Although he was the controversial sports anchor at WEWS (Channel 5) for two decades, everyone identified Gib Shanley with the Browns. The sound of his voice calling a game is indelibly imprinted on our memories.
Many felt that he was the best NFL play-by-play man of his era, which lasted from 1961 to 1984.
Oddly, in obituaries following his death Sunday at the age of 76, his one wacky stunt on television got the most attention — setting fire to the Iranian flag during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Today that would get scant attention, but in 1979 it was daring.
“We got 1,000 calls that night and all of them supported Gib except one. I know, I had to keep track of the calls,” said Fox 8 show director Doug Yandala, who was a young director at Channel 5 and was filling in on the switchboard that night.
Yandala recalls that
Channel 5 general manager Ed Cervenik also supported Shanley, but with reservations. According to Yandala, Cervenik told Shanley: “It was great show biz, but don’t do it again.”
Show biz! You should have heard him early in his career when he was doing high school football on the radio in his hometown of Shadyside.
“I did the games all by myself,” Shanley recalled once, “including the halftime fireworks show. ‘There’s a red one. There’s a green one.’”
Shanley actually had many talents. Even at the age of 40 he was a fine shortstop on the WHK softball team.
He was also a brilliant gin rummy player on flights to away games, often fleecing his spotter, Harry Leitch, and cleaning out this humble reporter once on a five-hour flight to Los Angeles.
Shanley had a penchant for gambling. He loved the race track and even owned a horse or two. In his later years he unsuccessfully tried to launch a gambling channel on cable television. Potential investors thought it was a bad bet. Actually, Gib might have been ahead of his time. Cable television is now overpopulated with niche channels.
During periods in his life when he was between marriages, Gib hung around with cronies in the Theatrical Restaurant on Short Vincent Street downtown between the 6 and 11 o’clock news shows. He sashayed around the bar with a drink in his hand and the uninitiated assumed Gib was drinking between shows. Not a chance. Gib usually drank ginger ale.
Much of his success on television can be attributed to his acerbic personality and advice from Hal Lebovitz, the legendary sports columnist. Lebovitz encouraged Shanley to take a position, to pepper his three-minute sports reports with commentaries. That set him apart.
In 1985 he made an ill-advised career change. His old friend Ernie Anderson persuaded him to move to Los Angeles, where the streets were paved with gold. Anderson was making a million dollars a year as the voice of ABC, having hit the jackpot as the commercial voice of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
“With your voice,” Anderson told Shanley, “you’ll get rich out here.”
Furthermore, the Los Angeles Rams were rumored to be in the market for a play-by-play man. The Rams’ radio voice, Bob Starr, was expected to give up the job and move to St. Louis to call the St. Louis Cardinals’ games. Shanley would have been a natural for the Rams.
Although that scenario never materialized, Shanley did fill in for half a season in 1985 because Starr suffered a heart attack. Starr, however, bounced back and returned to the broadcast booth by midseason. Shanley never got the job.
After three years on the Coast, Gib returned to Cleveland and in 1988 became the first sports anchor on WUAB’s 10 o’clock news, a position he held until the mid-’90s when the station determined he was too old.
Last summer, Tony Rizzo of Fox 8 ran into Gib at a Browns summer practice in Berea. Asked what brought him out on a hot August day, Gib replied: “I’m miserable. I’m bored as hell, driving my wife crazy at home. … That’s why I’m out here watching this (bleep).”
That was Gib, wonderfully acerbic.
He underwent back surgery last winter and it did not go well. He contracted a blood infection. He went into University Hospital on New Year’s Eve and never came out.
Add him to the list of the most interesting characters we’ve ever met. Put him right at the top.
Dan Coughlin is a columnist for The Chronicle-Telegram and a sportscaster for Channel 8. 

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