Here’s one championship title we Cleveland fans can grasp and proudly hold aloft: Most Miserable.
Boston fans no longer have their Curse to bemoan—and anyway, they’ve got those Patriots Super Bowl trophies. (Aargh!—Bill Belichick!) Chicago fans? Don’t start. The Cubs, yes—but what about all those unbeatable Bulls teams? (Ugh!—The Shot!) No, Cleveland owns bragging rights when it comes to the worst drought in professional sports championships. And it’s not just The Fumble, The Drive, The Catch, Game Seven, and all our other big-game losses. We’ve endured enough bad luck, dumb trades, dud draft picks, and just plain goofy moments to keep us crying in our beers for decades. And they’re all collected here.
Could this little book end the worst championship drought in major league sports? Honestly, no. But it will give you something fun to read while you’re waiting for the Browns, the Tribe, the Cavs, or someone in Cleveland to finally win the Big One!
It may not take away the misery, but at least it offers a little humor to go with the groans!
Biggest Bummers
The Drive
Did you just cringe when you read those two words? Did you close your eyes for a second and contemplate skipping this section? Because there is no more angst-filled description of a Browns game than “The Drive.”
The Browns were confident of a trip to the Super Bowl before the 1986 AFC Championship game against the Denver Broncos, and it seemed a certainty with only 5:32 left to go in the game. Cleveland had just scored on a 48-yard touchdown pass from Bernie Kosar to Brian Brennan to go up 20-13. Now Denver was planted on their two-yard line with 98 yards to go for a tie. Then Denver was at the Cleveland 40-yard line facing a second down and 10 yards to go with 1:52 remaining. Elway was then sacked for an eight-yard loss by defensive tackle Dave Puzzuoli. How much more promising could it be? California dreamin’ (as in Pasadena, site of that year’s Super Bowl) swept away the iciness of Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Broncos were third and 18 at midfield, with less than two minutes to go, and they needed a touchdown to tie. From the packed home crowd to the 60 million NBC television viewers, the consensus had the Browns taking this one from the Broncos.
Alas, Denver did tie it, and Elway’s march to paydirt was memorialized in the damning phrase known simply as, “The Drive.” Cleveland coach Marty Schottenheimer said after the game, “We had them third and 18, but they got the first down. There were others, but that [play] may have been the most important.”
Thrust into overtime, the Browns won the toss and would own the pigskin first. Surely a Mark Mosely field goal could win this in OT, just as it had a week before in the playoff game against the New York Jets. The Browns began their drive at their 30-yard line, with Kosar forced to run for two yards. A six-yard pass to Brennan made it third down and two yards at the 38-yard line. What follows has got to be one of the Browns’ most poorly conceived plays with the money on the line. The Browns needed two yards. They had a bruising fullback in Kevin Mack, who thundered for 3.8 yards per carry in 1986 and an amazing five yards per carry in 1985. The play? An inside off-tackle run by utility halfback Herman Fontenot. The result? No gain. Fotenot’s worth was as a pass receiver, not a runner. Mack, who outweighed the 198-pound Fontenot by 27 pounds and was built, well, like a Mack truck, did not get the call for two of the most precious yards in Browns’ history. Chances are good the Browns could have moved into position for the game-winning field goal. Instead, they punted, and Elway engineered a 50-yard drive, enabling kicker Rich Karlis to boot the heart-stabbing three-pointer that turned the California dream into a
Red-Right 88 flashback.
Schottenheimer told his team in the locker room to hold their heads high and that this team “would be back.” And so they would—one year later—to face the same Broncos, only this time in Denver. As much as that bit of news may have lifted the team’s spirit on January 11, 1987, it was better that the Browns not have that glimpse into their future.
He Knocked the Rock
This is the queen mother of all bad Cleveland baseball trades, the horror of which still lives to this day. This trade would even spawn a phrase that explains more than 30 years of bad Indians baseball: the curse of Rocky Colavito. Rocky was a product of Cleveland’s farm system who played for the big league Indians from 1955–1959 and again in 1965–1967. With his powerful bat, rifle right arm, and good looks, Rocky quickly won the hearts of fans. To them, he could do no wrong, as evidenced by the oft repeated phrase, “Don’t knock the Rock.” Yet on April 17, 1960, Cleveland’s general manager, Frank “The Trader” Lane, pulled off a deal with Detroit Tigers’ president William DeWitt that sent Colavito to the Tigers in exchange for Harvey Kuenn, the 1959 American League batting champ. Rocky was a power hitter; Kuenn hit singles and doubles for a higher average. Rocky was younger than Kuenn by three years and had the edge defensively, but, more significantly, Colavito was and remains one of the most popular Indians players ever.
Why did all of Cleveland take the trade so hard? Here’s what Cleveland Plain Dealer sports editor Gordon Cobbledick wrote the day after the trade: “Many are aware of Rocky’s limitations. They know he is an indifferent outfielder. They know he is a slow and uninspired base runner. They know he is capable of long spells when his bat is a feeble instrument. But they love him because he is Rocky Colavito! No more than a half dozen players in the history of Cleveland baseball have been accorded the hero worship he enjoys. Rocky was our boy.”
Indians pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant put it best when he said, “You want to know why Lane traded Rocky? That’s easy. Lane was an idiot.”
T.S. Stands for “Too Stupid”
If ever there was a true Cleveland sports embarrassment, Ted Stepien is it. Stepien started out as the owner of Nationwide Advertising and the Cleveland Competitors major league softball team. As the whole country would witness, it was a big jump, from owner of the Cleveland Competitors to that of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Too big, it turned out.
Just before the start of the 1980 NBA season, Stepien bought the Cleveland Cavaliers from original owner Nick Mileti, and truly dark days befell professional basketball in Cleveland. Stepien was unpredictable and inept, as evidenced by his goofy publicity stunts and irresponsible trades of draft picks in the early 1980s for questionable talent. The NBA was so outraged at Stepien’s moves they created what has become known as the “Stepien Rule,” which prohibits a team from trading future first-round picks in consecutive years. What an honor!
And who can forget the Cavaliers’ cheerleaders named after the egotistical owner himself . . . the Teddy Bears. The Cavaliers had four coaches in one season, tying an NBA record set by the old Toronto Huskies in 1947.
Away from the world of pro basketball, Stepien was no better at controlling himself. In 1980 he sponsored a publicity stunt that injured two pedestrians on Public Square when softballs were dropped from the 52nd floor of the Terminal Tower.
After three years of the Stepien insanity, both on and off the court, the NBA basically forced the sale of the Cavaliers to an ownership group that would actually provide some adult supervision. The Gund brothers, Gordon and George, came to the rescue and purchased the Cavaliers for $20 million in 1983, just as Stepien was trying to move the team to Toronto, where he intended to name them the Toronto Towers.
But the most entertaining episode of the Stepien era has to be his feud with sports-radio talker Pete Franklin. Franklin hosted the Sportsline radio show on Cleveland radio station WWWE, (now WTAM), in the 1970s and 1980s. Franklin was constantly on Stepien’s case, insulting him every chance he got. For those who remember Pete Franklin, that was normal behavior. He insulted everyone. Here’s one of his diatribes on the hapless Stepien, delivered in March 1983: “Other than being a certifiable nut and pathological liar, there’s probably nothing wrong with the guy. He’s an infestment, a cancer, that has screwed up the league, has escalated salaries and is responsible for everything from venereal disease to whooping cough.” Franklin went on to say the NBA considered Stepien “too stupid to operate” the franchise. From then on, Franklin referred...
