Here's a question for any Browns fan: Why? Why, more than four long decades after your team’s last championship . . . despite a relentless pattern of heartbreak, teasing, and more heartbreak . . . capped with a decade of utter futility . . . do you still stick with the Cleveland Browns? Veteran sportswriter Terry Pluto gets a daily barrage of email from fans letting their hearts bleed out orange and brown. So he decided to ask his readers: Just what is it about this team that makes you love them, hate them, and still keep coming back for more? A thousand fans responded—in detail. Their stories—along with interviews with former players and Pluto’s own expert analysis—deliver the answer. Answers, actually. Because like any intense relationship, it’s a little complicated . . . Covering the Browns from 1964 through present day, this book does for Cleveland football what Pluto’s classic about the Indians, The Curse of Rocky Colavito, did for Cleveland baseball: It won’t make the pain go away, but it might help you remember why it’s worth enduring. A must-read for any fan. ― Ashtabula Star Beacon Published On: 2010-11-30 Full of information that even longtime Cleveland Browns fans may not have known. -- Mike Lesko ― Record Publishing Published On: 2010-12-15 Pluto shares credit as author with “hundreds of Browns fans,” who sent him their stories about cheering for the team and, if they’re lucky, meeting and befriending the players . . . For dedicated Browns fans [the book is] like leafing through an old family photo album. -- Damian Penny ― blogcritics.org Published On: 2011-02-16 Terry Pluto is a sports and faith columnist for Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer and the author of more than 30 books. He has twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation’s top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers and has received more than 50 state and local writing awards. He was called “Perhaps the best American writer of sports books” by the Chicago Tribune in 1997. Chapter 1 Being a Browns fan is completely, utterly irrational. But you already know that. If you were born after 1960, you know that being a Browns fan makes no sense. None. Zero. That's because the team's most recent championship was in 1964. OK, maybe some of you born in 1960 actually believe you remember that stunning 27-0 victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1964 championship game. I'll simply remind you that in 1964, you would have been 4 years old. What else do you remember from the age of 4? Here's how it works ... I remember seeing Paul Brown coach the Browns. I really do remember seeing him coach, only I know I didn't. I was born in 1955. Brown's last season was 1962. I know that my father never took me to a Browns game until the late 1960s. He couldn't get tickets. I know I never saw Paul Brown coach the Browns on television, because at that age, I was not about to spend three hours on a Sunday staring at a black-and-white TV, watching the Browns. So I know I never saw Paul Brown coach the Browns. Only I know I did see him, because my father talked about how Paul Brown always wore a hat but seldom a smile. How he and Otto Graham won all those titles, seven in 10 years. How Brown had messenger guards bringing in plays from the sidelines. I know I saw all that, only I didn't see any of it. I just heard about it from my father. We weren't a football family. Baseball was our game, the Indians our team. But I still remember Paul Brown, thanks to my father. Just as many of you heard about Otto Graham, Paul Brown, Jim Brown and Gary Collins. Just as many of you insist you remember the 1964 championship game, even though you were born in 1968. It's the football version of the repressed memory syndrome. Do we really remember it, or do we just want to? I asked fans who read The Plain Dealer to send me e-mails for this book, to try to explain why they still follow the team and what it means to them. Remember, this isn't just a team that never has played in a Super Bowl. It's not just a team that loses more than it wins. It's not just a team that is best known for two games--The Drive and The Fumble. (Both of which make grown men cry ... 20 years later!) It's not only that the Browns have won a grand total of one playoff game since 1990. Or that the team has had only three winning seasons between 1990 and 2009. The dawg-gone team up and moved! Gone to Baltimore after the 1995 season. Gone for no good reason other than Art Modell was a rotten businessman who could not figure out how to make money in a league where nearly every other owner--and most of these guys will not be confused with Warren Buffett--turns a profit. The point of this is not to rehash the move or to pile on Modell. It's to state the fact that the team MOVED. After the move was announced in the middle of the 1995 season, the Browns still had four more home games. Here are the attendance figures for those games with a lame duck team, an unpopular