Paul Brown and the Birth of the Cincinnati Bengals.

      
     When I was a kid, growing up in Berea Ohio, a suburb of football-crazy Cleveland, Blanton Collier was Coach of the Browns.  But I got interested in reading about football, and read about the incredible Browns teams of the 1940s and 1950s, how Coach Paul Brown started the team in the All-America Conference and won all four championships that that league ever head, then came to the NFL and continued to win Championships.  At the same time, the players seemed to be always quality individuals, like Lou Groza who lived in our town and was universally loved.  I remember asking my Dad, "Dad, what happened to Coach Paul Brown?"  The stunning, incomprehensible reply was, "Art Modell fired him, son."
        That didn't make sense to me.  How could this fantastic Coach who won so many games and produced so many outstanding players have been fired?  Surely there was some mistake?
      The firing of Paul Brown rocked not only by little world, but the Ohio football universe. This was an event that rocked Ohio football for decades.  Paul Brown was not just a Coach, but one of the greatest of all time.  His Browns didn't even start in the NFL, nor the AFL, but the now-defunct All-America Conference, which existed from 1946 to 1949. The Browns won all four championships during the league's existence, going 47-4-3. Many observers thought that Paul Brown was a coaching genius, and his team was the equal of any in the NFL. Of course the majority of sportswriters pooh-poohed that idea, smugly agreeing that the caliber of the rival league was in no way comparable to the NFL.  This belief went out the window after the Browns won their first game in the NFL, versus the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles.   They won the NFL Championship that year also.

Brown's teams won 3 NFL Championships and finished first in their conference 10 straight years and 12 times out of 13.  He was every bit the equal of Bill Belichick. He had many of the same personal characteristics too, including a desire for total control of football operations, and a stern, demanding personality that put off many players. 

Later, I came to understand that it wasn't just about football.  There were very complex, serious financial issues.  The previous owners of the Browns, had an understanding with Coach Brown that he would have an increasing ownership role of the franchise.  Not everything was in writing, and thus it is hard to say how much obligation Modell and the team had to its only Coach.  Even today we may not know the full story, but in order for Modell to get out from under that commitment, he felt that he needed to fire Brown.

     That is not the first time a Coach has been fired, nor would it be the last.  But coaching wasn't just a job for Brown--any one of several teams would surely have hired him at top dollar--but it was the loss of HIS team, and probably millions of dollars.  In any case Paul Brown took it very hard, and never forgave Modell.  

     For a few years Paul Brown stayed away from the game, and became almost a recluse.  But gradually, Brown decided to rebuild.  Rather than taking a ready-made job in the NFL, he would become Coach and Owner of an expansion team in Cincinnati Bengals.  He would re-do what he had done in Cleveland.   Hence the Cincinnati Bengals were born.

    Growing up in Cleveland, nobody that I know of was upset that there was a new Ohio team in the AFL team.  It was more like, hey great!  Our former Coach has a new team!  Twice as much football for us!

    The Bengals were built with some of the same characteristics as his old Browns teams, with quality individuals.  The talent level was not there, but the 1968 Bengals were still a hard nosed running team, with fullback Paul Robinson gaining 1000 yards.  

The 1968 Bengals featured uniforms that were very similar to the Cleveland Browns, and perhaps not surprisingly featured a 1000 yard runner in Paul Robinson, as well as a premier tight end in Bob Trumpy.  

     Brown's team evolved quickly.  The 1969 team featured an outstanding quarterback in Greg Cook, who played his college ball at the University of Cincinnati, who at that time played under the radar in the Missouri Valley Conference.  By all accounts, Cook was an emerging superstar when as a rookie he led the league  in yards per attempt and yards per completion.  However, he suffered a severe shoulder injury and tried to play through it, which ended his career.  He tried bravely to come back, but was able to throw only three more passes after his rookie season.  There is no way to know for sure how great he might have become, but for one year, rookie Greg Cook was right up there with the likes of Namath and Lamonica.   

Greg Cook is the greatest quarterback you never heard of, playing one year with the Bengals after a sensational career at the University of Cincinnati. 

Despite his look of consternation at the criticism he is receiving from Coach Brown, young Sam Wyche would eventually become Coach of the Bengals and lead the team to the Super Bowl against the 49ers and their Coach, former Bengal Assistant Bill Walsh.

