Browns are giving Cleveland fans the rewarding, long-awaited season they needed

CLEVELAND — Bonnie Whitmer visits Sunset Memorial Park in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, almost weekly to provide her father an update on his treasured team.

We’re on quarterback No. 4 now, Papa.

Whitmer’s loyalty to the Cleveland Browns stems from her father Randy Morgan’s love of the team, a devotion tied to his 35 years as a member of its chain gang. Neil Oblonsky’s allegiance dates back to the ’60s and the origins of the Reitman Curse. For Steve Wachtman, the passion traces to Sunday afternoons on the living room floor in front of the Magnavox TV in the ’70s.

Browns fandom has, for decades, been a labor of love. This Browns season, though — with the team losing its starting quarterback, running back and top three offensive tackles to season-ending injuries, with six wins by four points or fewer in the last 13 weeks and with the playoffs improbably on deck — has rewarded those who have held on tight. In a period where the Guardians and Cavaliers are both varying degrees of adequate, the Browns have captured the city’s attention and delivered a wild, winding ride that feels like it could go anywhere from here.

‘A man can dream, can’t he?’

At halftime every Sunday, the Wachtman boys would play “The Passing Game” in their yard. Their father, Don, was the quarterback and the three brothers alternated between running routes and lining up at cornerback. They were awarded 5 points for a completion, 10 for an interception. Each route reflected a Browns legend. If Don called “17,” Brian Sipe’s number, that was a fly pattern. If he called “34,” Greg Pruitt’s number, that meant a post route. If he called “44,” Leroy Kelly’s number, he wanted a buttonhook.

Don was busy with work, community service and church, so the boys didn’t see their father much during the week. Sundays were sacred, with three hours earmarked for football. They spread out on the family room carpet in front of their Magnavox TV and marveled at Kelly, Thom Darden, Clay Matthews and Carl “Big Daddy” Hairston. That’s where Steve Wachtman watched Red Right 88 in high school, and The Drive and The Fumble on trips home from college.

He remembers standing in line at Agler Davidson, an old Columbus sports gear store, to get Pruitt’s autograph. He remembers his first game, against the Raiders at Municipal Stadium, when he didn’t realize how long it would take to park and walk into the cavernous building. When he and his now-wife reached the back row of the lower deck, under the overhang in the west end zone, they found four menacing Raiders fans in their seats. They waited in the aisle until an usher came by to mediate.

Now, Wachtman is a season ticket holder. He enjoyed the lack of lines for concessions or the restroom during the pandemic-altered 2020 season, but he can’t shake the memory of sitting beneath the broadcast booth during that season and hearing Jim Donovan deliver the line, “The only thing missing is all of you.” That year, the Browns qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 2002. Sitting beside his daughter, Wachtman, with tears in his eyes, thought to himself, “She finally understands how much all of this means to me.”

This year, he says, has resembled a blend of the 1980 Kardiac Kids and their late-game heroics and the Bernie Kosar years later that decade, when any third-down conversion felt attainable.

When the Browns are on the road, Wachtman throws watch parties with his buddies and their kids, gatherings that have swelled in size and significance as Joe Flacco, who turns 39 next week, has breathed life into a season once left for dead. Flacco, Wachtman says, has “unlocked the genius of (Kevin) Stefanski’s vision for offense like a skeleton key.”

Wachtman has booked reservations at nearly every potential playoff site, including Ellis Island Hotel, Casino & Brewery in Las Vegas.

“A man can dream, can’t he?” he says.

If this journey somehow leads to a Browns Super Bowl appearance, Wachtman says he’ll face one of the great dilemmas of his life: Does he keep that reservation and attend the game with droves of fellow Cleveland fans, or does he host the most anticipated watch party of his life, with a guest list that includes his 89-year-old father, whose passion for the Browns is where this all began?

“Where does it end? I have no idea,” Wachtman says, “but (I) will have a blast following along to find out.”

‘The happiest season I’ve had’

For about 40 years, Milt Reitman owned a camera store near Euclid Avenue and Short Vincent, beside the Roxy burlesque theater in downtown Cleveland. After the Browns won the NFL Championship in 1964, Reitman decided to buy season tickets.

Sixty years have passed. The Browns haven’t reached a Super Bowl.

“It’s the Reitman Curse they’ve been dealing with,” jokes Oblonsky, whose uncle was Reitman’s son-in-law.

Oblonsky, who now owns those season tickets, entered this season with lofty expectations for the Browns, but didn’t foresee this. In Pittsburgh in Week 2, Steelers fans expressed sympathy to him at Acrisure Stadium after Nick Chubb’s knee snapped. Oblonsky knew things were bad when sworn enemies were sending condolences. But the team has persevered.

“It’s a storybook season,” he says. “We always managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. This year, every time it looks like someone has a better hand, we have a full house.

“This is the happiest season I’ve had as a Browns fan.”

