Things I've Learned from Watching the Browns ─ And Hundreds of Browns Fans

Cleveland's top sportswriter Terry Pluto wonders why, 66 long years after their team's last championship, despite a relentless pattern of heartbreak, teasing, and more heartbreak, capped with a decade of utter futility, fans still stick with the Cleveland Browns. Nobody's in a better position than Pluto to learn why: He gets a daily barraged of emails from readers letting their hearts bleed out, orange and brown. For this book he asked, and they told him, What is it about this team that makes you love them, hate them, and keep coming back for more? Covering the Browns from 1965 through present day, it includes stories from fans and former Browns players, as well as Pluto's expert analysis. It does for Cleveland football what Pluto's classic book 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.

Terry Pluto is a sports columnist for the Plain Dealer. He has twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation’s top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is a nine-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than 50 state and local writing awards. In 2005 he was inducted into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame. He is the author of 23 books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito (selected by the New York Times as one of the five notable sports books of 1989), and Loose Balls, which was ranked number 13 on Sports Illustrated’s list of the top 100 sports books of all time. He was called “Perhaps the best American writer of sports books,” by the Chicago Tribune in 1997. He lives with his wife, Roberta, in Akron, Ohio.