New Releases by Terry Pluto

For Cleveland Browns fans who want to know why things keep going so wrong for their team… For 25 years — since the return of the franchise in 1999 — Browns fans have been more consistently frustrated, befuddled, and disappointed by their team than any other fans in pro sports. Why? Sports columnist Terry Pluto (cleveland.com / The Plain Dealer) shares answers. With insight and insider details gained from decades covering the team, Pluto looks closely at 2014 to 2024 and also back with fresh insight on earlier years of the new franchise: The drafts, the deals, the coaching and front-office changes … the onfield disappointments … rare bright spots and moments of optimism. Above all there has was the ongoing, fruitless, endless search for the right starting quarterback — from Tim Couch to Johnny Manziel to Baker Mayfield (and so many others!) … And then Deshaun Watson came to town — in one of the most disruptive and disastrous deals in the team’s history … “Browns fans deserve better,” Pluto says. If you’ve lived through years of disappointing football with the Cleveland Browns, this book will change how you understand the team. • By long-time Plain Dealer sports columnist Terry Pluto, based on decades covering the Browns • 40+ starting quarterbacks(!) — from Tim Couch to Johnny Manziel to Baker Mayfield to Deshaun Watson. • Explores the heartbreak, hope, and chaos of Browns’ QB decisions. • Includes some rare bright spots, such as Nick Chubb and Myles Garrett. • Explains key turning points, big deals, and what went wrong (or occasionally right). • Features thoughts from fans — including why they still stick with this team.

If you remember the Kardiac Kids … the Dawgs … the old Stadium … Bernie and Marty and Ozzie … this book is for you! Like a Classic throwback jersey, it recalls favorite players and exciting moments from Cleveland Browns teams of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and more. They played it old-school. Doug Dieken set the NFL record for consecutive starts by a left tackle despite three knee surgeries, broken hands and thumbs, torn tendons, a broken arm and “a concussion or two. Maybe four or six. Hard to know.” Ozzie Newsome never expected to play tight end when he was drafted, then practically reinvented the position on his way to the Hall of Fame. Bernie Kosar carried a massive weight on his young shoulders as a hometown hero leading the Browns during years when the team offered a ray of hope to a downtrodden city. Earnest Byner and Kevin Mack together formed one powerhouse backfield and separately dealt admirably with adversity. Phil Dawson discovered that despite popularity and longevity, “Every kick could be your last.” Also includes Gregg Pruitt, Brian Sipe, Marty Schottenheimer, Reggie Langhorne, Brian Brennan, Bill Belichick, Tim Couch, Phil Dawson, and others. These insightful short profiles will entertain Browns fans of any vintage!

This epic homecoming tale recounts one of the greatest sports stories in Cleveland history — how LeBron James and the Cavaliers took fans on a roller coaster ride from despair to hope and, finally, to glory as the 2016 NBA champions. Fans felt gut-punched in 2010 when local hero and MVP LeBron James announced he was leaving the Cavaliers and Northeast Ohio for Miami. The Cavs nose-dived in the standings and struggled to recover. Then, in June 2014, LeBron announced he was coming home. And he had a mission: Lead the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals and give Cleveland its first championship in 52 years. But would LeBron’s return be enough to restore his reputation, revive the franchise, and reward long-suffering Cleveland fans? Award-winning sportswriter Terry Pluto tells how it all happened. How LeBron won back fans with a heartfelt message — and savvy PR . . . How the Cavs’ front office crafted a championship-caliber team with a big three of James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love and a bench stocked not only with talent but character and chemistry . . . How LeBron’s added experience from four seasons and two titles in Miami prepared him for this second chance in Cleveland . . . How the Cavaliers reached the 2016 NBA Finals to face a Golden State Warriors team, led by MVP Stephen Curry, that had just set an NBA record for wins and had vanquished the Cavs in the Finals the previous season . . . How LeBron and the Cavs, down a historically hopeless three games to one, sparked an unprecedented come-from-behind surge (symbolized by LeBron’s superhuman block in Game 7) to stun Golden State and bring home the NBA Championship . . . And how the ecstatic fans joined the team in a joyful celebration that brought more than a million people together in downtown Cleveland. Pluto tells it all with insightful analysis, extensive front-office details, and a deep empathy for the fans.

Relive the most thrilling seasons of Cleveland Indians baseball in recent memory! Remember the excitement of those first years at Jacobs Field? When it seemed the Indians could find a way to win almost any game? When screaming fans rocked the jam-packed stands every night? When a brash young team snapped a forty-year slump and electrified the city? Those weren’t baseball seasons, they were year-long celebrations. Step back into the glory days with sportswriter Terry Pluto and broadcaster Tom Hamilton as they share behind-the-scenes stories about a team with all-stars at nearly every position . . . a sparkling new ballpark . . . wild comeback victories . . . a record sellout streak . . . two trips to the World Series . . . and a city crazed with Indians fever. Revisit baseball’s most fearsome lineup: Albert Belle’s mighty swing and ferocious glare . . . Jim Thome’s moon-shot home runs . . . Omar Vizquel’s poetry-in-motion play at shortstop . . . Kenny Lofton’s exhilarating baserunning and over-the-wall catches . . . These two Cleveland baseball veterans were there for it all. Now, they combine firsthand experience and in-depth player interviews to tell a richly detailed story that Tribe fans will love.

