'I had no choice'

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." -- Mark Twain

Today, Joe Cleveland read the obituaries on one Arthur B. Modell with great pleasure. This will also be the last time I ever write or say his name. He is dead in more ways than one.

In one of my early blogs, I state the case as to why this man, the former owner of the Cleveland Browns who tore the heart and soul out of this region by cold-heartedly moving this franchise to Baltimore, should NEVER be elected to the Hall of Fame. That link is below:

http://joeclevelandblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/case-against-art-judas-modell.html

Unlike others, especially the Cleveland haters and history revisionists who work for that certain four-letter network, I will not try to give this man any more credit than he is due.

Sometimes, in death, folks tend to look at the bright side of people and point out the things they did right. Joe Cleveland, on the other hand, will call a spade a spade.

You want to see something gushy about the man I've referred to as "Judas," go to ESPN.com or the Baltimore Sun. If you want to read someone tell it like it is, you've come to the right place.

I've always said to my closest family and friends that the day Judas dies will be a day of great celebration in my house. But, I've got to say, when I woke up and and read all of the text messages I received from people, and then clicked on Facebook, I felt an odd sense of calm.

Did I celebrate? A little. But did my eyes tear up for some reason? They did.

They weren't tears of sadness directed at that man. Oh no, that man will never hurt me again. But, it brought me back to 1995.

What should have been one of the best years in a Cleveland sports fan's life -- thanks to the Cleveland Indians going 100-44 and reaching the World Series for the first time since 1954 -- was ruined in one fell swoop by a guy who owned the Cleveland Browns and four fateful words he uttered in a Baltimore parking lot on Nov. 6.

"I had no choice."

Bullcrap, Joe Cleveland says. You did have a choice. You had a choice to sell the team. You had a choice to try to negotiate further with the City of Cleveland. You had a choice to get in on the Gateway project when Cleveland came up with it. And, you had a choice to betray millions of people by making a sneaky underhanded deal with the people of Baltimore, Maryland.

You chose wrong, sir. YOU CHOSE WRONG!

I remember listening to the radio in the kitchen of my parents' house on Dec. 17, 1995. Two days later, I would turn 22 years old. But there was no celebrating on that day.

I listened as the Cleveland Browns, playing for nothing but pride, had one of their best all-around games of the season, beating the Cincinnati Bengals, 26-10. I listened as Earnest Byner, the man behind The Fumble, rushed for 131 yards in his final game in front of the best fans in the NFL at the old Pandemonium Palace.

I listened as Casey Coleman described some fans taking hacksaws to their seats. Some throwing them over the fences and onto the playing surface.

I listened, with my late mother, as Coleman described the impromptu gathering of the Cleveland Browns, wearing those orange helmets, brown jerseys and white pants, in the Dawg Pound, hugging fans and thanking them for their 50 years of support.

At that moment, we both hugged and cried.

"It's over, mom," I sobbed. "I can't believe it's over."

My heart, and the hearts of millions, were truly broken that day. That pain that I shared with my mom, and the pain I shared with my friends who were Browns fans, were the result of one man and his selfish, prideful reasons to move an NFL institution to a city that couldn't even keep their team over 10 years prior to that.

My eyes got misty because of that memory, and the fact that now, finally, after 17 years of frustration and hate for one man, I can finally put it to rest.

I look at the reincarnation of the Cleveland Browns, who have, by and large, sucked for the 13 years they've been back. I look at the fortunes of the franchise that he moved to Baltimore, which was rechristened the Ravens, and watch in disgust as they won a Super Bowl and have become a perennial powerhouse in the AFC (despite never getting back to the big game since the 2000 season).

Did we, as Cleveland fans, deserve this cruel twist of fate? No, we certainly did not. That man is to blame.

Joe Cleveland was among millions of you who called the NFL over and over to let them know that this atrocity would not stand. We flooded and crashed their switchboards. We made our voices heard. We filed class-action lawsuits against that man and what he was trying to do.

In the end, we forced the NFL to make Cleveland a promise (of course, we had to promise a new stadium would be built, which it was) -- a promise of a new football team in three years that would bear the proud name of "Cleveland Browns," complete with the Seal Brown and Burnt Orange colors and those orange helmets and that proud legacy of Paul Brown, Jim Brown, Otto Graham, Lou Groza, Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar, Paul Warfield, Marion Motley, etc., etc.

Baltimore didn't get that, even though that man tried to bring it there. He tried to say later that he "willingly left the history behind," and the four-letter network tries to support that view, but that's a bunch of baloney.

I'm sure someone has a Baltimore Browns T-shirt or jacket somewhere. I know the team took ads out in Maryland papers selling tickets to the Baltimore Browns before NFL made them stop.

Thank God, they didn't get that from us.

I think, now, the spectre of The Move is away from the Browns franchise. I only wish the Browns would have gotten their act together sooner and won a championship while he was still alive. But, it wasn't meant to be.

Now that he's dead, the Baltimore Ravens are just another franchise, another rival to the Browns. That link to Cleveland has been severed.

