Browns mourn Coleman

11.27.2006

Like his media colleagues, Casey Coleman always carried a Browns media guide with him during his many years of covering the club as a sportscaster and while working on its radio broadcast team.

But he really didn't need the ultimate reference book on the club. He already knew everything in the guide - by heart.

In short, he was a Browns media guide in his own right - a walking, talking history book about the club. The basis for that knowledge began with his days serving as the team's ballboy during the late 1950s and early '60s while tagging along behind his father, Ken Coleman, a longtime broadcaster with the club. It also included the years he spent covering the Browns as a Cleveland TV and radio sportscaster, his two seasons a decade ago working as their radio play-by-play voice, and the last seven seasons, when he was the sideline reporter on the radio broadcasts.

Indeed, no one knew more about the Browns than Coleman. So with that kind of resume, then, people cheated themselves if they tried to have a conversation with him. They were better off to be quiet and listen, laugh and learn.

Now, though, that voice of experience has been quieted, as Coleman passed away Nov. 27 after a 14-month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 55.

"He will definitely be missed, that's for sure," said Browns color analyst Doug Dieken, who worked nine years with Coleman on the team's radio network and also lived next door to him in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village for five years. "I never saw Casey. He was always out and about doing something with sports. He was what I guess you would call a ‘sportsaholic.' For him, it was sports 24/7."

And much of that time was spent following the Browns. Just as Coleman had a long relationship with the club, so, too, did current Browns radio play-by-play voice Jim Donovan have a long relationship with Coleman. It dates back to their days growing up in Boston. Donovan is a native of the area, and Coleman went there with his family after his father, who called Browns games on TV and radio from 1952-67, left Cleveland to become the radio play-by-play voice for the Boston Red Sox. Though they didn't actually meet until Donovan came to Cleveland in the early 1980s to become the lead sportscaster at WKYC-TV (Channel 3), he knew who Coleman was.

"I knew of his dad from listening to him do the Red Sox games, and by the time I was going to college (at Boston University), Casey was starting to pop up on Boston area radio stations doing sports," Donovan said. "When I got to Cleveland, I didn't know anyone, then I see this TV sportscaster named Casey Coleman who I remembered from Boston.

"Because of our New England roots, there was always a natural relationship - a natural link - between us. There was also a special language between us. We would get to talking to one another and slip into our old Boston accents. It was fun."

When he first met Coleman, Donovan said he was taken aback by the Coleman family's strong connection to Cleveland sports, especially the Browns.

"I had always associated Ken Coleman as the voice of the Red Sox," Donovan said. "I never knew he had had such a long relationship with the Browns before that.

"And as for Casey, he could just rattle off Browns facts left and right, like a machine. Two years ago, when they had that big celebration to honor the 1964 Browns world championship team, I was truly amazed by Casey's knowledge of those guys. He just didn't know of them, but he also really knew them as both players and people. And they knew him in the same way from his days with the team as a teenager."

Coleman eventually got to follow in his dad's footsteps in 1994 when he began a two-year stint as radio play-by-play voice of the Browns. The fact he persevered through that troubled time in the club's history is a testimony to his toughness and professionalism.

Midway through the 1995 campaign, word leaked that Browns owner Art Modell was going to move the club to Baltimore following the season. As part of the fallout, angry sponsors, not wanting to be associated with such a negative situation, yanked their ads from the radio broadcasts.

That forced Coleman and his partner, Dieken, to fill in the time that had been set aside for ads. They basically had to stay on the air non-stop for the entire length of those final eight games, telling stories, doing analysis and discussing games around the league to the nth degree - anything to provide sound and keep the broadcasts moving. Yet somehow, they made it all work.

To hear the final moments of that memorable call, click on the multimedia link at the top of this page.

"Every guy doing sports on the radio wants to someday do play-by-play for a professional team, but the last part of the 1995 season wasn't fun," said Dieken, who has been the color analyst with Donovan the last seven years. "What was happening was obviously the most depressing thing for everybody, but you have to remember that Casey was actually catching it on both ends. He was the ultimate (Bill) Belichick (Browns coach) supporter, and there were a lot of people who were blaming Belichick for the team leaving."

But even before that, Coleman faced another difficult challenge - that of replacing popular, longtime Browns radio play-by-play man Nev Chandler, who died of cancer in August 1994, just as Coleman was getting started doing preseason games in that first season.

"That was a tough situation," Donovan said. "I have the utmost confidence in my play-by-play ability, but I never would have wanted to be the guy to follow Nev. He was so well-liked by the fans, and he was so popular after having done the Browns during such a successful era (the last half of the 1980s). Casey was constantly being compared to him. It was a no-win situation. They could have brought Al Michaels in here to do the games, and even he would have had a hard time. I know it would have been intimidating to me."

But again, in another example of Coleman's classy nature, he never complained about either situation, nor did he cause a fuss when, after a high-profile and much-publicized search, Donovan got the play-by-play job over him as the new Browns took the field in 1999. Instead, Coleman expressed excitement and enthusiasm for his new role as the sideline reporter during broadcasts, saying it returned him to the same ground-level view of the action that he had had as a Browns ballboy years before.

Coleman carried that same positive, upbeat, the-glass-is-half-full mentality into his own battle with cancer. He used his celebrity status to bring awareness to cancer and the need to fund research in hopes of a cure.

That will be part of his legacy.

Though in obvious physical pain, Coleman never lost his sense of humor through the ordeal, making jokes about himself and even the short time he had left to live.

When he was inducted recently into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, he laughed and said, "I'm at the point of my life where I eat my dessert first."

Coleman looked in the program at a photo of a plump-faced photo of himself some years ago, long before the cancer struck and started to shrivel up his body, said at the time that he "worked part-time as the station blimp."

The laughter that ensued then -- and really, every time he poked fun at himself -- no doubt eased his own tensions and fears and also those of who knew him, making it easier for them to approach him and not have to worry about weighing every word they said for fear of uttering something insensitive. In short, it put them at ease.

The Cleveland Journalism HOF was one of three halls of fame he entered in the last year as the community did its best to honor him while he was around to see it. Not a week or two would go by, it seemed, that Coleman wasn't being recognized by someone, somewhere, for something -- always good, of course.

The Browns were part of that effort, naming their indoor practice field the Casey Coleman Field House.

Standing by the big rear door of the facility as a rope was pulled to remove the covering from the temporary sign that had been erected, Coleman was visibly moved by the honor, possibly because the Browns were so near and dear to him because of his long association with them.

It was similar to the way he reacted each time someone paid him a tribute. He had spent a lifetime covering stories about others, trying to make them look good and give them their day in the sun, it was clear he never felt comfortable being the recipient of such.

But that didn't dissuade any group or organization from saluting him

Coleman would have been just as happy idling away his remaining days with his constant companion, his wife, Mary, whose caring and loving ways provided great comfort to him and, at the same time, revealed levels of inner-strength and fortitude that were as abundant as those of her husband.

From the moment he was first diagnosed with cancer, while acknowledging that the odds were not good, he calmly and confidently maintained that, "They say that only about 12 percent of the people who get this disease end up beating it, so why can't I be among those 12 percent?"

Though Coleman wasn't among that 12 percent, he still ended up being include in another select group - those people who know more than can be included in a media guide, but never let on they do.

A public wake will be held Nov. 30 from 4 to 8 p.m. at Berry-Martens Funeral Home at 26691 Detroit Road in Westlake. Funeral services will be held Dec. 1 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Angela's Church at 20970 Lorain Road in Fairview Park.