¿Sometimes I wish my minister would read his column instead of the sermon!¿ That¿s the kind of response Plain Dealer columnist Terry Pluto draws from devoted readers of his faith column. Although best known as an award-winning sportswriter, Pluto has also earned a reputation¿and a growing audience¿for his down-to-earth musings on more heavenly subjects. Here he offers 28 thoughtful essays on faith in everyday life¿practical topics such as choosing a church, lending money to friends, dealing with jerks, sharing your faith, visiting the sick, even planning a funeral.

Award-winning sports columnist Terry Pluto has another beat: Faith. Thousands of loyal readers regularly turn to his ¿other¿ column for a regular dose of down-to-earth spiritual inspiration. This book collects dozens of his popular essays about ethical and moral issues we all face in everyday life. Like getting along with our siblings. Setting a better example for our children. Listening better to our spouses. How money makes us do silly things. The lure of gossip. Feeling lonely. Giving in to anger. How we feel when our prayers go unanswered. Pluto writes from a very personal perspective, as when he discusses the vanity of his own approach to baldness, or reveals white lies he has used to make himself feel better, or describes the temptation to tell off his boss at work. This honestly humble approach to finding the spiritual in the ordinary gives Pluto¿s writing broad appeal. ¿I don¿t care if you are a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or a skeptic; there is a spiritual thirst in most of us,¿ Pluto says. ¿I try to write about God and us and what that means for our lives.¿ For a sportswriter who never thought he¿d write about faith, Pluto has brought a great deal of meaning to the lives of his readers. This collection will serve as a great way for Pluto fans to revisit the many inspirations found in his writing¿and to share them with a new audience.

Joe Tait is like a family friend to three generations of Cleveland sports fans. This book celebrates his Hall-of-Fame broadcasting career with stories from Joe and dozens of fans, media colleagues, and players. He was "the Voice of the Cleveland Cavaliers." But to fans, Joe was also "one of us." Cavs basketball, Indians baseball, or Mount Union football, he made the game come alive, and wasn't afraid to speak his mind¿even when it might get him in trouble with the coach or the owner. He inspired a generation of young broadcasters, and phrases he invented became part of the common language of Northeast Ohio sports.These stories will make you feel like you're sharing a personal play-by-play recap with one of the best announcers in all of sports.

More thoughtful essays by Terry Pluto ("the sportswriter who writes about faith"), based on his popular Plain Dealer column "Faith and You." These plain and personal musings cover topics we all face in everday life: insults and what they really mean, prayers that don't seem to get answered, endless sibling rivalry, figuring out how to our fathers, dealing with the loss of a pet, and more. Pluto writes for people who may not always feel confident in their beliefs but know faith is still important to them . . . For people who sometimes get mad at their church or disagree with their pastor yet don't want to lose the spiritual side of their lives . . . For people of different faiths or backgrounds or who aren't even sure they're religious. These essays doesn't claim to have all the answers, but the questions they raise give readers something to think about all week.

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still—decades later —just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball. Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports—told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.

Veteran sports writer Terry Pluto asks Cleveland Browns fans: Why, after four decades of heartbreak, teasing, and futility, do you still stick with this team? Their stories, coupled with Pluto's own insight and analysis, deliver the answers. Like any intense relationship, it's complicated. But these fans just won't give up.

"Not your typical sports biography . . . Take[s] the reader behind the scenes in the Cavaliers’ front office, revealing how championship contenders are built" — Library Journal Two award-winning sports journalists give an in-depth look at how a team and a city were rebuilt around superstar LeBron James. When the Cleveland Cavaliers drew the top pick in the 2003 NBA draft, an entire city buzzed with excitement. After all, how often does a LeBron James come along? Especially for Cleveland, a midmarket Rust Belt city without a sports championship in forty years. Especially for the Cavaliers, a long-struggling team that had never reached the NBA finals. Soon, everyone had something riding on LeBron—billionaire team owner Dan Gilbert looking for a return on his investment . . . teammates eager for a championship ring . . . the league in need of the next Michael Jordan to promote . . . the shoe company with its multimillion-dollar endorsement deal . . . even popcorn vendors in the stands of Quicken Loans Arena and servers waiting restaurant tables in a downtown that now booms every game night. Terry Pluto and Brian Windhorst tell the converging stories of a struggling franchise that had to get worse in order to get better and a highly touted teenage phenom, the local kid who became their future. This book will fascinate any basketball fan who wants the inside story of how LeBron James became the young superstar shouldering the weight of an entire NBA franchise. Chock full of facts and analysis.

