Cleveland sports fans watched on their tiny, black-and-white TV screens — and listened — disappointly so, as iconic former longtime Major League Baseball play-by-play announcer Russ Hodges, possibly for the first time in television sports history, uttered the phrase, “It must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.”

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An optical illusion?

Well, yes.

It was on Sept. 29, 1954 during the national telecast of Game 1 of the World Series between the Indians and the New York Baseball Giants, when, with runners on first and second and one out in the top of the eighth inning with the score tied 2-2, centerfielder Willie  Mays turned his back to home plate and ran, and ran, and ran some more into the depths of the cavernous part of the Polo Grounds outfield, almost to the point that he disappeared out of sight on the grainy image on the screen of those TV sets, to somehow, some way catch, as his cap so poetically flew off, a 457-foot rocket shot off the bat of Cleveland’s Vic Wertz that was likely headed for one of New York’s other boroughs. It killed an Indians rally and played a huge role in their eventual 5-2 loss achieved when pinch-hitter Dusty Rhodes tapped a three-run homer just barely into the seats in the short porch in right field, as rightfielder Dave Philley leaped high in a vain attempt to snag it, with one out in the 10th inning off starter Bob Lemon.

Wertz crushes one nearly out of sight, and Rhodes barely hits one and the Indians lose.

Ugh.

You always want to see something you’ve never seen when you go to a game, and the 52,000 in the seats and those watching on the few TVs that existed back in the earliest days of that medium, got their wish.

The unbelievable catch — how in the world did Mays pull it off? — has become engrained into the rich lore of baseball, and into the hearts and minds of Indians fans because that play set tone for the game and the game set the tone for the Series as the team that hardly ever lost — Cleveland set an American League record with 111 victories in the regular season and a staggering .721 winning percentage — blew a 2-0 first-inning lead that day and went on to somehow, some way lose four straight and the Series to the heavy underdog Giants.

That also defied logic and seemed like an optical illusion.

Perhaps, though, it was just karma — the sports gods evening the score between the two cities’ teams and fans — because it was a little more than 2-1/2 years earlier that a Cleveland team in the Browns used the same kind of magic in a game against New York Football Giants. It occurred almost exactly 75 years ago, on Dec. 17, 1950 at Cleveland Stadium, as the clubs, after tying for first place in the American Conference at 10-2 in the regular season, needed a special playoff game to decide which one would advance to meet, and host, the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL Championship Game a week later on Christmas Eve.

The weather? Much, much different than that of the Indians-Giants game in the early fall, or of the Browns-Giants regular-season games bunched together also in the early fall, and much like that when Cleveland’s former pro football team, the Rams, on Dec. 16, 1945, as they were playing their last game in town before bolting to Los Angeles, edged the Washington Redskins 15-14 to win the NFL title in blustery, bitterly-cold conditions at Cleveland Stadium.

The Browns and Giants both donned tennis shoes — white high-topped Chuck Taylor models, the same kind that the top early NBA players of the time such as George Mikan, Bob Cousy and Dolph Schayes were sporting — to try to get better traction on the frozen field.

The teams’ regular-season meetings — New York wins of 6-0 and 17-13 — were, as evidenced by those scores, fierce, hard-hitting struggles dominated by the two best defenses in the league, and this third game was more of the same. Points were, indeed, at a premium, as the Browns, on an 11-yard field goal by Lou Groza in the first quarter, led 3-0 through three quarters. The Giants managed to tie it 3-3 on a field goal of their own, a 20-yarder by Randy Clay, to set the stage for the play about which we have been talking repeatedly in this, the third part of this mini-series.

The Giants drove to the Cleveland 36 midway through the fourth quarter, at which time, hardly surprisingly, they put the ball into the hands of Gene Roberts, their best back and the most productive one — by far — in the game on either team who ended the game with 76 yards on 12 carries. He took the handoff from quarterback Charlie Conerly, broke through all the Cleveland defenders and took off. Browns head coach Paul Brown’s heart must have sunk at that point. Roberts’ nickname was “Choo-Choo,” and with good reason. He was considered the NFL’s fastest player, and once he got into the clear, put the throttle down and started chugging on down the tracks, he was almost impossible to catch. Things did not look good for the Browns, to say the least. It was downright dire, actually. All they things they had worked so hard to attain, were getting further away with each of Choo-Choo’s steps. A touchdown for the Giants and a 10-3 lead might have been, in a points-starved game such as this, too much for the Browns to overcome.

