It’s one thing to look up stuff and describe what that first Browns regular-season game was like.
But it’s another thing entirely to hear about it from someone who was actually there, among the 60,135 fans at Cleveland Stadium, almost exactly 80 years ago, on Sept. 6, 1946, watching the Browns roll past the Miami Seahawks 44-0 and launch what would turn out to be a decade-long dynasty.
His name is Dino Lucarelli, a native of Garfield Heights in the southeast Cleveland suburbs who went on to work in public relations for three Cleveland pro sports teams in the Browns, Indians and Barons, the Cleveland Browns Trust for three years after the original franchise went to Baltimore and also for the Cleveland Stadium Corp. before retiring from the Browns as alumni relations director in 2009. He still lives in the Cleveland area.
Dino, who turned 92 years young about three weeks ago, was 12 when he went to that first game with his older sister and her boyfriend. They had tickets for the grandstand while Dino sat in the bleachers by himself.
“It was 25 cents for me to get in,” he told me about 35 years ago. “I had to wear a bright red shirt so they could keep an eye on me from where they sat. I wasn’t allowed to leave for any reason, including going to the restroom.”
The fact is, Dino didn’t want to leave for any reason. He loved what he was seeing, hearing and feeling. It was an incredible environment, and experience.
“I had never seen anything like that,” he said. “I had never seen football played like that. It was so fast-paced, with everybody moving right in step. Then you had the Cleveland Browns Marching Band with the Musical Majorettes, all of it under those bright lights.
“I was hooked for life that night.”
Steve King
