My Family Tradition as Browns Fans

Icecube

@bob806 said:

Lol....yeah, Phoenix is pretty transient so that kid is from Illinois. Lots of people around there wearing all kinds of different jerseys to that game- mostly Cowboys.

Yea, I think AZ regularly has more fans show from the visiting team. I am pretty sure more Cowboy fans show than Card fans at AZ vs. Dallas games in AZ.

TypicalBrowns50

I am a 2nd generation fan, my dad got me hooked on the browns after explaining the kardiac kids To me. And how the team left and came back. I was immediately drawn to the intimate history of the team and passion Of the fans.

my first year basically being a die hard was 2006. Charlie Frye Jersey is still hanging in the closet collecting dust. I should’ve given it to a homeless man a long time ago. Growing up my favorite player was probably Josh Cribbs or Peyton HILLIS for one year. We haven’t had a lot to cheer about the last 20 years.

hoorta

@d-bone said:

Hell yea! Now this is a thread that should be 22 pages by months end. Very cool.

Don't have the time now to totally read through the thread- but I will give you guys my Browns history eventually....

Dutch Oven

@d-bone said:

Hell yea! Now this is a thread that should be 22 pages by months end. Very cool.

The Browns should draft Saquon Barkley. He's a generational talent.

?

Dutch Oven

@typicalbrowns50 said:

I am a 2nd generation fan, my dad got me hooked on the browns after explaining the kardiac kids To me. And how the team left and came back. I was immediately drawn to the intimate history of the team and passion Of the fans.

my first year basically being a die hard was 2006. Charlie Frye Jersey is still hanging in the closet collecting dust. I should’ve given it to a homeless man a long time ago. Growing up my favorite player was probably Josh Cribbs or Peyton HILLIS for one year. We haven’t had a lot to cheer about the last 20 years.

I find it somewhat surprising - in a good way - that anyone started being a Browns fan from '99 on and still is.

I mean, we older guys have memories of good teams we actually lived and died with.

SdBacker80

Great topic!!!

The 86 Browns were my first recollection of the Browns. My dad and I watched every game (Youngstown area) we would listen to the radio during the game to hear play by play with Nev Chandler. I remember My Cousin collected these Browns Digests 70s-80s not sure what they were called He had stacked high in a cabinet. I remember being 7/8 and reading most of them each time we would visit. First game at Muni Stadium was a Monday Night game against the Colts with Mike Pagel as the QB. I was 8 I had school (2nd or 3rd grade) the next morning my mom was pissed. Now being 2500 miles away I usually call Sunday evenings and we talk about what the Browns did wrong

ballpeen

We moved to Cleveland when I went in to 1st grade. Moved in from Detroit. My Dad was born in Toledo, as was I, so he was a Lions and Tigers fan. We went to a few Browns games, but I remember him saying he wasn't going to pay $11 for a football ticket! LOL When I got old enough I took money from my Plain Dealer route to buy my own $11 ticket and went downtown with a friend. There were gameday express busses. My parents were pissed I went downtown on my own. They were really pissed when my buddy and I got on the wrong bus home and it dropped us off out in Parma, we lived in Bay Village. We couldn't figure out the bus schedule to get home, so had to call my parents to come get us. That was a quiet ride, at least until we dropped my buddy off at his house, then it got pretty loud.

In those days home games were never on TV. Games had to sell out by maybe Thursday to get local TV coverage. There were always a few seats directly behind a pole, or a few standing room seats created that wouldn't sell. There could be 82,000 people in there, but those last 25 seats kept games off the air. My brothers and I would sit in the large upstairs bedroom we shared and listed to Gib Shanley call the game. We would take out our sleeping bags and stack them, use them as practice dummies.

Good times.

Footbalfan1962

My tradition started in 1996 when they became a top rate winning organization

gumby73

@ballpeen said:

My parents were pissed I went downtown on my own. They were really pissed when my buddy and I got on the wrong bus home and it dropped us off out in Parma, we lived in Bay Village. We couldn't figure out the bus schedule to get home, so had to call my parents to come get us. That was a quiet ride, at least until we dropped my buddy off at his house, then it got pretty loud.

