Of Moms, Numbers, Browns Memories and Drips

OF MOMS, NUMBERS, BROWNS MEMORIES AND DRIPS

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By STEVE KING

A little bit of this and a little bit of that, some notes and thoughts …

*I don’t know if this is appropriate for a football website, but I do know that it is appropriate for some kind of website, somewhere. And the timing is perfect. So here goes: Today is Mother’s Day. For those of you whose mom is still alive – and I hope you are in that group; I would do anything to be in there with you – make sure today to give her a call, do a Zoom chat with her or stand out in her driveway, with plenty of social distancing, and wave at her and/or shout at her. Don’t wait. Do it earlier in the day. That woman – that lady – is a priority – so, please, don’t you dare forget. And if you have a female significant other – wife, fiancé, girlfriend or whomever – do something special for her, with her. Please. Thanks. You’ll never a get a second chance at Mother’s Day 2020, or possibly at all. So, take full advantage of it. And to all the moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

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*”The Last Dance” series on ESPN will continue on Sunday, and the only real issue in regards to Northeast Ohio is trying to determine the over/under on references to Michael Jordan’s shot at the buzzer to defeat the Cavaliers in Game 5 at the Coliseum and eliminate them in their opening-round series in the 1989 Eastern Conference playoffs. Three times? Four times? Two times? Too many times? I’ll take the last one. OK, but you’re probably asking, “What does this have to do with the Browns?” Glad you asked. There are many photos of Jordan celebrating immediately after he hit the shot. One of the more famous ones was taken from underneath the basket at which he was shooting. He’s looking right at the camera as he jumps. I’ve looked at that photo countless times, as I’m sure many of you have done as well. It’s like looking at an accident scene on the highway. It’s horrible, but you can’t take your eyes off it, right? But what I had never noticed until just a couple weeks ago was this: Off to the left in the photo is the man who was guarding Jordan, the Cavaliers’ Craig Ehlo, looking down as he throws his hands up and walks toward the sideline. When you look over top of Ehlo’s head, there’s a man in the stands wearing a white Browns jersey with a No. 71 on it. He’s standing and has the same utter look of disbelief as all the other many Cavs fans in the crowd. But that No. 71 jersey. It intrigues me, not for the fact that he wore it to a Cavs game because a lot of Cleveland sports fans wear the clothing of other Cleveland teams to a game. For instance, how many times at an Indians game have you seen someone in the stands wearing a Browns jersey? It’s 1989, and the Brown who wore No. 71 – for that season and 1990, his only two years with the team — was defensive end Tom Gibson. I doubt the fan is wearing it because Gibson is his favorite player, since he was a little-known player and his debut with the Browns was still five months away. Perhaps it’s one of those throwback jerseys, and if that’s the case, then it might be for the great Walter Johnson, a defensive tackle for the Browns from 1965-76. But with the fact I first noticed the jersey-wearing fan in the stands not long after the NFL Draft, what I couldn’t get out of my head was how ironic it was to be looking at a No. 71 Browns jersey because that’s the number that first-round draft pick Jedrick Wills Jr. had selected only a day or two before. I mean, there are plenty of the numbers the fan could have picked. Why did I see No. 71 at that time? It was not associated with greatness on the Browns since Johnson wore it. Just like No. 23 on the Chicago Bulls never had greatness associated with it until Jordan came along … at the expense of the Cavs. Yay.

Of moms numbers — Michael Jordan reacts after hitting the game winning basket over Cleveland’s Craig Ehlo in Game 5 of the NBA playoffs May 7, 1989.The Plain Dealer

*And finally, as part of my research for the Mount Rushmore series about great Browns players that I have been doing, I had to watch a couple clips of “The Drive.” I know, I know, the 1986 AFC Championship Game was over 33 years ago – 33½, to be exact – but it still pains me to watch it, think about it, hear about it or anything with it. I can’t help it. It just does. I was talking to a friend recently and she mentioned some song that she said they used to play at Denver Broncos home games. “Ugh. The Denver Broncos. That team took years off my life. Really. I’m serious,” I said. That puzzled the woman, who is not really a football fan and is not from Northeast Ohio. “What do you mean? How can a football team take years off your life?,” she said. “You say the Broncos have taken years off your life, as in the front part of your life, so that you feel younger than you really are?” “No, it has taken years off the back end of my life, so at whatever age I was supposed to die, now I’m going to die several years before that.” “You’re kidding, right? You don’t really mean that, do you?” “Uh, I kind of do, but I also kind of don’t. What I do know, however, is that, that game – that loss – killed me. It still does now, all these years later. The Browns scored a touchdown late in the fourth quarter to take the lead. I thought for sure that they were going to the Super Bowl – I would have bet my mortgage on it, that’s how sure I was – and then that stupid drive happened. It nearly killed me back then, and, like I said, it’s still killing me now. Actually, it’s been killing little by little all these years in between then and now, like the ol’ Chinese Water Torture, drip by drip by drip.” “I guess I don’t quite understand.” “And I guess you would have had to been there. Trust me.” The moral of this story? Don’t be a drip. Call your mom today.

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Of Moms, Numbers, Browns Memories and Drips