Jim Brown was such a giant figure in sports and life that he commands center stage over a major golf championship and a couple of highly improbable happenings in pro sports playoffs.
Jim Brown passed last week at the age of 87.
Allow me to cut to the chase.
He was the greatest running back of all time.
There is no argument.
Maybe the greatest football player of all time.
If you saw him play, you know it. You don’t need anything else.
He played only nine years for the NFL Cleveland Browns before retiring on his own terms to become an actor.
So I’m not interested in hearing about statistics regarding yards gained, touchdowns scored and all the rest.
I always say, if your only gauge in judging athletic accomplishment are stats, you don’t know the game.
You can look up his accomplishments on the field, and in the movies. I’m not taking up space with that here.
It all started with his brilliant years at Syracuse University.
The first of the greats to wear Number 44.
Ernie Davis, who played during my time for the Orange, and Floyd Little, who arrived after I left, are the other prominent star backs who wore that number.
I knew Davis, but I knew Little a lot better.
I had only a passing contact with Brown, and I wish I had a lot more.
The Number 44 has been retired, not only at S.U. but for the entire National Football League, just as Jackie Robinson’s #42, and Bill Russell’s #6, have been retired forever in MLB and the NBA.
When I saw Jim Brown play I was mesmerized.
He played virtually every offensive snap and was involved in most of the plays.
He had a formidable combination of speed and power and when he had his hands on the ball you were in for a treat.
He handled the ball like a loaf of bread and what I remember the most are the countless would-be tacklers who would slide off him as he powered his way for more yardage and more touchdowns.
One man could never bring him down.
Sam Huff, the Giants linebacker who made a reputation of shadowing Brown, and had some notable success, once said, “you grab hold, then you hang on”.
Help was always needed.
Jim Brown was a football player with class.
In today’s look-at-me game, where gestures, poses, dances, and gyrations are a joke, Brown, who wore #32 with the Browns, would simply hand the ball to the referee after scoring a TD, and go back to the sideline.
What was always amusing was the way he would get up after being brought down on a play and walk back to the Browns huddle as if he were either injured beyond comprehension or was walking on glass.
You wondered if Jim Brown was too hurt to go on.
Until the next play when he would pick up 30 yards.
At Syracuse he established his greatness in multiple sports.
Many consider him the finest lacrosse player ever.
He was a high scorer for the Orange basketball team, and when called upon, sometimes surrounding football practice, he would star as a track and field performer, particularly in the Decathlon.
He left the Browns after nine years to pursue a movie career.
He starred in many, most notable in my view, The Dirty Dozen.
But perhaps his foremost achievement was his advocacy for civil rights. In 1967 he gathered the top Black athletes to support boxer Muhammad Ali who was wrongly punished for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War.
Wrongly punished because he did not receive due process under the Constitution, affirmed by a 9-0 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brown was cut in the mold of Martin Luther King in his civil rights activities. Peaceful, not violent solutions.
Brown was a giant in in helping troubled young men who were attracted to gangs, looking to set them straight, showing them a better way.
Jim Brown was far from a flawless man.
His violence against women was a matter of record and a major negative. There was no excuse for his actions on that count.
But when you look at the entire package of Jim Brown, you see greatness in so many ways.
And it starts with football.
There was no one better with the ball in his hands.
When we talk of last week’s PGA Golf Championship, held at marvelous Oak Hill in Rochester, NY, do we begin with the return to glory of a now 5-time major titleist, or do we start with the club pro who lived the dream of a lifetime?
Club professionals, and there are thousands, have an opportunity to play in one of the four majors by qualifying in regional tournaments. The PGA is the one.
There are those who get there, while most do not.
They never are heard from because they bring up the rear which is not a bad thing at all. They got there, and that’s the triumph for them. But one club pro, Michael Block, the head professional at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, Calif, not only earned a spot in the big one, but had the best finish in more than 30 years, capturing the hearts of golfers everywhere.
Block, not only finished in the top 15, to qualify for next year’s PGA Championship, and even this week’s Colonial play, but scored a hole-in-one on the par-3 15th.
He never saw it. The ball flew straight into the cup, 151 yards from the tee, and his playing partner, Rory McIlroy, had to tell him, before giving the 46-year old, a hug.
He capped his dream weekend by making a remarkable up-and-down and sinking a putt on the 18th.
Michael Block openly wept after the round.
Nothing could ever match the events he experienced in Rochester.
And it’s much more than the $288-plus paycheck he took home.
Anyone who has ever swung a golf club would understand.
It would also be difficult to understand the feelings of Brooks Koepka, who was practically down and out a year ago, fighting injuries and inconsistencies, seeing his once first rate game disappear.
But Koepka came back at Oak Hill to win his fifth major and third PGA title.
Koepka was locked in a battle with Viktor Hovland on the back nine of the final round, until Hovland had a horrific bad break.
The Norwegian was one shot behind Koepka with three holes to play when his 9-iron from a fairway bunker with a high grassy lip, became embedded in the bank, a shot that traveled only a few feet.
Hovland had to take an unplayable penalty stroke and wound up with a double bogey that did him in.
He finished in a tie with Scottie Scheffler, who was lurking in contention all day, two shots behind Koepka.
Brooks Koepka became the first golfer from the rival LIV Tour to win a major.
It really didn’t mean much for the LIV Tour since few viewers have watched the challenging group to the PGA Tour.
But it did mean plenty to Brooks Koepka, who is back as a force in the sport of golf.
Something amazing is going on in South Florida in both the NHL and NBA playoffs.
The two lowest teams on the totem-pole of the two leagues are making history.
The Florida Panthers, barely making the hockey post-season, have continued their unfathomable march to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Shocking the record-breaking 65-win Boston Bruins in the first round was only the beginning for what is a true Cinderella, a term used mostly for March Madness.
But the Panthers, after trailing 3 games to 1, stunned the Bruins in overtime, in Boston, in the 7th and deciding game.
They went on to whip the favored Toronto Maple Leafs to advance to the Eastern Finals, and at this printing, hold a 2-0 lead over the powerful Carolina Hurricanes, winning both games in overtime, one a marathon, in Raleigh.
It’s a story that has no equal, except that other South Florida team, the Miami Heat are within a game of reaching the NBA Finals.
Like the Panthers, the Heat edged into the playoffs, trouncing the Milwaukee Bucks, the top team in the East, before eliminating the New York Knicks.
Now, the Heat need only one game to knock off the second best entry, the Boston Celtics.
They lead 3-0 and in NBA history teams who win the first three are 197-0.
Enough said.
Here’s the ensuing argument: are the Heat playing phenomenal ball, or are the Celtics collapsing at the wrong time?
Here’s the answer.
The legendary Celtics coach and executive, Red Auerbach, once told me, “it’s not solitaire out there”.
It’s never solely a matter of what you do.
The opponent has a say as well.
And the Miami Heat are having quite a say.
Big week in the constantly evolving carousel of sports.
But the passing of Jim Brown, one of its jewels, took center stage.