Good times.

Oh Yeah! I know all about that quiet ride home! it's Oct.1980.. Sipe hits Dave Logan with 17 seconds left to stun Lynn Dickey & the Packers..No one could cover James Lofton all day..It's a good thing I taped that game.. I was grounded a week to watch it!

I chose to lie to mom to get her keys to the back-up car 'The Mean green Valiant'.. It's my best friends birthday & he's never seen a game..So we takeoff from Toledo & B00M! Front tire blows bout a hour from the Muni lot...The jacks up & I'm 2 nuts on the spare & here comes Buford & the blue lights special ?. Mighty Barney Fife, impounds Mom's car for another tire & questioned plate search..Were fk'd ?.I'm age 17. Mean green Valiant is Towed. And Fife takes us to his holding cell station for my ONE phone call .. Hi M0m! ....

am out of emojis at this time. but browns& parents pissed is worth all 6..

mjp28

@sdbacker80 said:

Great topic!!!

The 86 Browns were my first recollection of the Browns. My dad and I watched every game (Youngstown area) we would listen to the radio during the game to hear play by play with Nev Chandler. I remember My Cousin collected these Browns Digests 70s-80s not sure what they were called He had stacked high in a cabinet. I remember being 7/8 and reading most of them each time we would visit. First game at Muni Stadium was a Monday Night game against the Colts with Mike Pagel as the QB. I was 8 I had school (2nd or 3rd grade) the next morning my mom was pissed. Now being 2500 miles away I usually call Sunday evenings and we talk about what the Browns did wrong

Great stuff ! Where abouts were you in the Youngstown area to listen to Nev on the radio?

The BROWNS, INDIANS and even CAVS all had good radio and TV people......but we might have been a bit prejudicial on our opinions.

GO BROWNS, TRIBE and CAVS (well when LBJ was there).......oh yeah !

mjp28

@gumby73 said:

Oh Yeah! I know all about that quiet ride home! it's Oct.1980.. Sipe hits Dave Logan with 17 seconds left to stun Lynn Dickey & the Packers..No one could cover James Lofton all day..It's a good thing I taped that game.. I was grounded a week to watch it!

I chose to lie to mom to get her keys to the back-up car 'The Mean green Valiant'.. It's my best friends birthday & he's never seen a game..So we takeoff from Toledo & B00M! Front tire blows bout a hour from the Muni lot...The jacks up & I'm 2 nuts on the spare & here comes Buford & the blue lights special ?. Mighty Barney Fife, impounds Mom's car for another tire & questioned plate search..Were fk'd ?.I'm age 17. Mean green Valiant is Towed. And Fife takes us to his holding cell station for my ONE phone call .. Hi M0m! ....

am out of emojis at this time. but browns& parents pissed is worth all 6..

Gumby you missed your calling as a stand up comedian. GOOD STUFF !

mjp28

@ballpeen said:

We moved to Cleveland when I went in to 1st grade. Moved in from Detroit. My Dad was born in Toledo, as was I, so he was a Lions and Tigers fan. We went to a few Browns games, but I remember him saying he wasn't going to pay $11 for a football ticket! LOL When I got old enough I took money from my Plain Dealer route to buy my own $11 ticket and went downtown with a friend. There were gameday express busses. My parents were pissed I went downtown on my own. They were really pissed when my buddy and I got on the wrong bus home and it dropped us off out in Parma, we lived in Bay Village. We couldn't figure out the bus schedule to get home, so had to call my parents to come get us. That was a quiet ride, at least until we dropped my buddy off at his house, then it got pretty loud.

