CLEVELAND, Ohio - Well-known longtime Cleveland Browns play-by-play radio announcer Jim Donovan, who remained wonderfully emotional about the games he was calling while never losing his professionalism, died Saturday after a battle with cancer.
He was 68.
Donovan was a passionate figure in the press box and an endearing voice to 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 Browns faithful - educating, entertaining them, and at times metaphorically holding their hands through a lot of 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 do the games. That was Jimmy's life," Dieken said. "He was a perfectionist. He would listen to the games afterwards, critiquing himself. I never could do that. I didn't want to hear myself. During the games, he would be standing up, jumping up and down like he had a snake in his pants. I'd be watching him and laughing ... I'd forget I was on the air with him. ... Then he'd say, 'Doug, what about that play?'
Donovan had been rejoicing and commiserating with fans since the team returned from a hiatus in 1999. He was the sole play-by-play radio voice until he stepped down before this season.
He retired from WKYC in June after almost 40 years as sports and news anchor. Two months later, he announced his cancer had returned. Then, in August, he made the heart-wrenching decision to step away from the Browns gig.
In a note to fans this year, Donovan talked about vowing to continue the fight against cancer and wrote, "Not a day has gone by when I haven't paused and been so proud to be 'The Voice of the Browns'."
He ended his note saying, "Here We Go Brownies ... Here We Go! It's been an honor."
"There will never be another Jim Donovan," said Nick Camino, who this year was named Donovan's successor as sports director at WKYC. "His passion for the Cleveland Browns and all of our sports teams was unmatched. Getting an opportunity to work with Jimmy the last five and a half years is something I will never forget and will always cherish.
"Cleveland has been blessed to have some great broadcasters, and Jim belongs at the very top."
In radio and television, the difference between great and unlistenable announcing can be traced to the amount of preparation before the microphone is turned on. And Donovan came prepared.
He started his preparation on Wednesday, often putting in hours after getting home from the 11 p.m. newscast. On Mondays, he would listen to the game's broadcast three times, each looking for different issues, ways to improve.
"I always do the game like I'm doing it for two people driving in the car down the highway," he said in a 2006 Plain Dealer story. "You want to bring the game to them and that's how you do it."
He also was solid in a variety of roles. He spent 10 hours on the air anchoring the Cavs victory parade coverage in 2016. Once, after an anchor became ill, Donovan wound up doing election coverage - seamlessly.
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 pull in games on clear nights from all over the country, Donovan could listen to the men doing the job he aspired to do. Late-night out-of-town games filtered in to his transistor radio; he even recalled hearing Joe Tait call Cavs games.
He earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University. His start in the business came at a station in St. Cloud, Minnesota, 1,500 miles from his home.
Donovan then swung back east, going to Burlington, Vermont, where he called St. Michael's College basketball and Class AA baseball games for the precursor of the Akron RubberDucks.
His next stop would be Cleveland, then seen as a launching-point market for folks in the industry. NBC's WKYC had the rights to a couple of Browns games, and Donovan found himself as the No. 3 man supporting Gib Shanley and Reggie Rucker. That was 1985, and Donovan's career was about to take off.
He was versatile, never pigeon-holed in his work. He called both kinds of football - the American version with NBC's coverage and World Cup soccer.
In 1986, The Plain Dealer's James Ewinger reported 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 voice of the Browns. In those 25 years, the Browns had 21 losing seasons.
He racked up accolades, too, winning Emmys, Cleveland Press Club All-Ohio Best Sportscaster and Cleveland Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement honors. He's in multiple Halls of Fame for his broadcasting.
His football broadcasting drew positive reviews from media critics and fans. In 2005, a Plain Dealer reader poll asked which local sports anchor had the most credibility. Donovan came out on top.
His was as iconic a voice in the Cleveland sports world as anyone. As steady and prepared as Tom Hamilton calling Guardians games and a known figure as Tait on the Cavaliers sidelines, Donovan was a pro in the booth. He eschewed gimmicks and salacious behavior, instead relying on homework before he stepped into the booth.
