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This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”
Jackie Robinson blazed trails, no one would dispute that, but it was convenient that he was spectacular at playing the game he played amidst such controversy. For Bill Willis and Marion Motley, playing in the All-American Football Conference, they could not claim the title of being first; the Rams had a few also-rans that could claim the distinction of being the first black professional football players since 1933, but the players signed to the Cleveland team in 1946 were bona fide stars.
There was no real prospect for Willis, a star at Ohio State to play football professionally after graduating in 1945, so he went to coach at Kentucky State, a predominantly black school. The next year, he heard Paul Brown was holding a tryout in Bowling Green, and the Columbus native, hungry to play, chose trying out for the eventual AAFC juggernaut over playing in Canada and not playing at all.
It wasn’t even a social issue for Paul Brown, he just wanted the best football players. "I never considered football players black or white, nor did I keep or cut a player just because of his color," Brown writes in his autobiography. Willis stated, before his death in 2007, how much he appreciates how today’s black athlete is able to intermingle. He also downplays the difficulty of race, citing playing at Ohio State and in the Big Ten as one of the things that prepared him for pro-caliber competition.
McCartney or Tango and Cash, you can’t talk about the Top Dawg without Mighty Minny.
This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”
Herb Score’s selection as this town’s best ever #27 should serve as evidence that greatness is not measured in years. Score’s star burned white-hot for two seasons as a Cleveland Indian, earning him favorable comparisons with his legendary teammate Bob Feller, and widespread predictions that he would become one of the greatest left-handed pitchers ever to play the game.
Many professional bettors are starting to adapt in order to get better situations at +EV. As I’ve talked about before, +EV is expected value, and that should always be a positive amount. One of the ways that bettors are doing this is by focusing on half wagers instead of full game plays. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a full game effort out of basketball teams, especially late in the season. The obvious move to counteract that would be to look at bets one half at a time.