Jim Brown + the Cleveland Browns = Fan for Life

The memory is old, but vivid.

I can still clearly remember the inspiring sight of Jim Brown carrying hapless tacklers into the end zone.

The greatest running back who ever put on a pair of cleats punctuated the earliest development of my love for the Cleveland Browns. I recall watching in awe the combination of elusiveness and brute strength that made Brown the most feared football player of his (or arguably any) generation.

Because of Brown and his teammates, Sunday mornings had a different, special feeling about them in our suburban Cleveland home as a kid. I would awake with a feeling of tremendous anticipation.

A brunch of pancakes and bacon would be followed by the tossing of a football in the front yard. But as I romped on the green lawn, pretending to be Brown or Leroy Kelly or Frank Ryan or Paul Warfield, one fervent hope preoccupied my thoughts.

I hope the Browns win today.

And most of the time, they did. It was the 1960s, and Cleveland had been a perennial champion or at least contender for two decades. In today's era of annual Browns struggles, it's hard to imagine that Pittsburgh was once their personal punching bag, but as a child, I received great pleasure when the Browns would steamroll past the Steelers and the vast majority of their other foes.

I was in cavernous Cleveland Stadium the afternoon the city experienced its last major sports championship. It was December 27, 1964; bitterly cold winds turned my eight-year-old body into a human icicle, but I didn't care. I felt privileged and thrilled to witness one of the greatest upsets in sports history: a 27-0 NFL title game thrashing of the heavily favored Baltimore Colts.

I recall with relish thousands in the packed stadium rushing onto the field after the final tick of the game clock to tear down the goalposts. I stood and cheered my gridiron heroes for well over 15 minutes. For once, my dad didn't rush us out of the stadium to avoid the inevitable traffic jam. He too appreciated the moment, and I was proud of him for that.

But it wasn't simply the dominance of the Browns that fueled my fandom. They also brought me closer to my father and brother. The den was a warm place when the three of us watched them play on the old black-and-white TV and later the color model my dad proudly wheeled in around 1966. A great sense of camaraderie grew between us as we cheered our beloved team on to victory or lamented a rare defeat.

Nothing changed my love for the Browns. As I aged, I grew far more objective, yet I still felt passionately about them.

They traded the brilliant Warfield for the right to draft quarterback bust Mike Phipps in 1970, signaling the end of their era of greatness, but still I embraced them.

They blew the 1980 playoff game to Oakland in the famous "Red Right 88" debacle, but still I embraced them.

They allowed John Elway and the Denver Broncos to march 99 yards downfield to wrest away a Super Bowl berth in 1986, but still I embraced them.

And even after I became a sportswriter and was assigned to cover the Browns, I remained a fan. I feigned indifference and proudly maintained objectivity in my writing, but I could no more ignore my hopes for a Browns triumph than I could ignore the game itself.

But it all began with Jim Brown. As a young child, I don't remember anything specific about the Browns teams of the early 1960s. I recall with greater clarity their teams later in the decade, after Brown shocked the football world by retiring and figuratively handing the ball off to fellow Hall of Famer Leroy Kelly.

Yet I am left with no doubt that two men created Marty Gitlin the Browns Fan; they were, without doubt, Jim Brown and Irving Gitlin. My father died four years ago, but his memory lives on in my mind and heart. And among the fondest of those memories was sitting next to him on the orange and tan den couch and sharing our love for our favorite football team.