But every once in a while in sports, including football, as in life, something happens that defies logic. It doesn’t make sense. It seems truly unbelievable. There is no one who can explain it.

Just as it was for the Baseball Giants when a player such as Willie Mays showed just how great he was by making a play he shouldn’t have made, it was on this day for the Browns against the Football Giants. But instead of catching up with a speeding ball and catching it, the feat was catching up with a speeding runner and catching him.

Enter Cleveland’s middle guard, Bill Willis, a Hall of Famer in his sport just as Mays is in his. He was a product of Columbus East High School and then Ohio State, where, in 1942, the All-American helped head coach Paul Brown’s Buckeyes win the school’s first national championship.

Willis came to the Browns in their first season in 1946 and, with his good friend, fullback Marion Motley, permanently broke the color barrier not just in football, but all of pro sports, when they played in the team’s first game on Sept. 6, 1946. So, in that regard, then, Willis — and Motley, for had that matter — had something in common with Mays, one of baseball’s first Black players. Mays likely looked up to the Cleveland pair for paving the way for athletes like him.

Willis was very fast, certainly, but he was more quick than fast — and very athletic, too. He would antagonize, and infuriate, Browns HOF center Frank “Gunner” Gatski, against whom he lined up in practice, by leaping over him before the center could raise up into his blocking stance.

“You tell him to quit doing that!,” Gatski would scream at Paul Brown as teammates and assistant coaches alike laughed.

On the play against the Giants, Willis got chop-blocked, which helped spring Price.

Sprawled out on the turf, Willis turned to see Roberts’  caboose, so to speak. The back was past the crossing and headed to the next stop, the end zone.

And, did we also mention that Price had a heckuva big start on Willis?

Again, just as it was when Mays took off after a fly ball no one thought he could catch, Willis quickly got up and took after a runner no one thought he could catch. Yes, Willis was fast, quick, athletic and all this and that, but he was still a lineman and Roberts was a runner — and the fastest one around, to boot.

But that didn’t stop Willis. At least he could try.

And, as it turned out, succeed, against all odds.

Willis caught Roberts from behind and tackled him.

Really.

Somehow, some way.

At the Cleveland 4 after a 32-yard gain.

The Choo-Choo had been derailed, just 12 feet from the station.

As Russ Hodges said after Mays’ catch, everyone at Cleveland Stadium — 33,054 hearty souls on that frigid day — might have collectively been thinking to themselves, “It must’ve been an optical illusion to a lot of people.”

However, the Giants failed to get not only a touchdown but also even a field goal as the gritty Browns defense dug in its heels.

The Browns would later get another Groza field goal, this one from a lot further away, 28 yards, to go ahead 6-3 and then picked up a safety when Conerly was tackled in the end zone — by Willis, of course — to win 8-3.

Cleveland pro sports teams have had to win a playoff game twice to get into the league championship competition after tying for first place in the regular season, and both have come by 8-3 scores. The other was just two years earlier, in 1948, when the Indians, after finishing in a first-place tie with Boston in the American League, defeated the Red Sox and advanced to the World Series, which they also won over the Boston Braves.

But back to Willis. When asked by reporters after the game how in the world he tracked down Roberts, he replied, “I just saw him runnjng away with a bag of money that I thought should be mine.” He was referring to the fact that, unlike today, pro football players back then didn’t make much money and needed the extra dollars coming from playoff checks to make ends meet.

To be sure, by beating the Giants in a game the Browns had to win to get to the game they had to win to prove their greatness, Willis was also gaining financially. It was a win-win situation in the truest sense of the phrase.

Willis was laughing as he made his comment. Probably the reporters laughed as well. An absurdity, right? Just a little — or a big — joke, huh?

Maybe.

But, as crazy as it might sound, there just might be something to what he said.

After all, there’s a reason why it’s called an optical illusion.

Next: a look back years later.

Steve King

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