July 13, 1966: Jim Brown Retires

July 13, 1966: Jim Brown retires from playing football. He is 30 years old.

It is not due to injury. It is because he is a black man who is his own man, and does not like a white man telling him what to do -- unless, possibly, it's by a film director.

Brown had played 9 seasons with the Cleveland Browns, 1957 to 1965, and had led the NFL in rushing yardage in 8 of those seasons, all but 1962. In 1963, he rushed for 1,852 yards, which stood as a single-season record for 10 years. In 1964, he helped the Browns win the NFL Championship, still the last they have ever won. In 1965, he got them back into the NFL Championship Game, losing to the Green Bay Packers.

He was still the best running back in professional football, already the NFL's all-time leading rusher with 12,312 yards (a record that would stand until 1984), and was eventually selected in 1999 by The Sporting News as the greatest player in NFL history.

He was now trying his hand as an actor, filming the World War II movie The Dirty Dozen in London. He was enjoying himself, feeling freer than he ever had.

But preseason training camps were underway, and Browns owner Art Modell told him to leave and come back to join his teammates in Berea, Ohio, 13 miles southwest of downtown Cleveland.

Brown refused, telling Modell, already a noted cheapskate, that he could make more money and sustain fewer injuries as an actor than as a football player. Brown retired from football, taking away the one power that Modell had over him, which was to have an undue affect on his football career, but giving up that football career.

He was 30. As of July 13, 2022, Jim Brown is 86 years old, and has never regretted his decision. As he put it, "What would you rather do: Get hit by Dick Butkus, or make love to Raquel Welch?" (Brown and Welch went on to film one of the earliest interracial love scenes in American movies, in the 1969 Western 100 Rifles. Though she was considered "white," Jo Raquel Tejada was of Bolivian descent.)

He went on to star in several "blaxploitation" films, including the Slaughter series. In 1988, he was among the stars of such films who joined Keenen Ivory Wayans in his parody of such films, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, playing Slammer to Isaac Hayes' Hammer, the two men's characters having retired from fighting crime on the streets of their city to run a barbecue restaurant.

Modell made peace with Brown, and named him a team consultant. Modell continued to own the Browns until 1995, never reaching another World Championship game, until moving them to become the Baltimore Ravens. They won Super Bowl XXXV in 2001. He sold the team in 2003, and died in 2012, beloved in Maryland, but despised in Ohio.

A new Browns team began play in 1999, and Brown was named a consultant to their front office. He still holds this post. A statue of him stands outside their home, FirstEnergy Stadium, built in 1999 on the site of their home in his era, Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

UPDATE: Brown died on May 18, 2023, at the age of 87.

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July 13, 1966 was a Wednesday. Singer Gerald LeVert was born. This was also the night that Richard Speck killed 8 student nurses in Chicago. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was the only major North American sport in season, and this was during the All-Star Break. The day before, the All-Star Game was played at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The National League won, 2-1, on a walkoff single by Maury Wills of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But the World Cup was underway in England, where Brown was filming The Dirty Dozen. On this day, France and Mexico played to a 1-1 draw at the old Wembley Stadium in London. (Brown is not known to have attended.) Argentina beat Spain, 2-1 at Villa Park in Birmingham. Portugal beat Hungary, 3-1 at Old Trafford in Manchester. And Italy beat Chile, 2-0 at Roker Park in Sunderland.