Everything was a bit unusual Sunday at Cleveland Stadium. The mid-December sky was blue, a soft wind blew in off Lake Erie, and the Browns won what may be their last home game as Cleveland's football team.
Unless a growing movement to keep the team somehow overcomes long odds, the Cleveland Browns will be Baltimore's NFL franchise in 1996. Art Modell, Browns owner and president, made his deal with Baltimore public on Nov. 6.Many of the crowd of 55,875 - there were 10,769 no-shows - carried signs leaving no doubt about their bitter feelings toward Modell, who bought a controlling interest in the Browns in 1961. One sign said: "All I want for Christmas is Art's two front teeth."
The Browns began in Cleveland in 1946 in the All-America Football Conference, which merged into the NFL in 1950. The Browns won the NFL championship that same year.
At 4:06 p.m., with game clock expired and the scoreboard showing a 26-10 Cleveland win over Cincinnati, Browns fans were left wondering if they had witnessed the real end.
For John "Big Dawg" Thompson, 38, the rotund fan who carries an orange bone and who has built a reputation as leader of the Dawg Pound (Cleveland Stadium's infamous bleacher section), the mere thought that the Browns might no longer play in Cleveland after Sunday brought tears to his eyes.
"It's like a friend who you know is dying and today is the day he might pass away," Thompson said. "I'm trying to keep emotion out of it, but I know it's going to hurt."
For a late-season game between two teams with losing records, the media attention was similar to a playoff game. The team issued about 600 media passes, or double the amount for a usual game.
The Browns were introduced as one unit, a tactic some of the players requested to avoid having any one player face booing. But the crowd for the most part cheered, and five of the players, led by receiver Michael Jackson, ran out to the Dawg Pound to greet the fans there.
When Vinny Testaverde tossed a 1-yard touchdown pass to Frank Hartley early in the second quarter, the crowd roared its approval.
But every time receiver Andre Rison touched the ball, he heard booing - an obvious response to his recent criticisms of Browns fans and his stated anticipation of relocating to Baltimore.
Twice in the closing moments a firecracker tossed from the Dawg Pound exploded on field, convincing game officials to switch directions to distance the players from the bleacher section. Fans ripped up several bleacher planks an tossed them over a retaining fence.
But immediately after the game, several Cleveland players went up to or into the bleachers to be with the fans.
"You've got some people who are really salty about the whole situation," Browns linebacker Pepper Johnson said. "Then you had some people who all they could do was stand and cheer and clap for us. Right now, this city is just a bunch of confused people. One thing they all have in common is they want the Browns to stay here."
Bernie Pudelski, 62, of Cleveland, was contemplative as he viewed the game from the same lower-level seat he has called his own since 1958.
"I feel very, very sad that after all these years one man, Modell, can destroy something that you've learned to love," Pudelski said. "I know it's not the players' fault, although their salaries are a part of it."
Modell, 70, missed his fourth straight home game. But Bengals president and general manager Mike Brown, son of the Browns' namesake and founding coach Paul Brown, was in a loge in the big lakefront stadium.
Before the game, fans rallied and vented their anger. About 1,500 people turned out at a Save Our Browns rally in a park near the stadium, and they heard heard Mayor Michael White vow to take the cause to Atlanta on Jan. 17. NFL owners are expected to vote then on Modell's proposed move.
"What we want is our team, our colors and our name," he said before leading the crowd in repeatedly chanting: "It's not over!"
Nearby, a Cleveland radio station entertained more than a thousand people at a public hanging of a Modell effigy.
Former Browns player Cleo Miller, now a city employee, said at the Save Our Browns rally that there is cause for hope.
"A lot of people look at it as if it's a last go-round. I don't look at it that way," said Miller, a Browns running back from 1975-82. "Cleveland Stadium will be renovated and we will start a new era of Browns tradition."