Orange letters against a brown background on my new refrigerator magnet reads like a prayer: Just One Before I Die--Cleveland. The humble appeal represents the hope of a distant reward for all the suffering, all the heartbreaks all the energy spent over a lifetime on a team that is rarely competitive, let alone good. Browns fans are not greedy like some fans, (Steelers fans you know who I’m talking about) who would never consider begging the universe for one measly championship before sloughing off this mortal coil.
The lovely folks from the Southern California Browns Backers presented me the magnet when I walked into Patrick’s Pub in Costa Mesa to watch the season opener. Being surrounded by dozens of fellow Cleveland Browns fans during the losing effort produced an anesthetizing feeling. The other fans wearing brown and orange felt my pain and they even saved me from having to do all of the work of hurling and deleting the requisite expletives. Psychologists confirm that suffering is intensified when a person feels alone in his or her experience. That’s why churches focus so much on building community and not just belief systems. When your world falls apart, you need people to support you, not just a head-trip faith system.
Surprisingly many people wore jerseys of players who no longer play for the team and who never lived up to the hype y e.g., Patrick Hillis, Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, etc. When you blow $90 on a jersey, you've got to get all the use out of it that you can. Browns fans are practical that way. Only three or four people wore jerseys from players on the current roster. The jersey collection of failed Browns was reminder of all the men we thought would save us, only to leave us in the same old rebuilding mode. I liked the guy who crossed out the name Hillis on the back of his jersey and replaced it with “Me.”
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Even if the players aren’t reliable Browns fans are. Many teams have left cities, but the NFL knew about the loyalty and dedication of Browns fans and only Cleveland got its team back.
If you ever need a friend, choose a Browns fan because you will know that he or she will always be loyal and will stick with you no matter how badly you screw up and will always believe that things can get better for you.
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During the three years without a Browns team, my postal carrier ridiculed me for keeping a subscription to the Browns News Illustrated. “There is no news, because there is no team, you know that right?”
His ridicule matched much of what I heard in Iowa. Sure I found a couple of other fans in Indianola and there were rumors of more in Ankeny, but no one really understood why I’d continue to root for a such a perennially putrid team. Hey, we’ve been rebuilding since 1964, these things take time.
I don’t switch because it would reflect poorly on my character. I want to be loyal and dependable. Besides, what if my prayer was suddenly answered and the Browns won one while I was wearing a 49ers jersey? Unthinkable. But this whole thing with the Cubs has me thinking that I need to take good care of my body. Given what happened against the Dolphins, this may take a while.