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Davis Young
- Jan 15, 2021

DY: In Just a Few Words (#12)

It really was quite a game!

This week’s blog was about our Browns winning the NFL Championship Game in 1964. It hit a positive nerve with readers. We’re following up today with a further look at that game and memories it has sparked. Enjoy.

My friend and neighbor Bob Paulson is a sports memorabilia guy -- especially Cleveland sports. He has a ticket from the 1964 NFL Championship Game (the Super Bowl before there was a Super Bowl) that had a face value of $8 for an upper deck seat. Yes, $8. Check it out. The price is on the far left side.

A modest $8 is all I paid to go to that game on December 27, 1964. By contrast, an upper bowl ticket to the 2020 Super Bowl carried a face value of $950, according to a post on The Street/Personal Finance. If you had plunked down $950 for that 1964 game, you could have purchased 118 tickets and taken all your friends and their friends, too.

Here are a few other treasures from Bob’s collection.

What’s better than the official game program?

Getting your program signed by Browns greats Jim Brown and Frank Ryan.

The Browns starting lineup from December 27, 1964.

The front page from the December 28, 1964, Plain Dealer.

Note that the cost of that day’s paper was 10 cents.

Bob remembers being a seventh grader in 1964 at the then Moody Junior High School on Columbus Rd. in Bedford (now the site of the Bedford Public Library). “I had been a Browns fan since I was in the second grade and loved that 1964 team. I can still recite their starting lineup on offense and defense. We listened to that 1964 game in our living room on a table-top transistor radio. It was blacked out in Cleveland even though it was sold out. Some folks rented motel rooms as far away as Toledo and Erie so they could tune in.”

Another reader, PD columnist Ted Diadiun, reports a similar experience. “I was in New Castle, Pennsylvania, that day in 1964 because if you recall the NFL was sticking to its neanderthal rule of blacking out home football games -- yes, even championship games. So, a friend of mine had an uncle in New Castle and we invited ourselves there to watch the game on a snowy, tiny, black-and-white portable TV in the kitchen. I had a date that night and called the girl from the kitchen just before we left to go home to tell her I’d be a little late. When I told her why, she said it was too bad I hadn’t said anything -- her father had installed a giant antenna next to their house to pull in TV stations from Erie, and he and her brother watched the game in their family room on their color TV.”

Oh well, you win some and you lose some. Those ‘64 Browns are well remembered and deservedly so for 60 minutes of excellence -- a 27-0 shutout of the highly favored Baltimore team. Sort of like a football no-hitter. Those Browns had a vision and they made it happen. When you come right down to it, the real value of sports is when you can turn a positive vision into reality. Sort of like life, don’t you think?

DY: In Just a Few Words is a blog that comes out when something needs to be said or every Tuesday - whichever comes first. Davis Young is a communications professional who adds 50+ years of experience and perspective to issues of the day. His emphasis in DY: In Just a Few Words will be humor (a touch of sarcasm here, a pinch of facetiousness there...). Once in a while, he will touch on something a bit more serious - but hopefully not too deep or depressing.

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Davis Young
- Jan 12, 2021

DY: In Just a Few Words (#11)

Never give up. Never give in. And turn the heat on, please.

You want to talk about cold?

It was just two days after Christmas in 1964 and I was 25-years-old. As a special Christmas gift that year, I had purchased tickets for my father and father-in-law to the NFL Championship Game to be played at the antiquated Cleveland Municipal Stadium. FirstEnergy Stadium sits on that exact spot today. And it’s still mighty cold down there in the winter.

We boarded the Shaker Rapid for downtown Cleveland. We were on our way to watch the heavily favored Baltimore Colts eat the Browns’ lunch. This was before the Cleveland Browns would become the Baltimore Ravens because the Baltimore Colts became the Indianapolis Colts. But, those are stories for another day.

It wasn’t going to be pretty and we all knew that. I was a season ticket holder in those days and had hoped for 50-yard-line seats about 15 rows up from the field. Where we ended up wasn’t quite that good – two rows from the top of the western edge of the end zone directly in the path of wind blowing across what is today the Dawg Pound. It was beyond cold. It was frigid. But, at least we were there. One of the great things about a high-scoring game is that you can stay warm just by getting up and cheering after each score. Well, the halftime score at this game was 0-0. Nothing to cheer about. We were just trying to survive. Have I mentioned it was cold?

Mercifully, the second half warmed us all up a bit. It started modestly. A Lou Groza field goal made it 3-0 good guys. That was followed by three Frank Ryan TD passes to Gary Collins and another Groza field goal. Contributing along the way under the direction of Coach Blanton Collier were other Browns all-time greats – including Jim Brown and Paul Warfield. Perhaps their names ring a bell. Suddenly it was all over. Cleveland 27 – Baltimore 0. Yes, you read that right. Baltimore zip. It was a bad day to be from Baltimore.

