One of the last tangible connections to the original Browns will soon be snipped.

It comes with the news that the Yellow Cab Co. of Cleveland is going out of business. It will close within two months.

The company is owned by Brian McBride, 58, the grandson of Browns founding owner Arthur “Mickey” McBride. McBride owned Cleveland’s Zone Cab when he purchased Cleveland Yellow Cab in 1931. Zone Cab is one of the names by which Yellow Cab operates in the Cleveland area today.

It was 13 years after that purchase that Mickey McBride obtained the rights to the Cleveland franchise in the new All-America Football Conference. That team, eventually named the Browns after its popular head coach and general manager, Paul Brown, began play in 1946 as the league as a whole was launched.

The Browns were a big hit, winning all four titles in the short history of the AAFC. In fact, in going 52-4-3 overall, including a perfect 15-0 in 1948, they were so dominant that they made the league non-competitive, in essence putting it out of business following the 1949 season.

The Browns then moved to the rival NFL with two other AAFC teams, the Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers. Cleveland continued its winning ways there, capturing the league championship in 1950 and then returning to the title game the following two seasons before McBride sold he club in 1953 to a group headed by David Jones.

It was Jones who, eight years later, in March 1961, sold the Browns to Art Modell.

Paul Brown is known as “The Father of Modern Football” for all the innovations he brought to the game, but Mickey McBride was an innovator, too, coming up with the cab squad, which was the forerunner of today’s practice squad. When the Browns wanted to keep players but didn’t have room on the roster to sign them at that time, McBride got them jobs as drivers for his taxi company so they could make some money while waiting for an opening on the club.