Something very rare is happening, and for a second time, a Cleveland pro sports team is part of it.
You may – or may not – be aware that when the Cavaliers play the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, it will be the first time in league history, and the fourth time in pro sports history, that the same teams have met for a league championship three years in a row.
The Cavaliers beat the Warriors in seven games last year, after Golden State defeated Cleveland in six games in 2015.
The three other major pro sports leagues have all had this happen once, which makes this rarity completely diverse. They’re al included.
From 1954-56 in the NHL, Detroit and Montreal battled in the Stanley Cup Finals, with the Red Wings winning two times. The series featured a combined total of 18 future Hall of Famers. In the 1954 series, the Canadiens were so stunned after losing that they left the ice without shaking hands with the Wings.
It was nearly a century ago when it happened in baseball between two New York teams. From 1921-23, the Giants, 3½ decades before they would bolt for San Francisco (giving that city a semi-claim now that it is home to two of the teams in this three times-in-three years uniqueness), beat the Yankees twice in the World Series. Babe Ruth hit .368 with three home runs the year that the Yankees won. He had batted .393 with 41 homers during the regular season.
And finally, the other Cleveland connection along with the Cavs?
It’s through the Browns, who, from the 1952-54, played another Detroit team, the Lions, in the NFL Championship Game.
The Browns were in their third year in the NFL in 1952. They moved to the NFL, along with the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts, in 1950 from the All-America Football Conference after capturing all four titles in that league from 1946-49.
Those winning ways continued when the Browns went to the NFL as they came from 10 points down in the fourth quarter to edge the Los Angeles Rams 30-28 for the 1950 championship on Lou Groza’s 16-yard field goal with 28 seconds left.
The Rams, who had left Cleveland for Los Angeles after winning the 1945 NFL title so as to avoid going head-to-head with the new Browns, returned the favor in 1951 by topping the Browns 24-17 on a 73-yard touchdown pass from Norm Van Brocklin to Tom Fears on a third-and-three play late in the fourth quarter.
Then, for the next three seasons, it was the Browns and Lions playing for the championship.
In 1952 before 50,934 fans at Cleveland Stadium, the Lions moved to a 14-0 third-quarter lead and won 17-7. Chick Jagade rushed for 104 yards and the Browns’ only touchdown on a seven-yarder in the third quarter. The game was déjà vu since the teams had met midway through the regular season at Detroit, with the Lions winning by nearly the same score, 17-6. Cleveland had earned the title in the American (to be renamed Eastern in 1953) Conference crown that year with an 8-4 mark, beating out the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles (tied at 7-5) by a game.
The Browns were much more dominant during the 1953 regular season, winning their first 11 games before losing a meaningless finale to the Eagles to go 11-1. They rolled to the title in the new Eastern Conference by 3½ games over Philadelphia (7-4-1). But that wasn’t enough to claim the NFL crown, as the Lions won by a much narrower margin than the year before, 17-16, at what was then known as Briggs Stadium.
Jagade again led the way for the Browns in the game with a nearly identical performance from the year before, rushing 15 times once more for 102 yards and a TD on a nine-yarder in the third quarter. His longest run in the game was 30 yards. In 1952, it was 29.
But quarterback Otto Graham, who almost always saved his best moments for the biggest stages, had the worst postseason performance of his career, hitting on just two of 15 passes for 20 yards with two interceptions for a quarterback rating of exactly zero.
The Browns, though, still managed to find a way to lead 16-10 late in the fourth quarter before letting the Lions drive 80 yards for the winning TD on a 33-yard pass from Bobby Layne to Jim Doran with 2:10 left.
The Browns finally won – and in a big, big way – in 1954, routing the Lions 56-10 in front of 43,827 at Cleveland. Graham rebounded impressively from his struggles the previous season, accounting for six touchdowns, three each passing and running. His quarterback rating for the game, 116.7, was as good as it had been bad in 1953.
The Browns led 35-10 at halftime, getting 12 more points in just two quarters than they had in the previous eight quarters combined against the Lions in 1952 and ’53. In that first half, Graham threw two scoring passes, covering 35 and 31 yards, to wide receiver Ray Renfro, along with an eight-yarder to wideout Pete Brewster, and he had one- and five-yard rushing TDs.
He added another one-yard scoring run in the third quarter, with Cleveland’s final points coming on TD rushes by Fred “Curly” Morrison (12 yards) and Chet “The Jet” Hanulak (10).
The Browns had gotten to the title game by winning the East with a 9-3 mark, 1½ games better than the Eagles (7-4-1). The week before they played the Lions for the title, they finished the regular season with a 14-10 home loss to Detroit in a game that had been moved from early in the season to accommodate the Indians playing in the World Series against the Giants (another connection, albeit minor, to San Francisco?).
But instead of that being the pre-curser to a third straight loss to the Lions in the championship game, the defeat served merely as more inspiration for the Browns to get revenge.
With that in mind, then, what can the Cavs use for revenge?
Obviously it’s the fact that nearly everyone nationally – and also some people locally, so really, just about all those outside of their own locker room – who give the team little or no chance to defeat Golden State.