In those days home games were never on TV. Games had to sell out by maybe Thursday to get local TV coverage. There were always a few seats directly behind a pole, or a few standing room seats created that wouldn't sell. There could be 82,000 people in there, but those last 25 seats kept games off the air. My brothers and I would sit in the large upstairs bedroom we shared and listed to Gib Shanley call the game. We would take out our sleeping bags and stack them, use them as practice dummies.

Good times.

Ballpeen you were so right on those ridiculous NFL sell out rules especially in the big old multiuse stadiums with the good/bad seats.

Like you said good times.

gumby73

@mjp28 said:

Gumby you missed your calling as a stand up comedian. GOOD STUFF !

Ah Shucks,thanks! I did drop the ? at a few high school pep rally's..Coaches with bad Breath ?️... My Browns 2nd National Anthem ? request..

Oh! were not done yet... I'll get to the story of the 2 G-men goober fans that hired 2 female escorts at Metlife we called........ M&M's & Skittles ?

just Keep these great post coming ? Good Stuff Ballpeen!

TexasAg1969

I followed them with Jim Brown, but only through the newspapers since from 59-65 I lived in Venezuela. Never saw him actually play a game, but have enjoyed the youtubes.

Came here with JFF and remained to give you all Myles to make up for it and I think he has already. If we can just get a season going this year, I think it gets real interesting.

Loved reading the different stories on here about the rest of you and your connection with the Browns.

SdBacker80

@mjp28 said:

Great stuff ! Where abouts were you in the Youngstown area to listen to Nev on the radio?

The BROWNS, INDIANS and even CAVS all had good radio and TV people......but we might have been a bit prejudicial on our opinions.

GO BROWNS, TRIBE and CAVS (well when LBJ was there).......oh yeah !

I grew up in between Akron and Youngstown. I don’t recall the station but I remember Nev.

Having spent time around Philadelphia radio, San Diego and So Cal radio. I agree we have some great radio people. Tom Hamilton is one of my favorites. I’d put him up against anyone.

I think we feel exactly the same about Browns Tribe and Cavs although I enjoyed the Price Nance Daugherty Cavs there were just too many dismal tanking years in between that and LBJ And even after LBJ that my interest was lost a little.

mjp28

@sdbacker80 said:

I grew up in between Akron and Youngstown. I don’t recall the station but I remember Nev.

Having spent time around Philadelphia radio, San Diego and So Cal radio. I agree we have some great radio people. Tom Hamilton is one of my favorites. I’d put him up against anyone.

I think we feel exactly the same about Browns Tribe and Cavs although I enjoyed the Price Nance Daugherty Cavs there were just too many dismal tanking years in between that and LBJ And even after LBJ that my interest was lost a little.

I'll agree with Hammy anytime and the great and classy Herb Score or Joe Tait or Jimmy Dudley going way back. I used to like going in the backyard with my grandfather and have a nice relaxing afternoon listening to a Tribe game especially when there were fewer games on TV.

And the BROWNS especially now when they're blacked out on the Ohio/pa line for the Steelers with Donovan & Dieken and before that with Nev and Gib.

I'm not a big hoops guy but I remember the Cavs in the big Brad and free throw champ Mark Price era and going back to the Richmond arena era with Joe Tait. I would like to catch games on my car radio when traveling. LBJ was incredible in his era which is probably gone now in Ohio.

Amazing too how reminiscing about sports brings back all of these great times in our lives.

GO BROWNS, TRIBE, BUCKEYES and Cavs......

AP1

My Great-Grandpa's family landed in Baltimore like many other Jewish Slavs, made their way to Pittsburgh and settled in Albion, PA south of Erie. He worked on the railroad and was the first to take my Grandpa to the city on a train to watch the Browns and Indians. My Grandpa was born in 1938, so he had the thrills of the Paul Brown juggernaut teams of the 1940s and 50s and the Jim Brown era. My Dad was born in 1960 and lived the Kardiac Kids, I was born in 1982, the Schottenheimer through Belichick Browns were my everything. We moved to Central Indiana in 1984. Dad was one of the first of all of his uncles and cousins that didn't work in the mills, foundries or tool and dye shops of NW PA.