     The merger of the two leagues led to three teams coming to the AFC:  the Browns, Steelers and Colts would play in the new AFC.  As a result, the Bengals and the Browns were in the same division.  The Bengals, of course hated the Browns, and even in exhibition games tried to win at all costs.  To compensate for losing their star quarterback,  Offensive Coordinator Bill Walsh devised a short passing game with Virgil Carter and Sam Wyche at quarterback, which was the forerunner of the West Coast Offense.     The next year, another unknown quarterback, Ken Anderson from tiny Augustana College, would appear on the scene. Eventually, in 1981, Anderson and the Bengals would make it to the Super Bowl, only to be thwarted by their former Offensive Coordinator and the San Francisco 49ers.  

Bill Walsh was possibly not considered to be quite tough enough to succeed Brown as Coach of the Bengals, but he did all right with the 49ers and a kid named Montana.  

   One of the things I didn't like about the merger of the two leagues is that it forced fans to choose between the Browns and the Bengals.  Browns fans have had our ups and downs with Art Modell for firing Brown.  It didn't bother us a bit to see our old Coach restart his career in Cincinnati.  We could understand why Paul Brown hated Modell and his former team, but we didn't hate the Bengals, at least not at first.   Brown had done nothing wrong but get fired by Modell.
     Sometimes I used to get into disputes about whether it was fair game to be a Browns fan, but to have a dislike for the owner.   My friend Morris and I used to argue about that.  I was still upset at Modell for firing both Marty Schottenheimer and Paul Brown as well as many other sins (trading Hall of Famer Paul Warfield for Mike Phipps comes to mind).  Morris used to say that I was not a true Browns fan for not supporting Mr. Modell.  Well, one fateful day in 1995, that little debate was ended. Morris,almost in tears, admitted I was right about Modell.  Paul Brown's team was moving to Baltimore.   
      

Second Guessing Coach Shula 50 years Later: Should Unitas have Started Super Bowl 3?

If you were Coach Shula, would you have benched NFL MVP Earl Morrall for the great Johnny Unitas?

     I can't believe I am writing this article, but I need to vent my spleen.   In an earlier article, I wrote about the amazing upset by the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, which is still the most compelling Super Bowl of all time for me.  Briefly, in my view the AFL was more innovative than the NFL and knew how to generate takeaways via the Zone Defense and Bump-N-Run, and they were better at the Blitz and countering the Blitz with the Hot Read and Hot Receiver, and made better use of the quarterback's ability to call audibles. That's how an 18 point underdog dominates its opponent, and by the way the next year a 14 point underdog was even more dominant. You can find this article here:  

Super Bowl III was not a Fluke. Why the AFL beat a Superior Team

and the Chiefs upset here:

What about Super Bowl III did you not get? Kansas City Chiefs Destroy Vikes in SB IV.

Anyway, I had a huge response on that blog, and many of the readers felt strongly that Earl Morrall was to blame, and if only Don Shula had started Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas, the Colts would have surely won that game.  Shula himself occasionally expressed regret about not having inserted Unitas at halftime. 
Obviously, the Colts had their chances.  If they could have done it again without five turnovers and a blown flea flicker, maybe they would have won.  But they could not have foreseen that in advance, and you don't get do-overs.
Thee idea that Unitas should have started is not only wrong, at least in my opinion, it's crazy. Supposing you were Coach Shula, you would not start Johnny Unitas for the following reasons: 

1.   Your team has gone 13-1 in a presumably much more powerful league (the previous two years the NFL teams beat the 14 point spread).  

2.  Your Colts gave up only 144 points (10.3 points per game), tied for the lowest in NFL history for a 14 game season (the 1963 Chicago Bears also gave up only 144 points).  

3.  You have the league MVP in Quarterback Earl Morrall.  He has led the NFL with 26 TD passes, 4 more than the second place guy.  He is number two in Yards and Yards Per Game.  He was comfortably ahead almost all the time and didn't have to pass that much, or he would have led the league in yards, too.

4.  Morrall has taken first string reps for the entire year.  Unitas has not.

5.  In your last game, your team won the NFL Championship 30 to 0.  And NOW you want to make a change? Really?

6.  In the one game you lost, your boy Unitas went 1 for 11, with 3 INTs.   Overall, for the season he was 11 for 32 (34.4% completion), for 134 yards, 2 TDs and 4 INTs. 

