Dante Lavelli, RIP

As I sit here typing this blog post, I'm picturing you as you read it. I may or may not know you, but the picture I have is of somebody like me, a guy in his late 30s who's been watching the Indians, Browns and Cavaliers fail to get a championship over and over and over again. It's possible that you personally are a woman in her 90s, sitting in New Delhi and, having just heard of Cleveland for the first time, decided to investigate and clicked links until you got to this site, but I guess that's pretty far-fetched.

So chances are that, like me, you don't remember Dante "Gluefingers" Lavelli's 11 years with the Browns, nor the seven championship teams of which he was part. He was Otto Graham's favorite target from the team's inception in 1946, leading the AAFC in receiving as a rookie and catching the winning touchdown pass in the title game. Four years later, in the Browns' first year in the NFL, he caught 11 passes in the NFL Championship Game against the Rams.

Bill Livingston's column in the PD is worth reading. It's about how loyal Lavelli was to the Browns organization, never speaking his mind about Modell until the day he announced the Browns were moving. Then he let loose on Modell, who had betrayed the city in a way Lavelli didn't respect. Livingston also mentions how Lavelli "did not so much catch the ball as attack it." It sounds like he was a lot of fun to watch, if you were a Browns fan.

Lavelli only caught 386 passes in his career, tied for 193rd on the all-time list. Of course, there were only 12 games in the regular season then, and the running game was greatly favored; at the time he retired, he was second on that list (behind Tom Fears). He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975.