NFL PLAYOFFS : Here, the Twain Shall Meet : Fans of Browns, Steelers Share Towns, Though Not Always Peaceably

NEW WATERFORD, Ohio —  After scouring the 120 or so miles of steep hills and rolling farmland that separate the two teams involved in pro football’s greatest backyard rivalry, we are delighted to report that we have found the line of demarcation.

We regret to announce that it is not a line, but a jar.

A fat, clear jar of oversized Ping-Pong balls floating in yellow goop.

“What’s the matter?” asks Rose Sheppard, who patrols this battle zone daily. “You never seen hot peppered eggs before?”

The jar sits in the middle of a long wooden bar, in the middle of a tavern called the Ranch, in the middle of this speck of a town about halfway between the home of the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers.

There are equal numbers of Brown and Steeler fans in these parts. They mingle in the same workplace, the same church, even the same house.

But they know there are times when one must draw a line, stand up for beliefs, join ideological brethren in a fight to sustain truth.

One must decide on which side of the hot peppered eggs to sit.

For as long as Shepard can remember, Brown fans have sat on the side closest to the television, Steeler fans on the other side.

“Never crossed over,” said Sheppard. “Each of them always on their side.”

From across the jar, they have shouted at each other, heckled each other, gambled away a day’s pay, shed a week’s worth of sweat.

Neighbor on neighbor. Boss vs. employee. Fathers against sons.

When the Browns visit Pittsburgh today in the first playoff game of this rivalry’s 45-year history, the noise inside the Ranch should shake the windows on cars winding outside along Route 14.

Inside, emotions will overflow like those shots of Goldschlager. Sheppard will know the fans by the messes they make.

“Browns fans are real sloppy drinkers,” she said. “When they do a shot, you have to follow them around to clean it up.”

And Steeler fans? “Real neat. They do a shot, you give them a rag and they clean it up themselves.”

When the game ends and one of the teams has advanced to the AFC championship game Jan. 15, the heckling will continue. Like next-door neighbors fighting over a section of fence, this a rivalry bereft of sportsmanship.

Winners will scream across the eggs at the losers, who will scream back something about next year, always next year.

And everybody will be watching Sparky.

That is either the first or last name of a truck driver--nobody seems to know which--who last week made a bet with a co-worker across that jar.

If the Steelers win, Sparky will immediately drive his buddy north to Lake Erie, where his buddy will promptly take a swim.

If the Browns win, Sparky will walk outside in the frigid air and wash his buddy’s truck.

Sensing surprise in the apparent unevenness of the wager, Sheppard smiled.

“That truck,” Sheppard said. “It’s an 18-wheeler.”

*

The tenor of today’s game at Three Rivers Stadium--the third time the Steelers and Browns have met this season, the 91st time overall--was set Friday in the solemn words of District Magistrate Donald Machen.

He will preside over an official court in a players’ lounge at Three Rivers Stadium during the game in hopes of thwarting a potentially disturbing series of events.

“I have heard a lot of negative talk from Browns fans and Steelers fans . . . talk about fans wanting to dismember each other,” Machen said.

He should look first at his own government.

Yes, that blinking sign above U.S. 60 that greets traffic several miles outside Pittsburgh actually read, “Dawg Neutering, Saturday, Three Rivers Stadium, 12:30 p.m.”

And, yes, another sign a few miles earlier read, “Welcome to Blitzburgh.”

And to think that those spaces are usually wasted on warnings about traffic jams.

The signs mark the end of the road for Brown fans who have completed the most famous two-hour drive in sports, one that joins two historic mill towns and their equally historic teams.

But it is also a drive that separates similar people, tugs at those who should be the best of friends, at least twice a year directs them to each other’s throats.

Nobody fights each other harder than brothers. It is this dynamic among their fans that makes the Browns and Steelers an encounter unmatched in the NFL.

This game has not always had great players, but it has always had possessed followers.

“All I know is that there would be a lot of suicides in this Cleveland-Pittsburgh area if there were no Browns or Steelers,” said Rich Kratko, a factory worker from Youngstown, Ohio. “This is what keeps us all going.”

Early this morning for thousands, the drive began in Cleveland, outside shiny new Jacobs Field, down to the sleek Ohio Turnpike, south and east across rolling pastures that offered the only sign of peace.

Two toll-booth operators said Friday they dreaded today, just as they dread each of the team’s two regular-season meetings.

