OK, so now they’re both gone, Jim
Brown a year and a half ago and now Rocky Colavito on Tuesday.
Two of the biggest legends in the history of Cleveland legends, for all-time but especially for a time long ago.
They were, indeed, bigger than life.
Just ask any gray-haired Northeast Ohio native — mostly male but certainly a lot who are female, too — who remember black and white TV, Kennedy getting assassinated and rotary-dial phones — and they will tell you about JB and Rocky, the Supernen of their day in a city where the guy was born.
Brown, who was described by a fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer and the last of the two-way players, Chuck Bednarik, as “the closest thing there’s ever been to Superman on a football field because he was bigger, faster and stronger than everyone else and virtually indestructible,”
put up rushing totals that were light years beyond what mortal men could do then. And Rocky, like Marciano, hitting home runs that were still climbing in height and speed when they went out of play, including four in one game on a hot June night in Baltimore in 1959.
You couldn’t buy pro sport jerseys then (I know, because my poor dad tried, looking everywhere), so the boys in my Greater Akron area neighborhood took, much to their mother’s chagrin, brand-new undershirts (yes, boys wore undershirts, then) and, with a Magic Marker, carefully wrote a big “32” on one and a big “21” on the other. They became the most cherished parts of our wardrobe.
When we put the “21” shirt on, we grabbed a bat, put it behind our backs and used it to stretch, and then glared while pointing that bat right at an imaginary pitcher who, we knew, was shaking in his spikes and stirrup socks.
Why? Because Rocky did it before every at-bat.
It used to be that one of the saddest days in Cleveland sports history was when Rocky was traded to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn — Harvey Kuenn, for goodness sakes!! — just before the start of the 1960 season, making Indians General Manager Frank “Trader” Lane the most vilified man ever in these parts until some guy named Art Modell — perhaps you’ve heard of him — came along 35 years later.
Now, though, this day is sadder, because unlike the first time, when Rocky Colavito returned to Cleveland in a 1965 trade, he’s not coming back.
And neither is Jim Brown.
Steve King
