CLEVELAND — It sits behind the bar quietly, standing sentry, taunting the regulars, teasing the barflies and the beer guzzlers and the lively lunchtime crowd. It has been the most popular volunteer employee at the Barley House for a couple of weeks now. Tourists ask to take pictures with it. Some simply stare. So close. So far. Welcome to Cleveland.
“I’m from a family of Browns fans,” says Taylor Horner, who is working behind the bar for the Wednesday afternoon shift, but will be back again for a prime-time shift Thursday night, when the Browns take on the Jets at FirstEnergy Stadium just up West Third Street from here. “So I know what football days and nights are like around here. But this has been … different.”
Horner is standing next to a genuine Victory Fridge which, if you think about it, is one of the great beer-marketing schemes ever — and is almost enough to make you forget that Bud Light also was responsible for those imbecilic “Dilly, Dilly!” ads that littered all of last football season.
There are eight such refrigerators in bars across the Cleveland metro area (and a few strategically located inside the stadium itself), and they are each stocked with 200 libations awaiting liberation. That won’t come until the Browns win a game, something they haven’t done since Christmas Eve 2016, something they’ve done just that one time across their past 37 games, twice in their past 45.
The Browns are so good at losing they haven’t even been given as much credit as they deserve for one of the most amazing records in sports: from 2008 through 2017, the Browns’ record was 38-122. The 1962 Mets, considered by universal acclimation to be the worst professional sports team ever assembled, went 40-120.
“We’re tired of that,” Taylor Horner says.
So when the Browns win again — and they are 3-point favorites Thursday night over the Jets — the moment the game clock hits 0:00, a WiFi signal will automatically unlock the chains that are theatrically wrapped around the Fridges, each customer will be allotted one frosty brew, and the world will go back to spinning properly on its axis.
“My fingers and toes are crossed,” says Stephanie Serrage, who has worked at Barley House for 10 years and has been its manager for the past seven. “I’m from Cleveland. I root for all of Cleveland’s teams. If you’re born and raised with this, you know how much it’s going to mean to people when it happens. And not just because of the free beer.”
The stunt already has taken on something of a life of its own because the Browns, as you know, hardly ever lose in ordinary fashion. The first week of the season, there were 400 people packed cheek to jowl inside the Barley House’s main room and out on its patios, all of them waiting on a 43-yard field goal from Zane Gonzalez at the end of overtime that not only would have unlocked the treasure trove but also would have delivered victory against the detested Steelers …
“Silence,” Serrage says, laughing one of those painful laughs sports fans understand too well. “I’ve never seen anything like it. People are going crazy, there’s TV cameras everywhere waiting for the Fridge to unlock, we’re trying to explain to people the procedure of how we’ll distribute the beer. And then some wondered if a tie was good enough. It’s not.”
She laughs again.
“And then last week, that poor kicker …”
Gonzalez missed two extra points and two field goals as the Browns lost to the Saints and the beers stayed put and the Victory Fridge, standing sentry, virtually winked at everyone. Gonzalez is no longer in Cleveland but the Fridges are, scattered throughout the city, with the fervent hope they won’t need to be restocked.
“They could probably stay fresh for two months,” Serrage says. “But we are really, truly, honestly hoping to not have to find out.”