Terry Pluto, one of Cleveland's top sportswriters, takes a hard look at the first 5 years of the new Cleveland Browns franchise and doesn't like what he sees. This book chronicles the backroom deals, big-money power plays, poor decisions, and plain bad luck that have dogged the venerable franchise since Art Modell skipped town in 1995. Legions of loyal fans stand by, waiting for a return to past glory. How much longer must they wait? Pluto sifts through the clues from the last five seasons and looks for answers.

Now in paperback. The best columns from one of Northeast Ohio's most popular sportswriters ever. Terry Pluto has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, has been named Ohio Sportswriter of the Year six times, and has won more than 50 national and state writing awards. This book collects his best Akron Beacon Journal columns about Northeast Ohio sports -- Indians, Browns, Cavs, high school, and more -- from the past decade. It's his first column collection. (He is author of 18 other sports books, including "The Curse of Rocky Colavito.")

A nostalgic look back at the upstart AFC Cleveland Browns' surprising 1964 championship victory over the hugely favored Baltimore Colts. Profiles the colorful players who made that season memorable, including Jim Brown, Paul Warfield, Frank Ryan. Recreates an era and a team for which pride was not just a slogan.

Unguarded reveals the Lenny Wilkens we have never seen before, the tough, strong, thoughtful, and analytical man who has spent a life in basketball making his teammates and players better than they knew they could be. Thought-provoking, candid, always honest, Wilkens shares all the secrets he's learned in his four decades surviving in the NBA storm. For forty years, he has been the Quiet Man of the NBA. As a rookie, he was overshadowed by two pretty fair guards who entered the league at the same time: Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. As a veteran, he was—both figuratively and literally—a coach on the floor, but he had the misfortune to play for several struggling teams. As a general manager, he won a championship and made back-to-back Finals appearances—but he did it without superstars, a year before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revitalized the league. And as a coach, he has won more games than anyone in NBA history—but spent his best years locked in the same division as Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Basketball connoisseurs have long appreciated the style and intelligence with which Lenny Wilkens played and the unflappability and class he's brought to coaching. The respect he has earned resulted in his joining the legendary John Wooden as the only men to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame twice—first as a player, and then as a coach. Now, in Unguarded, Lenny Wilkens steps out from behind his placid demeanor to speak plainly and unequivocally on the enormous social and athletic changes he's seen in his career. Wilkens sounds off about the challenges he had to overcome in the course of his journey: the racism that left him off the 1960 Olympic basketball team and kept him from being chosen as head coach of the first Dream Team; the fatal miscalculation that kept his Cleveland Cavaliers from getting past Michael Jordan to the NBA Finals; the painful, frustrating task of coaching a troubled and troublesome J.R. Rider, a player who contributed to his departure from Atlanta. And he credits those who went out of their way to help him: the priests and nuns who taught him the value of discipline and reinforced his faith; the coaches who pushed him to develop his talents to the fullest; the selfless players such as John Johnson, Hot Rod Williams, Larry Nance, Steve Smith, and many others who sacrificed individual glory for the good of their teams; his mother, Henrietta, and his wife, Marilyn, who stood beside him in many trying times.

An account of the NBA from 1956 to 1966, after the introduction of the 24-second shot clock, highlights those who dominated the sport during its "glory days," including Red Auerbach, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Boston Celtics.

A Midwesterner's version of "Wait Till Next Year"--a witty, charming account of the history of the Cleveland Indians, and how a common love of baseball forged a remarkable bond between a man and his father. 16 pp of photos.

“The year’s funniest and most insightful baseball book.” — Chicago Tribune A classic look at those years of baseball futility and frustration that make the rare taste of success so much sweeter. Any team can have an off-decade. But three in a row? Only in Cleveland. No sports fans suffered more miserable teams for more seasons than Indians fans of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Terry Pluto takes a fond and often humorous look at “the bad old days” of the Tribe and finds plenty of great stories for fans to commiserate with. Other teams lose players to injuries; the Indians lost them to alcoholism (Sam McDowell), a nervous breakdown (Tony Horton), and the pro golf tour (Ken Harrelson). They even had to trade young Dennis Eckersley (a future Hall-of-Famer) because his wife fell in love with his best friend and teammate. Pluto profiles the men who made the Indians what they were, for better or worse, including Gabe Paul, the underfunded and overmatched general manager; Herb Score, the much-loved master of malaprops in the broadcast booth; Andre Thornton, who weathered personal tragedies and stood as one of the few hitting stalwarts on some terrible teams; and Super Joe Charboneau, who blazed across the American League as a rookie but flamed out the following season. Long-suffering Indians fans finally got an exciting, star-studded, winning team in the second half of the 1990s. But this book still stands as the definitive story of that generation of Tribe fans—and a great piece of sports history writing.