Three deaths and a lot of tears

By STEVE KING

One of the saddest days in Browns history — actually, THE saddest, period — occurred 58 years ago Tuesday,
It was on May 18, 1963 that celebrated Browns rookie running back Ernie Davis died of leukemia at University Hospitals in Cleveland. He was just 23.
The first African American to win the Heisman Trophy after doing so during his senior season at Syracuse in 1961, he was the second of three Browns players to die during a 4 1/2-month period that year. 
Rookie back Tom Bloom, a Purdue product and the latter of the team’s two sixth-round picks in the 1963 NFL Draft, was killed exactly four months before, on Jan.18, in a car accident on an icy stretch of Interstate 71 as he was returning to campus from his hometown of Weirton, W. Va. He was but 21.
Then two weeks after Davis’s death, on June 4, an up-and-coming safety named Don Fleming from tiny Shadyside along the Ohio River in East Central Ohio, was electrocuted while working on a construction job in Winter Park, Fla. when the boom of the crane he was operating struck a power line. He was exactly a week short of turning 26, ready to enter the prime of his career. He had spent three years with the club after arriving in 1960 in a trade with the Chicago Cardinals, with whom he refused to play after they drafted him in 1959. He had 10 interceptions in three seasons, including five as a rookie in 1960.
The most tragic offseason in pro sports history, if not just sports history overall? Yes, without question, it would seem. It certainly shook up the Browns, who were already unsettled after watching Paul Brown, the man for whom the team is named and the only head coach the club had had since its inception in 1946, was fired just weeks after the end of the 1962 regular season and replaced by his top assistant and close friend, Blanton Collier. That was a whole heckuva lot of tough circumstances to digest.
After watching the Green Bay Packers’ powerful, big-bodied runners, Jim Taylor and Paiul Hornung, run over the Browns in a 41-17 loss at Cleveland in 1961, Paul Brown wanted to see if he could craft the same kind of backfield on his team, The Browns had one such runner in Jim Brown, but his running mate was the smaller Bobby Mitchell, who relied on speed, quickness and moves. Davis, with his size and the fact he had broken all of Jim Brown’s rushing records at Syracuse, would be the answer. The problem was, though, that he was the property of what is now known as the Washington Football Team after it drafted him at No. 1 overall in 1962.
An opening presented itself when Davis said he didn’t want to play with Washington, which, at the time, was one of the NFL’s worst franchises and had never had an Affrican American player on its roster. Brown, who also served as general manager of the Browns, inquired about the possibility of a trade, but the price would be steep — Mitchell. Brown made the blockbuster deal.
But while it worked for Washington, as the club converted Mitchell into a wide receiver and he developed into a Pro Football Hall of Famer, the trade was a disaster for the Browns. Davis came down with a mysterious illness and never played for the Browns. His glands became swollen, and it was thought he might have the mumps or mononucleosis. It was finally diagnosed as something far worse in the fall of 1962, and he died about seven months later.
When it became apparent in the 1962 training camp that Davis would not be available at least for a while, Paul Brown began looking for another back. He talked to his good friend, Packers head coach Vince Lombardi, who said he had a promising rookie who was not going to make the team because of the presence of Hornung and Taylor, but might be able to help the Browns. His name was Ernie Green, a 14th-round draft choice in 1962 out of Louisville. Lombardi agreed to trade Green, who also had good size, to the Browns, and he became one of the best runners in the league in a career that lasted through 1968, including in 1964 when the Browns captured the NFL title. He was a perfect complement first to Jim Brown and then with another Hall of Famer, Leroy Kelly. After Green retired, Collier hired him as running backs coach, making him one of the first African American assistant coaches in NFL history.
But Paul Brown never got to be part of any of that. He failed to tell Art Modell beforehand about the Mitchell trade, which infuriated the Browns owner, and then the team struggled to a 7-6-1 record in 1962. Modell had seen enough and dismissed him.
In addition, Mitchell returned to Cleveland in Week 2 of the 1962 season and made a sensational 50-yard catch-and-run for a late touchdown to beat the Browns 17-16.
It was just a bad situation for the Browns all the way around, and the horror of it hit home exactly 58 years ago.