Jim Donovan, beloved Cleveland announcer and Voice of the Browns, dies

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Famed Cleveland Browns play-by-play radio announcer Jim Donovan, who remained wonderfully emotional about the games he called without losing his professionalism, died Saturday after a battle with cancer.

He was 68.

Donovan was a passionate figure in the press and an endearing voice to the fans, with whom he shared the highlights and all too often dominating lean moments over the years.

He was a constant guide to the legions of Brown’s faithful; he taught them, entertained them and sometimes metaphorically held their hands despite many losses and too few postseason appearances.

A litany of coaches came and went, but Donovan remained a fixture behind the microphone, calling games with former analyst and ex-Browns lineman Doug Dieken. The two fell into a conversational rhythm.

“Jimmy lived to play the games. That was Jimmy’s life,” Dieken said. “He was a perfectionist. He then listened to the games and criticized himself. I’ve never been able to do that. I didn’t want to hear myself. During the games he stood up and jumped up and down as if he had a snake in his pants. I looked at him and laughed…I forgot I was on the air with him. …Then he said, ‘Doug, what about that play?’

Donovan has rejoiced and commiserated with fans since the team returned from hiatus in 1999. He was the only play-by-play radio voice until he resigned before this season.

He retired from WKYC in June after nearly 40 years as a sports and news anchor. Two months later he announced that his cancer had returned. Then in August, he made the heartbreaking decision to step away from the Browns gig.

In a letter to fans this year, Donovan spoke about his pledge to continue the fight against cancer, writing, “Not a day has gone by where I haven’t paused and been so proud to be ‘The Voice of the Browns’ .”

He ended his note with the words: ‘Here We Go Brownies… Here We Go! It was an honor.”

“There will never be another Jim Donovan,” said Nick Camino, who was named Donovan’s successor as sports director at WKYC this year. “His passion for the Cleveland Browns and all of our sports teams was unparalleled. Having the opportunity to work with Jimmy over the past five and a half years is something I will never forget and always cherish.

“Cleveland is blessed with some great broadcasters, and Jim is right up there with the top ones.”

In radio and television, the difference between grand and inaudible announcements comes down to the amount of preparation before the microphone is turned on. And Donovan was prepared.

He started his preparation on Wednesdays, often hours after he got home from the 11 p.m. news. On Monday he listened to the broadcast of the game three times, each time looking for different problems, ways to improve.

“I always play the game as if I’m doing it for two people driving down the highway in the car,” he said in a 2006 Plain Dealer story. “You want to bring the game to them and this is how you do it.”

He was also solid in several roles. He spent 10 hours on air anchoring coverage of the Cavs’ 2016 victory parade. When an anchor fell ill, Donovan once seamlessly covered the election.

Donovan was born in Boston and raised in a working-class Irish Catholic family in Milton, Massachusetts. As a youngster, he dreamed of calling Boston Bruins games.

Before the days of streaming, when radio signals could bring in games on clear nights from across the country, Donovan could listen to the men doing the work he wanted to do. Late-night games out of town filtered into his transistor radio; he even remembered hearing Joe Tait call Cavs games.

He received a degree in journalism from Boston University. His start in the business took place at a station in St. Cloud, Minnesota, 1,500 miles from his home.

Donovan then turned back east to Burlington, Vermont, where he called St. Michael’s College basketball and Class AA baseball games for the precursor to the Akron RubberDucks.

His next stop would be Cleveland, which was then seen as a starting point for people in the industry. NBC’s WKYC had the rights to a few Browns games, and Donovan found himself the third man supporting Gib Shanley and Reggie Rucker. That was 1985 and Donovan’s career was about to take off.

He was versatile and was never pigeonholed in his work. He mentioned both types of football: the American version with NBC coverage and World Cup football.

In 1986, James Ewinger of The Plain Dealer reported that Donovan was named 6 p.m. sports anchor at WKYC. Donovan, he wrote, “has given the station its most thorough and unembroidered sports coverage since he was hired a year ago.”

In 1999, Donovan was named the voice of the Browns. In those 25 years, the Browns had 21 losing seasons.

He also achieved accolades by winning Emmys, Cleveland Press Club All-Ohio Best Sportscaster and Cleveland Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement honors. He is in several Halls of Fame for his broadcasts.