We watched football every Sunday, but the Browns were never on until the playoffs. The in game updates back then were absolute treats. My Grandma would occasionally record games with the VCR and send them to us and we had a Browns' News/Illustrated subscription. And that's how we got our Browns' information! I'd sit at the kitchen table and immerse myself in that thing. That periodical was truly a gem.

Every time the Browns played in Indianapolis we would go and it seemed in the late 80's, early 90's that was a yearly event. The Colts were absolute trash then and many years the Brownies wore their Brown on White uniforms and our fellow Browns' fans traveled so well that those games always felt like Browns' home games. After the game, my Dad would take us down to the player-family area right by the loading docks where the team buses parked. We were in Heaven. We met and received autographs from our Heroes - Bernie, Clay Matthews, Steve Everitt, Eric Metcalf, Ozzie Newsome, Kevin Mack, Ernest Byner, Michael Dean Perry, Pepper Johnson, Mike Caldwell, Vinny, Bill Belichick, Tom Tupa, Leroy Hoard, James Jones, Michael Jackson, Antonio Langham and Eric Turner to name a few.

My Dad had a pretty good relationship with a guy that ran a local watering hole and a couple times in the early 90's, I got to go to the bar with Dad to watch some games. He'd order a couple appetizers and we'd sit in the corner and watch the Browns on satellite, which was a huge deal. I remember a few games of note being televised locally, it was sporadic: the Monday Night win vs the 49ers, an opening day loss in NE, Metcalf taking two punts back vs the Steelers and the win in Dallas in '94.

On Thanksgiving weekend 1994, we finally got a chance to see the Browns play in Municipal Stadium, I came remember not wanting to leave after the game. They beat the Oilers 39-24. It was awesome and my brother, fours year younger, and I soaked up the experience. Just being around passionate Browns fan that I knew had cheered and screamed as loud as we had and cried like we had until there was nothing in the tank was fulfilling. Oddly enough, a family in front of us did not stand for the National Anthem and the guys around us in Carhartts and the old Orange hard hats let the man of the family know how he felt. Words were exchanged, the guy in the hard hat rolled up his program and hit the man that sat on the head a couple times. He had plenty of words. The family left immediately never to return.

The last two decades have been no different as far as our love. However, my outlook has changed from that of a starry-eyed boy ever the optimist, to a man that questions making the same decisions and expecting a different result. We were raised and have remained steadfast Browns fans in the darkest four decades of the franchise. My brother is out East, he's still a die-hard Browns fan. My sister is out West, she's still a Browns fan. My mom, raised in a Steeler home, is a Browns fan and Dad and Grandpa are still going strong. Even my little girls who cheer for "Daddy's Team" are Browns fans.

Flugel

@ap1 said:

My Great-Grandpa's family landed in Baltimore like many other Jewish Slavs, made their way to Pittsburgh and settled in Albion, PA south of Erie. He worked on the railroad and was the first to take my Grandpa to the city on a train to watch the Browns and Indians. My Grandpa was born in 1938, so he had the thrills of the Paul Brown juggernaut teams of the 1940s and 50s and the Jim Brown era. My Dad was born in 1960 and lived the Kardiac Kids, I was born in 1982, the Schottenheimer through Belichick Browns were my everything. We moved to Central Indiana in 1984. Dad was one of the first of all of his uncles and cousins that didn't work in the mills, foundries or tool and dye shops of NW PA.

We watched football every Sunday, but the Browns were never on until the playoffs. The in game updates back then were absolute treats. My Grandma would occasionally record games with the VCR and send them to us and we had a Browns' News/Illustrated subscription. And that's how we got our Browns' information! I'd sit at the kitchen table and immerse myself in that thing. That periodical was truly a gem.

