| | CLEVELAND -- Before Dawg Pounders let out their first bark
or threw back their first beers, they already knew the result of
Sunday's night game with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
|  | | Headed for the Kiss Pound? Browns fans made sure Cleveland was rocking Sunday. |
They won.
Three seasons without football after having their Cleveland
Browns stolen out from under them came to an end Sunday night.
They had survived, won back their team and their colors as the
season -- the real season, no exhibition games -- finally got under
way against the archival Steelers. And it was time to party.
"We're a bunch of crazed dogs and we're battling back," said
Kevin Hepburn as he and his buddy, Jim Istenes, tied up their motor
boat, "Sick Puppy," at a dock on Lake Erie just outside the
stadium. "I've been sad since they moved. We've been waiting a
long time. But this is brand new."
Never mind that the Steelers crushed the Browns 43-0.
This was a day-long celebration that climaxed when hometown
comedian Drew Carey introduced the Browns as the crowd howled.
"Anyone who's told a Cleveland joke before -- you can now
officially shut up," Carey shouted as the Browns ran onto the
field and fireworks exploded overhead.
Downtown Cleveland was awash in orange, brown and goofy outfits
a full four hours before kickoff, the first regular-season home
game for the Browns since December 1995. Scalpers got $200 for
tickets and were asking as much as $500, fans said.
In parking lots stretching more than a mile from the new
stadium, people set up camp behind cars, trucks, buses and vans,
firing up their grills and cracking open cold beverages. All the
Clevelanders were loving their Browns and ready to celebrate with
anybody wearing a dog bone.
A band of folks with seats in the Dawg Pound, the end zone
section that's the domain of the Browns most rabid faithful, hung
out in a private lot close to the stadium.
When they saw a truck driving by with a couch in the back -- painted orange with brown and white stripes like Cleveland's helmet and the words "Tim Couch" emblazoned on it -- they called the
driver over and offered a free parking spot.
"Our No. 1 draft pick!" yelled Dave Bletsh as a couple of guys
unloaded the couch and joined the party. "We had to have that."
The couch artist, Tim Johnson, was dressed head-to-toe in orange
and brown and wore slippers that looked like footballs on his feet.
He talked about what made him repaint his tan sofa in honor of
Cleveland's rookie quarterback.
"It just came right in my head," he said. "I didn't think
anybody else would do it."
In a parking lot on the other side of the stadium, Tuck Leckey
showed off a tattoo of a helmeted dog he got just for the game.
Leckey and his friend, Terry Doseck, drove up to Cleveland from
southwest Ohio without tickets, but picked them up for $200 each.
"I've been a Browns fan all my life, and I just got this," he
said. "It's not done yet. We're going to fence him in and put a
collar on him."
Everybody was glad that when the Browns finally came back, it was against the Steelers. Even Pittsburgh fans were happy to see the rivalry renewed in Cleveland.
"I've had a lot of garbage rain down on me already," said Roy
Lane, sporting a Kordell Stewart jersey. "But that's all right.
It's been a long time and we're glad to have them back."
Bletsh agreed.
"It's Pittsburgh and Cleveland and nothing else," he said.
"There is no other rivalry."
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