7.  Unitas is 35 years old and you have no guarantee that he is going to be able to perform.  Hey most experts believe he was the greatest of all time, but how sound is his arm?  You can't know how long his arm is going to hold out, and at no point in the season has he looked like his old self.  

So Coach Shula, are you nuts?  You're going to bench the NFL MVP for a guy who went 11 for 32?  To play the New York Jets,a team of unknowns?  Who are they?  You are going to be laughed out of the stadium if you sit Morrall.  

As it turned out, Earl Morrall had a terrible game with 3 turnovers and a blown play in which he somehow did not pick up Jimmy Orr during a flea flicker.  Unitas came into the game in the second half and did better.  He threw only 1 INT, an underthrown and completed 11 passes out of 24, a 45.8% completion rate. His quarterback rating was an abysmal 42.0. 

Namath, on the other hand, was never pushed.  His favorite receiver, Don Maynard, had a pulled hamstring so they used him only as a decoy.  He still went 17 for 28 with zero INTs and a rating of 83.3.  So, if the Colts are going to get a do-over, so will the Jets.  If  the game had been closer, Namath might have launched an aeriel bombardment of his own.  

In Super Bowl V two year later, Unitas would have the chance to redeem himself in the Super Bowl versus the Dallas Cowboys.  Do you remember that game?  Evidently not.  Unitas went 3 for 9 with 2 INTs before getting injured, leaving his team behind by a touchdown,  10-3.  So in came Earl Morrall, who also had a shaky game versus the Doomsday Defense, but the Colts scored 10 unanswered points to win 13-10.  Early 70's football was characterized by tough defense.  Morrall also received two more rings as a backup with the Dolphins.  He did not play in those Bowls, but did contribute during the season, especially for the 1972 undefeated season when he rescued the Dolphins in the championship game, subbing for injured Bob Griese.  

Anyway, looking at the total stat line, Colts qbs just had a tough go of it in the Super Bowl.  In SB3, Unitas relived Morrall and lost, and in SB5, Morrall relieved Unitas and came from behind to win. I would say overall, Morrall had the better career performance in Super Bowls than Unitas, though neither was very good.  Total stat lines: 

Unitas (2 Super Bowls, 1 ring):  14 for 33, 42.4% 198 yards, 1 TD,  3 INTS
Morrall (4 Super Bowls, 3 rings):  13 for 32, 40.6%,  218 yards, 0 TD, 4 INTS

Earl Morrall relieved injured Johnny Unitas in Super Bowl V with the Colts down by 7, and led them to score 10 unanswered points for a 16-13 redemption versus Bob Lilly and the Dallas Cowboys. If Morrall was 17 points better than Unitas in SB V, why would you think Unitas would be so much better in SB III?  

Earl would pick up two additional Super Bowl Rings, 3 for his career, as a backup for the Miami Dolphins.  He saved the perfect season for the 1972 Dolphins by subbing for an injured Bob Griese in the AFC Championship and leading the team to victory over the Steelers.  Morrall, by the way, was selected as first team All Pro that year, starting 9 times.  You want to call him a career backup, fine.  But he's a backup with an MVP award, 2 All Pro seasons, 4 NFL Championship rings, 3 Super Bowl rings, and 102 NFL starts.  He was 63-36-3 as a starter and overall his teams went 150-103-12  Super Bowl 3 was one of his worst games, but in my view the NFL was simply not prepared to play football the AFL way, and that was proven in Super Bowl 4 when the Kansas City Chiefs steamrollered the Purple People Eaters of Minnesota.   It's very hard to second guess Coach Shula.  The NFL just had to get beat before they could learn.

Do you remember Garo Yepremian's attempt to imitate Joe Namath after a blocked kick in Super Bowl VII?  His lead blocker on that blown play was none other than holder Earl Morrall, who also made All-Pro that year in addition to collecting his second Super Bowl ring.  

  t

RIchie Scheinblum, My Favorite Ballplayer

Richie Scheinblum was my favorite ballplayer as a kid, even though he batted only .218 for the Indians with one home run. 