Every time the Browns played in Indianapolis we would go and it seemed in the late 80's, early 90's that was a yearly event. The Colts were absolute trash then and many years the Brownies wore their Brown on White uniforms and our fellow Browns' fans traveled so well that those games always felt like Browns' home games. After the game, my Dad would take us down to the player-family area right by the loading docks where the team buses parked. We were in Heaven. We met and received autographs from our Heroes - Bernie, Clay Matthews, Steve Everitt, Eric Metcalf, Ozzie Newsome, Kevin Mack, Ernest Byner, Michael Dean Perry, Pepper Johnson, Mike Caldwell, Vinny, Bill Belichick, Tom Tupa, Leroy Hoard, James Jones, Michael Jackson, Antonio Langham and Eric Turner to name a few.

My Dad had a pretty good relationship with a guy that ran a local watering hole and a couple times in the early 90's, I got to go to the bar with Dad to watch some games. He'd order a couple appetizers and we'd sit in the corner and watch the Browns on satellite, which was a huge deal. I remember a few games of note being televised locally, it was sporadic: the Monday Night win vs the 49ers, an opening day loss in NE, Metcalf taking two punts back vs the Steelers and the win in Dallas in '94.

On Thanksgiving weekend 1994, we finally got a chance to see the Browns play in Municipal Stadium, I came remember not wanting to leave after the game. They beat the Oilers 39-24. It was awesome and my brother, fours year younger, and I soaked up the experience. Just being around passionate Browns fan that I knew had cheered and screamed as loud as we had and cried like we had until there was nothing in the tank was fulfilling. Oddly enough, a family in front of us did not stand for the National Anthem and the guys around us in Carhartts and the old Orange hard hats let the man of the family know how he felt. Words were exchanged, the guy in the hard hat rolled up his program and hit the man that sat on the head a couple times. He had plenty of words. The family left immediately never to return.

The last two decades have been no different as far as our love. However, my outlook has changed from that of a starry-eyed boy ever the optimist, to a man that questions making the same decisions and expecting a different result. We were raised and have remained steadfast Browns fans in the darkest four decades of the franchise. My brother is out East, he's still a die-hard Browns fan. My sister is out West, she's still a Browns fan. My mom, raised in a Steeler home, is a Browns fan and Dad and Grandpa are still going strong. Even my little girls who cheer for "Daddy's Team" are Browns fans.

Way to go - another GREAT story in this thread! Loved our 80s Browns, which began 2 years after we drafted Clay Matthews and Ozzie Newsome in the first round in 1978. The 80s also treated fans to my 2 favorite QBs - Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar. These were some of the RBs/FBs in the 80s: Greg Pruitt, Cleo Miller, Mike Pruitt, Calvin Hill, Charles White, Boyce Green, Earnest Byner, Kevin Mack, Curtis Dickey, Herman Fontenot, Tim Manoa, and Eric Metcalf. And your mention of the Browns News Illustrated brought back fond memories and the weekend discussions it would lead to about the team.

Flugel

This has been a lot fun reading where all the passion comes from in this fan base/message board. Incredible stuff and much appreciated folks! Looking forward to reading more of them. Don't hold that stuff hostage...

gumby73

@ap1 said:

Browns' News/Illustrated subscription. And that's how we got our Browns' information! I'd sit at the kitchen table and immerse myself in that thing.

On Thanksgiving weekend 1994, we finally got a chance to see the Browns play in Municipal Stadium, I came remember not wanting to leave after the game. They beat the Oilers 39-24. It was awesome and my brother, fours year younger, and I soaked up the experience. Just being around passionate Browns fan that I knew had cheered and screamed as loud as we had and cried like we had until there was nothing in the tank was fulfilling.

Our Browns friend, your whole post was awesome.. Thanks for sharing..this got me^^.Nothing like the tingle when your arm hair's stand straight up! What a ballgame! I also now remember making the trip from NC back to Ohio to my Sisters with Dad & All the Family...Thanks AP! It took a few 30, but Dad & I, finally broke mom of removing the browns illustrated from the kitchen table..