Category: CBus

Who Dey: A Brownies Fan Rooting for the Bengals

I love football. I mean, I really love football.

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash

How could I not? I come from a football loving family.

I grew up watching the game – usually pro football – with my Dad, a diehard Cowboys fan; they were, after all, America’s team, so he said. He had great respect for Tom Landry, always dapperly dressed, fedora and all, but I think he watched them mostly because of their cheerleaders, skimpily clad in their cowgirl outfits. My Grandma McCarthy, on the other hand, loved Fran “The Man” Tarkenton and the Vikings’ Purple People Eaters, whom she fiercely cheered on. As memory serves, I might have heard her yell, “Get that son of a bitch!” a time or two. Then again, maybe not, but it sure sounds like something she would have yelled. My brother, for as long as I can remember, dressed in green and gold from head to toe on game days, screaming his cheesehead off in deference to and adulation of his Green Bay Packers.

And then, of course, there are the Cleveland Browns. Youngstown, equidistant between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, has been a city divided immemorial by football. It’s a given: if you live in Y-Town, you’re either a Browns fan or a Steelers fan. Whichever you are, you naturally despise the other. Passionately. It is a bitter rivalry, indeed. As for my family, even though folks have their personal favorites – the Cowboys or the Vikings or the Packers – we ALL cheer for the Browns, the long-suffering Browns. Though there have been intermittent moments of glory – holding our collective breath when Brian Sipe and the Kardiac Kids thrilled us with their amazing comeback victories, for example, or uniting steadfastly behind Y-Town’s own favorite son, Bernie Kosar, or losing our ever-loving minds when our team somehow penetrated the Steel Curtain – we Browns fans have had a spectacularly rough row to hoe. “The Drive” forever haunts us. Ugh. Heartbreaking. Still, we remain ever hopeful and singularly loyal. Every season. Year after year. My mantra (and I’m sure that of countless Brownies fans) is, “Just once before I die!” Oh, and we don’t hesitate to tell the Steelers fans what they can do with their Terrible Towels. Do they still even have their Terrible Towels? I’m dating myself. Alas, I have been a football fan long enough to remember Steelers fans joyously gloating, waving those terrible Terrible Towels, when they were the new rage, in our faces.

Way back though, when I was a kid and a neophyte fan, I thought the games were interminable and wondered how anybody could sit for three+ hours watching one game – just ONE game! But then my Dad taught me to appreciate the game: he explained the rules; he defined the positions on offense and defense and their respective responsibilities; he pointed out the risk of going for it on 4th down; he justified the practice of calling a time out to “ice” the other side’s kicker; he differentiated a football “Hail Mary” from a rosary “Hail Mary,” both, though, invariably, a hope and a prayer. He patiently answered my questions, even if I asked the same ones over and over again. He also taught me about “the pool” and how to strategically play the points spread. Important and practical tutelage that continues to inform my love and understanding of the game.

I moved from Y-Town to Columbus in the early 1980s. And, of course, living in Columbus, I could not NOT become an Ohio State Buckeye fan. That I did. With a vengeance. I still cheered on the Brownies while falling in love with the Buckeyes. In fact, I remember one Christmas, I went shopping at Just Sweats on Sawmill Rd (oh, that’s a whole other story for another post – a notorious true crime story involving a con, a murder, a mystery), and I bought my immediate family the same matching gift: not Buckeye gear, but instead white sweatpants and sweatshirts emblazoned with a Browns helmet. Yep. Rabid Brownies fans – all of us.

Living in Central Ohio, though, made me aware of another rivalry: now, instead of living equidistant between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, I was living equidistant between Cincinnati and Cleveland. As such, I found just as many Bengals fans in Columbus as Browns fans. In fact, many of my new friends in Columbus were Bengals fans, and they didn’t shy away from talking smack about my often hapless, but lovable, Brownies. How dare they?! This rivalry, I discovered, was just as fierce and fanatical as that with the Steelers. Oh, my. Of course, I came to the defense of my Brownies, and I stoked the flames of the rivalry: one year (1989, I think, on December 3, I remember because it was the day after my birthday), I chartered a bus – a 56 passenger bus – to go to the Bengals vs. Browns game in Cleveland, and I filled the bus with friends – almost equally divided between Cincinnati and Cleveland fans. Oh, that was fun, even though it was bitterly cold in the Dawg Pound – a bone-chilling wind whipping in from Lake Erie, and even though Boomer’s offense dominated Bernie’s that day, and even though the drive home to Columbus was terrifying in treacherous icy and snowy conditions.

It was fun, nonetheless, and I’ve hated the Bengals ever since.