Browns fans will never forget about The Move or the impact it had on them personally and professionally. Joe Cleveland will never forget.

However, will it be easier to digest now that the man is gone? I would like to think so.

You can hate and despise someone for a long time, but I celebrate the death because I don't have to hate and despise him anymore. The worms and maggots can take care of that for us. I don't have to be reminded of The Move anymore.

The man was close to bankruptcy because of shoddy business deals and poor decisions. He was a meddlesome owner who ran off the best coach in NFL history in Paul Brown and ran off any other coach that came to town besides Blanton Collier. Blanton Collier won him an NFL championship. Actually, he won CLEVELAND an NFL championship, but that man found vindication in that.

That man was viewed as a "carpetbagger" upon his arrival in 1961, and he never forgot it. He never put the best interests off Cleveland first. He put his own interests first, and that betrayed him.

I listened as a talking head on that four-letter network tried to justify the move to Baltimore as a "sound business decision," and I wanted to reach through my computer screen and punch that guy in the mouth. Really?

If it was so "sound," then why did he have to tuck tail and sell his beloved franchise less than three years after he moved them?

If it was so "sound," why was he consistently hemmoraging money?

If it was so "sound," why is Steve Bisciotti the owner of the Baltimore Ravens and not David Modell?

If it was so "sound," why are they not named the "Baltimore Browns?"

"Sound," my ass!

That man had a billionaire partner in Cleveland in Al Lerner who would have purchased the team from him and kept it in Cleveland. I believe that, inevitably, a new stadium would have been built to replace the decrepit Cleveland Stadium. I believe that, had he done that and holding a minority interest in the team, that man would have had a bust in Canton 15 years ago.

Instead, Lerner paid $530 million to buy the expansion Cleveland Browns, while that man spent himself back into the poor house because of all the money he had to pay. He had to pay the NFL and his fellow owners. He had to pay the City of Cleveland. He had to pay Lerner and Bill Gries to buy their shares of the team. He had to pay focus groups to come up with a new nickname and colors for his team and then had to pay for the trademarks.

I believe that, had he simply sold to Lerner in 1995, on Sunday in the Browns' season opener, they would have dedicated a moment of silence, and Browns fans would have obliged.

Instead, he never stepped foot in this town again after high-tailing it to Baltimore under the threat of death. And, his death led to several moments of glee.

A group of Browns fans gathered in front of Cleveland Browns Stadium Thursday morning and popped some champagne and drank a toast to the man's death. Good for them! Joe Cleveland wishes he could have joined them.

That leads me to my next request -- please, for the love of God, do not try to force the fine Browns fans to adhere to a moment of silence for that man.

I'm sure the four-letter network is gleefully hoping the NFL and the Browns attempt this, so they can air the sound of thousands of fans booing, or cheering, or flipping the bird, or whatever else they're going to do instead of bowing the heads in silence, and then deride us for our so-called "lack of class."

Did Baltimore adhere to a moment of silence when Robert Irsay died? I don't think so. They still roast the guy in effigy, and he's been dead for years. And, they got a team back and won a Super Bowl!

So, why should we have to? It's just another reason for that four-letter network to rub Cleveland's noses in crap and paint us all with an unfair brush.

Why should we have to turn the other cheek? Should Brooklyn fans do the same for Walter O'Malley when he moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles? That happened back in the 1950s, and there are STILL people in Brooklyn angry that it happened.

If Robert Kraft decided to move the Patriots out of New England, you don't think that four-letter network would start a campaign to bring them back? Do you think they would dedicate hours of programming to him if he died, had he done that? Do you think they would force the fans of Boston and New England to have a moment of silence for him, and if they did, do you think they would crucify the fans for booing?

I highly doubt it. But, we're Cleveland, the nation's punch line, the backward-ass losers.

That network found a clip of two fans burning LeBron James' jersey and turned into an entire region of jersey-burners. They found one fan throwing a battery somewhere in the vicinity of James as he sat on the bench during the fourth quarter of the Heat's first game in Cleveland and turned it into 20,000 battery-throwers.

The four-letter network tells Cleveland to "get over it" when it comes to LeQuit. But, are they saying that to the fans of Orlando after the ringer Dwight Howard just put them through? I haven't heard them do it.

And, I'm sure the moment a Cleveland teams wins a championship -- and it will happen -- they will attempt to deride it by airing clips of all the Cleveland sports failures leading up to it, and then proclaiming that it was a fluke and that it won't happen again.

This is why I hope that Mike Holmgren and Randy Lerner and Jimmy Haslam or whoever politely decline to air any tribute to him. Cleveland doesn't need another black-eye, and you're going to have half the stadium doing anything but being silent if it happens.

It's bad enough that they are putting a decal on their helmets all season long. But, I can live with that.

Let the fans of Baltimore sing songs and try to give him the tribute he doesn't deserve, but will get anyway.

My tribute to him is in the above paragraphs and in the blog I wrote one year ago.

May you burn in Hell, Art Modell!

Until next time, remember that Cleveland Rocks!