His excitement grew every time Nick Chubb pounded through the line for a first down, or when one of the myriad of 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 does bleed orange and brown."
Donovan's most famous call, arguably, came on Dec. 29, 2002, as the Browns hosted the Atlanta Falcons in the final week of the regular season. To reach the playoffs, the Browns needed to win.
Late in the game with a one-point lead, William Green took a handoff from Kelly Holcomb and juked his way through a hole, speeding down field, yard line after yard line. As he ran, Donovan's voice rose excitedly.
"He's through, first down! Forty, Forty-five, Fifty, Forty-Five, Forty ... Run William Run!"
The Browns won, 24-16.
Unfortunately, his parallel life to much of his time calling Browns games involved cancer.
After feeling tired in 2000 and being tested, Donovan learned he had CLL - chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He was familiar with it; his father and uncle were diagnosed with it.
After having cancer for two years he began enduring weeklong chemotherapy sessions for six months. It quashed the cancer - for a while. In 2005, it came back. He initially fought back when told he needed a bone-marrow transplant, but the tipping point came in 2009 before a Browns-Chiefs game in Kansas City.
Despite a temperature nudging near 103 degrees, despite feeling horrible, despite Andre Knott ready to step in if need be, Donovan pushed on. He did the game.
When he got home, he knew it was time for a transplant. A donor was found, and he had the transplant on June 7, 2011. Then if Donovan weren't dealing with enough medically, a cancerous mole was found on his ear. For someone with an already weakened immune system, that's dangerous. And he pushed on.
Those who worked with him like Dieken and Knott said how Donovan rarely complained. Saturday, Knott remembered Donovan as a kind mentor.
"I did the Browns with him for seven years, the "Browns Red Zone" for 10," Knott said. "I was in my 20s when I got the Browns job, rough around the edges. Jimmy taught me how to prepare. He taught me how to be humble, ask others for help in terms of how to pronounce names and get information. He never big-timed me, and he easily could have done that. That's another great part of Jimmy ... how he treated others so well."
On Sept. 22, the team honored Donovan and former kicker Phil Dawson into the Browns Legends. Donovan and pioneering Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown are the only non-players to be honored as Cleveland Browns Legends.
In a Faith & You column in September, Pluto succinctly summed his personal feelings about Donovan.
"The man," he wrote, "is a combination of courage and dignity."
Fans heard a fun announcer. Anyone truly 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 mirrors what Hamilton, Donovan's counterpart on the air for the Cleveland Guardians, said Saturday: "I don't know how anyone could have been more courageous and tenacious."
"Obviously, we knew the fight Jim was in for," Hamilton said. "The thing about Jim that jumps out at you is what a fighter he was and he never really let you know how tough the battle was. It wasn't about him; he didn't want to make it about him. He fought that battle pretty privately. I have so much admiration for him not only as a broadcaster and what a pro he was and what a great play-by-play guy he was for the Browns but the kind of person he was."
Donovan leaves behind 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 got close to what Cheryl and Meghan were to him," Hamilton said.
Cleveland.com's Terry Pluto contributed to this story.
In 2022, Terry Pluto wrote a three-part series on Donovan:
Jim Donovan Part 1: The kid with a dream and a cassette tape recorder
Jim Donovan Part 2: He gets the Browns job, and the fans love him
Jim Donovan Part 3: The Browns broadcaster's huge heart and long battle with cancer
I cover restaurants, beer, wine and sports-related topics on our life and culture team. For my recent stories, here's a cleveland.com directory. WTAM-1100's Bill Wills and I talk food and drink around 8:20 a.m. Thursdays. Twitter and IG: @mbona30. My latest book, co-authored with Dan Murphy: "Joe Thomas: Not Your Average Joe" by Gray & Co.
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