On Sept. 24, 1996, the lights finally went out on Cleveland Municipal Stadium. But not before one final message, dripping with irony, flashed across the giant scoreboard. The yellow lights glowed, "Hi mom, we bought it!"

The ‘we" wasn’t the town of Baltimore, but Ziggy Muryzinski and Norm Plonski, a pair of Browns fans with a vested interest in the medium of that message. The two longtime school buddies had just plunked down a cool $1000 for the Browns scoreboard in the stadium auction. It was appropriate considering that for years, Ziggy sat at the controls behind that black edifice, punching up "7" on those Bernie Kosar-to-Webster Slaughter connections and Matt Bahr extra points (or, perhaps moving his hand slowly over to the button that controlled the time clock when Denver called a last-minute timeout).

Plonski, proprietor of Hoopples River Bed Cafe and the Parkview Nite Club, was eyeing the official game clock that day with a special purpose in mind. Today, the digital ticker ("It’s the size of a small minivan," says Plonski’s son, Norm Jr.) hangs on a wall at the Parkview, a brewpub located at the intersection of West 58th Street and Cass Road. And it’s all hooked up for its return to glory.
"Fifteen minutes before the preseason game, we’re going to light it up," says Plons-ki. "And before the first game with Pittsburgh, we’re going to do our own countdown. We expect some Star Wars-type interest in it. We expect to do a lot of business."

One would hope so for Plonski’s and Muryzinski’s sakes. After all, "It took us six grand to get [the scoreboard] out of the stadium," says Plonski. "We had to use union labor. We took the panels apart, probably a thousand of them each the size of [acousti-cal] ceiling tiles. We got to take thousands of bulbs and anything we wanted out of the electronics room."

They broke even on the purchase by breaking apart the scoreboard into smaller wedges and selling them mounted on plaques accompanied with a picture. Plonski says he and Muryzinski just wanted a piece of the stadium that, as kids, they stood in front of shilling "scorecards."

"We would stand there outside the stadium, just about missing kickoff, then run inside, down to Section 7 in the lower deck. We had to stand on our boxes to see. We were cold, but we were in."
Another piece of memorabilia Plonski plans to cart out for the Browns’ return is a steel hot dog container from the old stadium that he got on trade for a piece of the scoreboard. More than just a prop, Plonski plans to use the piece to serve Bertman wienies to hungry customers. With the Browns’ return, Plonski expects he will fill an additional 50 seats in front of the big-screen TV at the Parkview.

"It was packed on Sundays when the Browns were here before," says Plonski. "We’re roping off a section of bar and calling it the ‘Dawg Loge.’ Unless you dress properly in Browns attire, you can’t get in."

 

-ML