This was a huge payday for the players. Each Brown received roughly $8,000 as their share from the Championship Game and each Colt $5,000. Those amounts have, of course, grown modestly through the years. For example, Super Bowl winners in 2020 each received $124,000 for that one game while the losers had to make do with only $62,000. But, even the paltry $8,000 for each winning Brown in 1964 was more than enough to buy a new winter parka to protect against the cold. Global warming sure has helped a lot since then. I’m almost as much a fan of global warming as I am of the Browns. I get the shakes just thinking about how cold it was that day in 1964.

Which gets us to 2021. I am here to tell you as a witness to that long ago time that what happened in Pittsburgh this past Sunday night is by far the greatest Browns moment since that 1964 Championship Game when we shocked Baltimore. I waited 57 long (often cold) years to see something as good and as powerful from the Browns as what they did on that frigid day in 1964. And, sure enough it happened.

Think about what we all saw this past Sunday. No head coach. Multiple other coaches out. Important players sidelined by COVID-19 and assorted injuries. Just one practice in the week leading up to the first playoff game in nearly two decades. Up against a world-class QB in Ben Roethlisberger in 2021 just as they had been with Johnny Unitas in 1964. Clearly, the underdog.

What happened this week is a perfect example of making lemonade out of lemons. All week before the game, Browns players had been saying “no excuses” whatever might happen. Well, Browns fans, nobody needed any excuses. The result of what happened in Pittsburgh is a perfect example of grit over glamour, action over words. The Steelers have six Super Bowl trophies. So far, we have none. But, I’ve got a feeling we can build on what happened this week.

And if it takes another 57 years, so what? I’ll only be 138-years-old then. I can wait. Special moments don’t happen every week. The takeaway from Pittsburgh is that no matter the odds, never give up and never give in. Find a way. Make it happen. Turn the heat on.

Davis Young
- Jan 5, 2021

DY: In Just a Few Words (#10)

You are never too old for a gap year or two.

You may think you know what's cool and what's not, but you’re very likely ignoring one of the most important social issues global citizens should be alarmed about right now. The issue is what’s more important – PLAY DATES or GAP YEARS?

I know where I stand on that question. When I was raised in the early 1950s, there was never a single time when my mother phoned a friend and said, I’m wondering if you can bring little Larry over to our house about 2:15 in the afternoon two weeks from this coming Thursday for a play date with Davis. If that doesn’t fit on your phone calendar, how do you and Larry look for the 11th of next month mid-afternoon say about 3:30?

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – I am now 81-years-old and my chances for play dates are dwindling at an alarming rate. And, perhaps that is just as well. I don’t have a swing set anymore. My swinging is limited to the senior tees on golf courses. I am simply too old for play dates. It has taken me a long time to admit that, but it’s true. And this blog is all about truth.

So, I come down on the side of gap years as being the key issue in today’s troubled world, at least my world. I am still plenty young enough to take a gap year and I want to make an official announcement that 2021 will be a gap year for me. I need to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life other than to just live it.

What will I do when I finally grow up in another couple of years? What kind of work offers me the best opportunity for long-term happiness? Do I need to go back to school for an MBA? I have a strong entrepreneurial inclination. What kind of company might I start? Will I have time to be a good parent to my children who are now in their 50s and still looking to me for fatherly advice?

These are important issues. Taken together, they are nearly overwhelming. So, rather than a gap year, I may actually end up taking several gap years. I need to get this right. I don’t want to be coming back to you in another 15 years when I’m 96 and have to admit that I didn’t use my gap year(s) to really think through what I want to do next.

For a long time, I have refused to use the word retirement. I hate the thought of the r-word. But, the g-word is another story. 2021 is my gap year, perhaps the first of several. I’m on my way. I think I still have a shot at being the GOAT if I can just figure out what I want to be the GOAT of. That’s another G-word I like.

Perhaps I’ll become a professional baseball player. I know a team that needs some youth. And, with the last name of Young I am forever Young. I will up-skill my game. That’s a promise. I’ve thought about becoming a fireman. One of my best friends is a fireman. I’d have to learn to slide down a pole when the alarm goes off, but the best part is I could spend off-time time with one of those white dogs that has black spots. Or, maybe I’ll become a judge. I think I’d be good at that because I’m very judgmental.

One day last September, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published my Aries horoscope as follows: Your career path is expanding. It’s a day to choose worthwhile goals and decide which direction you want to move professionally. My hometown newspaper understands me. I am counting on the fact that you do, too.

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