First and Last Seasons: A Father, A Son, and Sunday Afternoon Football

I grew up in Cleveland in the 70's and 80's and was a big Cleveland Brown's fan. I actually attended the last Championship game a professional Cleveland team won...the 1963 NFL title game. So, I understand the pain Clevelander's have experienced for the past 40 years.

McGraw moves back to Cleveland to spend time with his Father who is dying and to cover the first year experience of the "new" Browns. It sounds like a smaltzy experience, but it is anything but.

The power of the book is the complete honesty that McGraw relates about his Dad and himself. There is no sugar coating of the "good and bad" about their character and their relationship.

McGraw also gives an accurate description of how Cleveland has been homogenized into "any town" USA and gives a feel for today's predictable NFL machine. I'm one of those "don't care about the new Browns" type.

I would love to sit down and have a beer with Dan in one of those old crappy Cleveland bars.


Like life that it describes, the book is a little messy   September 21, 2001
The book was supposed to be about the author spending the first season of the Brown's with his dying father. But like so many things in life it does not go exactly as planned and the father dies after the first preseason game. The author improvises a little and does backwards looks at his relationship with his father. He also examines the strange relationship between a town and its team. The town pays for the stadium to bring the Brown's back, but it is not really a team of the common Clevelander, which is probably true of most of the NFL. While these are the two main topics (the author's relationship with his father and the new Browns) the author bounces around on other topics such as his own drinking issues and race relations in America (or at least Cleveland). In almost every topic he touches he shows how life is almost more complicated and messy that it seems it should be. Overall, a good read for football fans.


Excellent book   March 25, 2001
Dan McGraw made me laugh at deathbed tales and cry about football and it was well worth every page.


This book struck very close to home - literally. MUST READ!   February 22, 2001
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

I didn't think it possible that anyone could really describe what it was like to grow up in the small Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, and how it feels to return there as an adult. But Dan McGraw has done just that. Cleveland has been referred to as 'the Land of Oz,' and Dan McGraw's book gives the reader a bitter-sweet taste of what it means to be called a `Clevelander.'

Although I don't personally know Dan McGraw, I grew up right on the Lake Erie lakefront about a mile from where he and his family lived.

His accurate, colorful descriptions of the locations and people in and around the Cleveland area are right on the mark. The book really `tells it like it is' when one is faced with the illness and death of a parent, and one's identity as it relates to their parents and their neighborhood.

What is it like going back to your old neighborhood and finding things have changed but yet remain the same? It is an interesting paradox that really comes out in the story, as does Dan McGraw's attitude as he experiences a myriad of mixed emotions toward life and the city he both loved and hated.

It is a book certainly everyone can identify with, and forces one to raise questions about their own experiences with family and friends, as well as one's upbringing. The book expresses the feeling held by many Clevelanders that growing up in the city by the lake was depressing yet exhilirating, dull yet exciting, comforting yet agitating.

Don't miss this interesting biography of a man who saw through to the inner meaning of what it is to be a son, a father, a caregiver, and a resident of what has got to be the strangest, most unique area in America.