CLEVELAND — The Browns won three of their four NFL championships on home turf, celebrating titles at Municipal Stadium in 1950, 1954 and 1964. Cleveland won the World Series at Dunn Field, as old League Park was called then, in 1920.
Of those four glorious memories for the Forest City, only the Browns' first win — in their first year as an NFL team after having dominated the All-America Football Conference to the point that it folded — had any real drama. Lou Groza's field goal with 28 seconds left gave Cleveland the 30-28 win over the Rams, completing a comeback from eight points down in the fourth quarter.
The 1920 World Series? Cleveland won a best-of-nine clash with Brooklyn in seven games, and the finale was 3-0. Stan Coveleski pitched a five-hitter and allowed only three baserunners after Cleveland took the lead on an error in the fourth inning.
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So, if there's good news for Cleveland in having failed to wrap up this year's World Series on Sunday night in Chicago, it's coming home with two chances to get the job done. Tuesday or Wednesday could turn out to be the greatest sports moment Cleveland has ever had.
"It's gonna be crazy," Cleveland first baseman Mike Napoli said on the field at Wrigley after Game 5. "I mean, it's gonna be nuts. If you don't know, they sold out (the stadium in Cleveland) for a watch party. So, you can imagine, when we're playing there, it's gonna be pretty fun."
It will be a lot less fun if Cleveland doesn't close the deal. The alternative to the city's greatest sports moment is the worst — and when you're talking about Cleveland, that is saying a lot.
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This is the city of Red Right 88, The Drive, Michael Jordan's shot, the start of the 2007 ALCS collapse, years of general sporting malaise, the three-year absence of the Browns after Art Modell pulled up stakes and went to Baltimore, and, of course, pretty much the entire existence of the reborn Browns.
So many of those wounds were salved by the Cavaliers this spring, when Cleveland became the first team ever to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals, against a record-setting 73-win Warriors outfit that only had the unanimous league MVP and three members of the U.S. Olympic team that won gold in Rio.
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For Cleveland to have that incredible moment, played out in Oakland, celebrated months later back home on the first night of the World Series … and then see that World Series wind up with the home team becoming the first team in 31 years to blow a three-games-to-one leadin the Fall Classic, and not just to any team, but the Cubs? The 108-year drought Cubs? That would be the worst.