The Browns have lost one of their longest and most well-known fans.

Martin Mull, described online as “a comic actor whose career also included contributions as a musician and painter,” died last Thursday it is home in Los Angeles. He was 80.

Mull was born in Chicago but moved with his family (his mother was an actress and director) to North Ridgeville, in Lorain County, west of Cleveland, when he was 2 and lived there until he was 15, when his family moved again, this time to New Canaan, Conn.

So his formative years were spent, in part, watching those great early Browns teams that played in a league championship game in each of their first 10 years of existence, from 1946-55, winning seven titles.

From time to time when his professional schedule allowed it, he would return to the area and take in a Browns practice in Berea.

He was friendly and engaging and always had a smile on his face during those visits. He seemed to really enjoy watching his hometown team and chatting with Browns officials.

Mull was one of a number of notable people who have attended Browns practices over the years, including Ronald Reagan when he was serving as President, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who was friends with Browns head coach Bill Belichick, and pro wrestler Jerry “the King” Lawler, a Browns fan.

One day, Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel and his counterpart at arch-rival Michigan, Lloyd Carr, showed up at a training camp practice in what was certainly a staged event. Carr stayed at the northwest, or Ann Arbor, end of the practice complex, just a few feet away from Tressel’s mother, Eloise, who, for years, helped check in guests and media members during Browns training camp practices. Meanwhile, Jim Tressel, a Berea High School and Baldwin-Wallace University product, stayed at the southeast, or Columbus, end of the complex.

Tressel, who was just named to the Board of Directors at B-W, where he played quarterback in the early 1970s, a mere half-century ago, shockingly so, for his iconic father, head coach Lee Tressel, is a huge Browns fan who, as the story goes, would listen to Browns games on the radio in his office on Sunday afternoons as he reviewed the previous day’s Buckeyes game while beginning preparations for the next opponent. There were times, when the Browns were struggling mightily to win games and find the right head coach, that Tressel’s name was bantied about as a possible candidate. As one Browns staffer told me at the time, “What better way to rally the masses than to have Jim Tressel coaching the team.”

I truly think Tressel would have welcomed the conversation, but it never came to that.

Other than that of Reagan in the mud-1980s, the visit to Browns practice that caused the most stir was that of Rice. She had been part of President George H. Bush’s entourage in Mentor the previous evening for a fundraiser for a Republican candidate. For security reasons, her trip to Browns practice was kept hush-hush. The only sign that something big was going on was the fact the bridge overpasses on I-77 near Berea and the neighborhood where Browns Headquarters is located, even on the rooftops of houses, was teeming with sharpshooters that morning.

During practice, one of the Browns media relations staffers asked reporters if we would like to talk to Rice. We enthusiastically said yes. So, less than a minute later, she was whisked over to us and a surge of media people swarmed around her. Just by where I had been standing, I was pushed into a position of being the closest person to her. I was less than a foot away — meer inches, actually.

“Unbelievable,” I thought to myself, “This is one of the coolest moments of my life.”

Indeed, that 15 minutes of fame, even it was in a Forrest Gump kind of way.

Rice explained she was a big Browns fan. Growing up in Alabama, she and the members of her family, especially her father, followed the Browns because of the team’s history with having so many African-American players, especially Bill Willis and Marion Motley, who permanently broke the color barrier, not just in football, but all of pro sports, when they played for the Browns in their first-ever game in 1946. Browns games were televised throughout the South for years. That’s how baseball great Hank Aaron became a fan.

Anyway, I was loving the moment so much that I wasn’t paying that much attention to my surroundings. Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched? I looked to my right to see a large man, standing only about three feet away, laser-focused on me. He had a scowl on his face, like he was begging for an excuse to crush me. When you look up “Secret Service agent” in the dictionary, this is the person in the photo: a 6-four-4, barrel-chested man with a dark complexion, slicked-back thinning black hair and a mustache, and wearing a black pin-stripped suit with a white shirt and a black tie. He had on mirror sunglasses.

Did I already mention he looked angry and irritated?

Ugh.

I gulped.

If I had moved my right arm any closer to Madame Secretary for any reason, he would have broken it off at the elbow and asked questions later.

I am not kidding.

I got the hint. I was as still as a mannequin. I have always liked my arms intact.

Somewhere, perhaps the late great Martin Mull is reading this and chuckling.

Steve King