    My favorite baseball player as a kid?  That's easy.  He was Richie Scheinblum of my hometown Cleveland Indians.   Why?  Well, it's a little bit hard to explain, but Richie came along in the late 1960s when I was old enough to think about baseball a little.  Richie represented inspiration, ambition and hope, and later I identified with his struggles against adversity.   I also liked his name, which sort of rolls off your tongue, almost as good as Rocky Colavito. I didn't realize it was a Jewish name at the time, not that it mattered to me, but later I came to appreciate that he was one of a relatively small number of Jewish ballplayers in the Major Leagues.   

      The Cleveland Indians of 1968 were brilliant defensively and had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, with Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Sonny Seibert and Steve Hargan. The ERA for the staff was 2.66, which was absolutely amazing.   They just couldn't hit.  Tony Horton and Duke Sims were the only real power hitters, with 25 home runs between the two of them. The entire rest of the team hit only 36 for the year, an unbelievably low number.  Star rightfielder Rocky Colavito had been sent away the previous year, and so the stage was set for someone new to step in.
     So, here comes Richie Scheinblum, who played right field like Colavito.  He had bashed the baseball all over the place in the minor leagues, and most importantly, he was a switch hitter.   That was huge.  I knew that Mickey Mantle was a switch hitter, and that he had been taught by his Dad, "Mutt" Mantle.  Mutt had the idea that switch hitting would be the wave of the future.  The reason is that a right handed pitcher can throw a curve ball at your head, and have it curve for a strike.  Now how can you hit something like that?  Well, Mutt Mantle's solution was to learn to bat left-handed to take away the advantage of the curve ball from the right handed pitchers.  His boy Mickey seemed to do okay, slugging the third most home runs in history up to that time, despite a difficult injury history. 
     In 1968, it wasn't crazy to think that everyone would become switch hitters, and in fact the Yankees took it seriously.  They had a ton of them in addition to Mantle.  Roy White, Tom Tresh, Horace Clark and Gene Michael could all switch hit.  Then a bit south of Cleveland in Cincinnati, Pete Rose was a switch hitter in addition to being the most hustling ballplayer around.  Pete only led the majors in batting average, so perhaps there was something to this switch hitting business.
   Could Richie Scheinblum be the answer to the Yankees dominance in switch hitting?   Why not? 
       But Richie got off to a horrible start with the Indians in 1969, going 0 for 34 to start the year.  He was terrible.  But if anything this only cemented my bond with him, because I was equally terrible.  I was in a slump of my own that year, and in fact went hitless the entire year.  In fact my slump would continue the rest of my adolescence, and it was not until my junior year in High School that I learned how to hit.  22 years later I would resume my hardball career playing in Japan, this time with moderate success, but that is another story.   But back to Richie.  I  suffered with him,  as he never did turn it around for the Indians, hitting only .186 with a single home run.  But I never gave up on him.  Never ever. 
      It crushed me when the Indians sent him down to the Minor Leagues.  Back then, they had a rule that once you had been back and forth a few times between the Minors and Majors, you had to stay in the Minors for an entire season.  At age 27, for Richie that represented the kiss of death.   

      But Richie starred again in the Minor Leagues and was ultimately traded to the Washington Senators.  Richie destroyed Triple-A, batting over .400 most of the year before ending up at .388.  Alas, he still could not succeed at the Major League level, once again hitting under .200 after a late season call-up.  Not even having Ted Williams as a manager could help him.  

       But then something weird happened.  He was traded to Kansas City and installed as the every day right fielder, and lo and behold he started to hit.  A lot.  In fact he was leading the league in hitting in June before getting injured, but still wound up at .300 for the year.  Then just to prove it was no fluke, he hit .307 the next year. After that he slumped and bounced around for a few years and eventually went to Japan where he had two excellent seasons as a power hitting rightfielder for the Hiroshima Carp.   An Achilles injury cut short his further adventures, but he was in the Bigs long enough to show that he belonged. 
    So Richie Scheinblum made it in the Major Leagues, though he did not revolutionize Cleveland baseball like I had expected. Maybe that is kind of symbolic in its own way.  His Cleveland experience was sheer agony, but he went on to great success elsewhere.  Cleveland sports fans would see that pattern repeated a few times over the years.  