My loyalty to the Browns remained unabated – until 1996, that is. For a time (when traitor Art Modell, in the dead of night, moved the Brownies out of Cleveland to Baltimore), I boycotted pro football and focused my fanaticism fully on my Buckeyes. Later, though, after the sting and disappointment wore off, I worked my way back to my Brownies and the rivalries with both the Steelers and the Bengals.

And so it remains to this day. My allegiance has, at times, faltered, though: most recently, I was skeptical of the Browns’ decision to draft Baker Mayfield as the franchise quarterback. As a Buckeye fan, how could I forget that Mayfield arrogantly planted the Oklahoma flag at midfield in the ‘Shoe after the Sooners’ blowout win in 2017? Still, that bitterness has faded; I’ve come to like Mayfield, and I continue to root on my Brownies. Sadly, their 2021 season has ended. As for the rivalries? Well, the bad news: the Steelers beat us twice this season, but the good news: Brownie QB nemesis Ben Roethlisberger is retiring. Yay. The better news: the Browns swept the Bengals. Huzzah!

And yet, the Bengals are in the playoffs. Sincere kudos to them: they played a spectacular game against the Titans last weekend, winning on the final play of the game and earning a well-deserved spot in the AFC Championship game versus the Chiefs tomorrow. They’re the underdogs. They’re one win removed from the Super Bowl.

And, rivalry be damned, this Brownies fan is rooting for them.

Who Dey!

#InAroundAndBeyondTheBuckeye

Y-Town is My Town

Though I have lived in the Columbus area for almost 40 years, I was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. I am a Buckeye born and bred. Well, actually, I was born in Youngstown but raised in Austintown, a suburb on the west side of Youngstown (Proud graduate of Austintown Fitch High School Class of 1981. Go, Falcons!).

Restless, in search of adventure, and attracted by the bright lights and the promising prospects of the big city, I joined the great migration that left Youngstown in the mid-1980s for Columbus, the capital city. Needless to say, this was ironic given Columbus was then widely known as a “cow town.” Regardless, my twenty year old self reasoned, aside from family, that it had more to offer than Youngstown. At the time, irony upon ironies, it seemed everyone I met in Columbus was from somewhere else, especially from Northeast Ohio. In fact, the Youngstown transplants numbered so many that an annual gathering, the so named “Y-Town is My Town Party,” convened to, of all things, connect with each other and celebrate the town we had all deserted.

Columbus, especially Dublin where I’ve lived for the last 25 years, is my home. But, “home” is where my Momma is. Therefore, Y-Town is, and will always be, my town.

Indeed, you can take the girl outta Youngstown, but you can’t take Youngstown outta the girl.

A Boom Town Gone Bust

Bruce Springsteen, my favorite balladeer, tells the sad story of Youngstown…

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works

When he come home from World War II

Now the yard’s just scrap and rubble

He said, “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”

These mills they built the tanks and bombs

That won this country’s wars

We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam

Now we’re wondering what they were dyin’ for

Bruce Springsteen

A boom town gone bust after the steel mills closed, Youngstown, scrappy as ever, takes its punches, too many landing below the belt, but it doesn’t pull any either: even when it is seemingly down for the count, it always finds a way to get back on its feet. Sometimes wobbly. Other times punch drunk. Or slap happy. Gasping and groggy. Often on the ropes. Still, however, standing. The boxing metaphor is particularly apt considering Y-Town is the home of world champion pugilists with title belts forged in the fiery furnaces of the rust belt. More on that in a future post. It’s more than just a metaphor, though: it’s the character and tenacity and grit of its people who, round after round, answer the bell – No. Matter. What.

Before the Boom

A wave of European immigrants flooded Y-Town in the early 20th century in search of opportunities in the burgeoning steel mills – opportunities that promised prosperity and a better way of life. They settled in Y-Town, creating ethnic enclaves of Italians, Irish, Germans, Poles, and Slovaks – all with rich traditions firmly rooted in family, faith, and food (oh the food!), and all familiar with every sort of adversity. They built families and businesses and whole new lives in a whole new land. And, upon their backs and through their hard work, they built America with Youngstown steel.

The DeLaurentis Family – My Grandfather, My Grandmother, My Aunt

My Dad’s parents were among those brave souls who set sail from the shores of the Old Country in pursuit of the American Dream. They left behind everything and everyone they knew to journey to the New Country with its new ways and new language. As well, my Mom’s family – the Pennsylvania Dutch and Irish – emigrated, too, first from afar across the ocean, then from the coal towns of central Pennsylvania to that steel town of Northeast Ohio.

I’ll tell you about them.

Their stories.

My remembrances.

And, in this blog, I’ll write more about Youngstown – part memoir, part travelogue, part family tree, part history lesson, part love letter – to share with you why Y-Town will always be My Town.

#InAroundAndBeyondTheBuckeye