His football broadcasts received positive reviews from media critics and fans. In 2005, a Plain Dealer reader survey asked which local sports anchor had the most credibility. Donovan came out on top.

He was as iconic a voice in the Cleveland sports world as anyone. As steadfast and prepared as Tom Hamilton calling Guardians games and a familiar figure like Tait on the Cavaliers sideline, Donovan was a pro in the booth. He eschewed gimmicks and salacious behavior, instead relying on homework before stepping into the booth.

His excitement grew every time Nick Chubb burst through the line for a first down, or when one of countless quarterbacks rolled out and completed a first-down pass. He knew football and he knew broadcasting, but — as cleveland.com columnist Terry Pluto wrote in September — “He bleeds orange and brown.”

Perhaps Donovan’s most famous call came on December 29, 2002, when the Browns hosted the Atlanta Falcons in the final week of the regular season. To reach the playoffs, the Browns had to win.

Late in the game, with a one-point lead, William Green took a handoff from Kelly Holcomb and made his way through a gap, speeding down the field, yard line after yard line. As he ran, Donovan’s voice sounded excited.

‘He’s ready, first down! Forty, forty-five, fifty, forty-five, forty… Run William Run!’

The Browns won 24-16.

Unfortunately, his parallel life with spending much of his time calling Browns games was accompanied by cancer.

After feeling tired and getting tested in 2000, Donovan discovered he had CLL: chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He was familiar with it; his father and uncle were diagnosed.

After battling cancer for two years, he began undergoing week-long chemotherapy sessions for six months. It destroyed the cancer – for a while. It came back in 2005. He initially fought back when he was told he needed a bone marrow transplant, but the turning point came in 2009, before a Browns-Chiefs game in Kansas City.

Despite temperatures reaching nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, despite feeling terrible, despite Andre Knott being willing to intervene if necessary, Donovan persevered. He did the game.

When he got home, he knew it was time for a transplant. A donor was found and he underwent the transplant on June 7, 2011. Due to medical failure, Donovan found a cancerous mole in his ear. This is dangerous for someone with an already weakened immune system. And he persevered.

Those who worked with him, like Dieken and Knott, said Donovan rarely complained. On Saturday, Knott remembered Donovan as a kind mentor.

“I played the Browns with him for seven years and the ‘Browns Red Zone’ for 10 years,” Knott said. “I was in my 20s when I got the job with the Browns, rough around the edges. Jimmy taught me how to prepare. He taught me to be humble, to ask others for help in pronouncing names and obtaining information. He never made a big deal out of me, and he easily could have. That’s another big part of Jimmy…how he treated others so well.”

On September 22, the team honored Donovan and former kicker Phil Dawson as the Browns Legends. Donovan and pioneering Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown are the only non-players honored as Cleveland Browns Legends.

In a Faith & You column in September, Pluto succinctly summarized his personal feelings about Donovan.

“The man,” he wrote, “is a combination of courage and dignity.”

Fans heard a nice announcer. Everyone who was really close to Donovan saw him as tough.

“Jimmy is one of the best, one of the toughest people I’ve ever been around,” Dieken said.

That echoes what Hamilton, Donovan’s on-air counterpart for the Cleveland Guardians, said Saturday: “I don’t know how anyone could have been more courageous and more persistent.”

“Obviously we knew the fight Jim was in for,” Hamilton said. “What strikes you about Jim is what a fighter he was and he never really let you know how tough the fight was. It wasn’t about him; he didn’t want to make it about him. He fought that battle quite privately. I have so much admiration for him, not only as an announcer and what a professional he was and what a great play-by-play guy he was for the Browns, but also the kind of person he was.

Donovan is survived by his wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Meghan.

“I know how dedicated he was to Cheryl and Meghan; they were everything to him. As important as the Browns were, they never came close to what Cheryl and Meghan were to him,” Hamilton said.

Terry Pluto of Cleveland.com contributed to this story.

Related

In 2022, Terry Pluto wrote a three-part series about Donovan:

Jim Donovan Part 1: The Child with a Dream and a Tape Recorder

Jim Donovan Part 2: He gets the job with the Browns and the fans love him

Jim Donovan Part 3: The enormous heart of the Browns broadcaster and the long battle with cancer