*******

Epilogue     

    I had an analogous experience as a late blooming ballplayer, though at the amateur level of course.. I never felt that I played up to my ability in Pony League, mainly because I psyched myself out worrying, kind of like Richie in his early days.  So at age 39, 22 years after my last whiff in Pony League, I found myself in Japan  working as a research scientist.  I found out that they had hardball leagues for adults, which scarcely existed at that time in the US.  N Softball yes, but this was hardball in Japan.  Japanese people can not understand why grown adults would want to play soft-toss. Shouldn't that be for little children? 
      I was okay as a backup right fielder for the Sapporo O-Jays.  We were named after the music group, a favorite of my manager Kanno-san.  We played only like 10 games and I had fewer than 20 at bats.  But I got a few hits, and stole a few bases despite my ripe old age.  The next year I returned to Dayton and played two more years of amateur hardball, which was just starting up. I was not good but I did hit over .300.   

Sugoi Richie!  Richie starred for the Hiroshima Carp for two full seasons before an Achilles injury ended his career.   

I was not a big success in Japanese baseball.  But I felt like I belonged.  Note my Ichiro Suzuki "Blue Wave" cap.  Very stylish.  

     

The Cincinnati Reds, Joe Morgan and Reinventing the Second Batter

Four key cogs in the Big Red Machine:  Tony Perez, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan & Pete Rose.

Let's wind the clock back a few years to the late 1960s, when pitchers were dominant and home runs were a rarity.  1968, the Year of the Pitcher, stands out because Carl Yastrzemski was the only guy to hit .300 in the entire American League, while in the National League no one was able to hit 40 home runs (Willie McCovey was tops with 36) and only four guys hit 30 or more home runs.  That year the Los Angeles Dodgers had no one with more than 10 home runs. 

Low scoring, and low power numbers resulted in a much different game than today's game.  Late 1960s baseball featured much more emphasis on stolen bases and bunts.  Consequently, the second batter in the lineup was often the team's best bunter.  For example, Cincinnati's Pete Rose was a very good leadoff hitter and the Reds liked to have light hitting Tommy Helms batting behind Rose in order to bunt him over or run the hit-and-run. 

This all changed when the Reds made a huge trade before the 1972 season, giving up Helms and slugger Lee May for  Joe Morgan, pitcher Jack Billingham and outfielder Cesar Geronimo.  Now they had a guy who stood 5'6" with a tiny strike zone and excellent discipline at the plate, so he got on base as often as Rose plus Joe was a prolific base stealer.  They experimented with Joe at leadoff, second and third in the order, although Pete greatly preferred batting leadoff.   Little Joe wasn't very big, so in his early career the thought was that he should be a contact hitter,  hit to the opposite field, bunt and move the runner along. In other words, his career trajectory was more or less similar to Tommy Helms, with the added dimension that Joe could steal bases and get on base via walks.  

The Reds' brain trust, with Manager Sparky Anderson  and Hitting Coach Ted Kluczewski, settled on an unorthodox strategy.  Rose would bat leadoff rather than the faster Morgan, but instead of trying to steal bases, he was to stay put on first base.  That opens up the right side of the infield as the second baseman has to cheat over a little anticipating the steal attempt and the first baseman has to hold the runner on.  Forget about the bunt, let's move Mr. Rose along with a base hit, shall we?  Joe, a left-handed batter, was going to look to PULL the ball and bat Rose over to third base or even drive him in with extra bases.  In other words, the second position in the order was going to do damage rather than giving himself up most of the time.  After Morgan, the Reds were going to come at you with the likes of Bobby Tolan, Johnny Bench, and Tony Perez.

My guess is that Klu and Sparky were not primarily thinking of Morgan as a power hitter.  They were thinking that was going to lead the National League in batting average by hitting line drives through the hole in the right side of the infield and walk 100 times a year.   The home run power was a bit of an unexpected bonus.  

Probably the Reds were not the only team to consciously reinvent the role of the #2 batter, but they were among the most obvious practitioners and benefactors. They won the pennant in 1972 after going 82-80 the previous year.  It may surprise you to be reminded that the 1972 Reds didn't hit that many home runs, but they were second in the league in runs scored because of their super productive front end of the batting order.  At that time, Dave Concepcion hadn't learned to hit, and so the 6-7-8 batters were Dennis Menke,  Cesar Geronimo and Concepcion, none of whom distinguished themselves offensively that year.