Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #746494 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .89" h x 5.58" w x 8.56" l, .80 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Amazon.com
The tough, blue-collar city of Cleveland loved its football team, the Browns (named after beloved coach Paul Brown). During their heyday in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Browns muscled their way into several championships and the hearts and minds of the fans. Even after change came in the 1960s with a new owner, Art Modell, and the forced retirement of Coach Brown, the team continued to flourish. When All The World Was Browns Town remembers those years, capped by the championship season in 1964, and juxtaposes this relatively innocent time with the present. Now the Browns are in Baltimore, moved by owner Modell, and renamed the Ravens. The money in big-time professional sports ultimately had its way with a town that was fanatical about football and its storied team.

From Library Journal
In 1963, the Cleveland Browns's new owner, Art Modell, fired legendary coach Paul Brown. The next year new coach Blanton Collier led the team to the NFL championship?the last title any Cleveland pro team would win. Pluto (Falling from Grace, LJ 11/1/95) tells of the team's season and dramatic win over the favored Baltimore Colts. He adds memories from Jim Brown, Frank Ryan, Bernie Parrish, and other key Browns. Collier would retire in 1970, and in 1996 Modell outraged the town and old players by moving the team to Baltimore. Like Steve Hubbard's Shark Among Dolphins (LJ 9/15/97), another tale of a coach's replacement, this is a good regional sports pick, for Ohio and elsewhere.?Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp., Tucson, Ariz.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Sportswriter Pluto (Falling from Grace, 1995, etc.) movingly reveals the substance of a mythic bond between men and a game, a team and a city--and thus lays bare how present-day pro football has surrendered its soul. During the late 1940s and early '50s, the Cleveland Browns were the class of pro football. Coached by the brilliant martinet Paul Brown (for whom the team is named), the Browns streaked to several AAFC and NFL championships. By the dawn of the 1960s, however, some felt that the game had passed Brown by, among them the brash young man from Brooklyn named Art Modell who, in 1961, bought the team. After the '62 season, Modell ``retired'' Brown and hired one of his prot‚g‚s, Blanton Collier. It was a move Pluto calls ``the best football decision Art Modell ever made.'' He worked with essentially the same raw material Brown had: quarterback-cum-math-Ph.D.-candidate Frank Ryan; aged legend Lou ``the Toe'' Groza; and running back Jim Brown, reckoned by many to be the greatest player ever; as well as several prominent rookies. Collier urged, cajoled, and otherwise motivated the Browns to a stunning season-capping 270 rout of the Baltimore Colts in the NFL Championship Game. Pluto recounts the giddy joys of training camp, the easy camaraderie among players and between the players and their fast-living owner. Pluto also notes that football was at the time not the lucrative profession it is today (at least not for the players) and reveals the subtle racism that was, and continues to be, a problem hounding the teams of the NFL. Today, the Browns play in another city (ironically, Baltimore), and as a result, Modell has gone from civic hero to pariah. Still, for Clevelanders, the 1964 championship will remain one of their most cherished memories. Thanks to Pluto, that moment has been lovingly preserved. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.