“Depending on who is the home team, all morning and night you get everybody from the other team driving past and screaming at you,” one said.

For some, the drive continues along this toll road into Pennsylvania, where it leads to an interstate highway that ends at the foot of Three Rivers Stadium.

But for the most adventuresome--and almost nobody travels to the opponent’s stadium without expecting adventure--there is Exit 16.

That is where you leave the turnpike and travel to Pittsburgh through the Pennsylvania border towns, bustling places such as Youngstown, mobile-home sized spots such as East Palestine, hills dotted with homes filled this week with antagonism.

This is where you find spots such as the Tangier Bar.

The small white brick structure along a busy Youngstown street might be the only gathering spot in the country where banners and flags from two professional sports teams from different states hang prominently on facing walls.

OK, some Brown fans got a little rowdy the other day and tore all the Steeler stuff down.

Wait until the Steeler fans show up today to find it missing.

“The difference in the fans is that the Browns fans are much more die-hard,” said Kratko, wearing a Brown cap in the bar, even though this Youngstown spot is several minutes closer to Pittsburgh.

“Steeler fans may cheer for us to win the Super Bowl if we beat them,” Kratko said. “But we will never cheer for them. Never.”

The only thing consistently shared by both groups is a tendency to generalize about the other.

Many Steeler fans insist that they will never attend a game in Cleveland Stadium again because of a recent spate of violence there against them.

“I used to take a bus up there with a bunch of people once, never again,” said Joe Patrizi, owner of Joe Coolie’s Restaurant and Lounge in Aliquippa, Pa. “During the game you get whiskey bottles thrown at you. You go out in the parking lot and see the tires slashed on all the cars with Pennsylvania plates.”

Brown fans claim it is unsafe to attend a game at Three Rivers Stadium for a different reason. They claim that any male standing in a restroom line wearing a Brown jacket is urinated upon.

It’s bad enough in your own neighborhood, according to Tangier worker Mary Jane Nicholson, who lives in nearby Boardman, Ohio.

She and her husband are lifetime Brown fans who have had to endure years of taunting from neighbors who are Steeler fans.

“These people even put up signs in their yards,” she said, not needing to note that such a thing is considered sacrilege in Bernie Kosar’s birthplace.

Nicholson’s husband and friends hoped to get even his year by placing a stuffed toy moose wearing a Brown T-shirt on a friend’s TV set watched by many in the neighborhood.

“All the guys would rub it for luck before every big play, and it seemed to work,” she said.

But, alas, the Browns lost twice to the Steelers.

“And all the Steeler fans in the room threw cans at the moose and knocked it off the set,” she said.

What makes a Steeler or Brown fan? It’s as simple as their relationship is complex.

“You’re born in Ohio, you’re a Browns fan, no matter how close to Pittsburgh you live,” Kratko said. “You’re born in Pennsylvania, it’s the other way around.”

And once anointed, you never deviate.

“My daddy was a Browns fans, and if you even said Steelers in the house, he would say you were in the wrong house,” said Ranch-manager Sheppard, whose New Waterford address is only a few miles inside the Ohio line. “So I became a Browns fan. And I never brought home anybody who wasn’t, at least not on game days. My daddy was a big man.”

*

From Youngstown head south on Route 7 to Route 14, then east toward Pittsburgh, past the Ranch and several abandoned farmhouses that perhaps used to be ranches.

As the road nears the Pennsylvania border, the surrounding hills become steeper, the landscape sharper, the accents harsher.

A couple of miles from the border, just before Route 14 becomes Route 51 and eventually dumps you onto Route 60 for the final miles to Pittsburgh, there is a town called Unity.

Finally, we thought. A place where the bickering would end. Unity.

We entered the Vittle Village mini-market with hopes high. Unity, Vittles, a smiling older woman behind the counter re-cooking a pizza that wasn’t just right. . . .

Then the woman, Virginia Thompson, spoke.

“It’s our son,” she said softly. “My husband and I are Browns fans. He is not.”

Bystanders shook their heads, muttered, sighed.

“It was what he wanted, and there was nothing we could do about it,” she said. “I guess he just wanted to go in his separate direction.”

A voice pierced the silence.

“Why don’t you talk to me,” said Chuck Niznik, a Youngstown truck driver. “I’m a Raider fan.”

We raced out of Vittle Village and fled into the night.