That fandom was born 55 years ago. Oblonsky attended his first game in 1968, a Browns win against the Dallas Cowboys, with his father and brother. He remembers voicing how he couldn’t wait to become an adult who could afford season tickets of his own.

There have been moments when every neuron in his body has signaled to him he should sever ties with the Browns and bail on his season tickets. He could find other hobbies on Sundays, activities that wouldn’t leave him grouchy and grumbling.

He worried that once he ditched the devotion, though, the team’s fortunes would change. He didn’t want to feel like a quitter. And above all else, he says he’s still the kid who cherished the chance to stand among the crowd at Municipal Stadium, dreaming of making it a weekly staple every fall.

“That 10-year-old part of me has never left,” he says. “It was really hard when we were 1-31. Somehow, maybe stupidly, every year started over and I was an optimist.”

He recalls the heartbreaking playoff defeats in the late ’80s, the Dwayne Rudd helmet toss and how the Kardiac Kids’ run came to a crashing halt. He recalls all the years Jamal Lewis and every other running back plowed through an overmatched Browns defense.

He recalls thinking, every year, about next year.

But now he wakes up “happy on Mondays.” He relished the atmosphere against the New York Jets in Week 17, when the Browns secured a playoff spot. He thought about how a playoff environment in Cleveland would mirror that but “on steroids,” estimating that the decibel levels would become deafening 45 minutes before kickoff.

The Browns would need some January upsets to unfold if they’re to host a playoff game. But that hasn’t stopped Oblonsky from wondering if this group could once and for all end the Reitman Curse.

“What a ride,” he says. “Best ride ever.”

‘Even in the grave, he has football with him’

Every fall, Marilyn Morgan placed a sign on the garage door:

We interrupt this marriage to bring you football season.

Marilyn would joke she was a “football widow” who never had to worry about infidelity because her husband had a longstanding affair with football. He would return home in time for Sunday dinner and she would ask who he was.

Randy Morgan refereed high school games on Friday nights and college games on Saturdays. He spent his Sundays pacing the Browns’ sideline as a member of the chain gang, undeterred by subzero temperatures or snowflakes pelting his ears or a hopeless football team.

“He never gave up on them,” says Whitmer, his daughter. “Never.”

He held fond memories of Dec. 16, 2007, when the Browns beat the Bills, 8-0, as a blizzard buried the yard lines beneath piles of snow.

Only a grandkid’s flag line performance could pull him away from his fall football duties, and even then, he’d be sitting in the stands, critiquing the referees working the game.

Randy had season tickets since the ’70s, but never needed them, as he was always patrolling the sideline in his blue coat, NFL hat, glasses and his red vest. He was the only member of the chain gang who returned after the Browns’ three-season absence in the late ’90s.

He swore John Elway tiptoed beyond the line of scrimmage before flinging a pass during “The Drive.” He overheard countless iterations of Butch Davis’ profanity-laced tirades. He listened to Bill Belichick mutter to himself as Kosar tossed a touchdown to Michael Jackson on a play different than the one the coach called. Belichick once tripped over the pole Randy was holding, fell to the grass and launched the pole toward the stands.

Randy stood beside Lou Groza on the field in 1995 during the final home game before Art Modell ripped the team from the city of Cleveland.

“You would have thought there was a major death in the family,” Whitmer says.

Whitmer was prohibited from having the October wedding she desired. Instead, she got married in April, and her relatives with refereeing backgrounds — her husband, brother, cousin, uncles and dad — pulled their uniforms over their dress clothes and serenaded her with an original tune.

Let me call you sweetheart
You’re a referee’s wife
You’ll be washing striped shirts
For the rest of your life

By 2016, Randy developed neuropathy in his feet. It became too demanding for him to stand for long periods, so he called it a career. Marilyn passed away in 2019, Randy in 2020. They were married 61 years. Whitmer delivered a football-themed eulogy at her father’s funeral, detailing his life from the 1-yard line to the end zone.

Randy was inducted into the Cleveland Football Officials Hall of Fame in 2013, an honor that earned him a trophy and a gold pin to add to his collection of footballs, helmets and photos. After Randy’s death, someone brought Whitmer and her husband that red vest he wore every Sunday on the sideline.

“I cried when they handed it to me,” she says. “It was such a treasure.”

When the Browns clinched a playoff spot in late December, Whitmer trekked to the cemetery to relay the news. There’s a football etched onto her dad’s gravestone, along with the line, “Always in the game.”

“Even in the grave,” Whitmer says, “he has football with him.”

Two weeks after he passed, Whitmer left flowers at his grave. On her way to discard the plastic wrapping, she found a football sticker resting on the cemetery trail. She laminated the sticker and keeps it in her pocket every day.

As this season progressed, she found herself repeating to him how he wouldn’t believe what’s happening, each week another thrilling chapter in a season he would have adored.

“This,” she says, “would be the perfect season for him.”

(Top photo: Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images)