On This Date: Jim Brown Carries 37 Times in the Rain at Soldier Field, a Browns Record (Oct. 4, 1959)

On Oct. 4, 1959, in a steady rain at Soldier Field, the Cleveland Browns beat the Chicago Cardinals, 34-7. Jim Brown carried the ball 37 times for 147 yards and scored Cleveland's first 2 touchdowns, both on short plunges. The 37 carries were a Browns record. They stayed his career high for the rest of his life.

Paul Brown's game plan that day, in the words of the AP, was to curtail the passing game and ride his fullback. Which is a nice way of saying he handed Jim Brown the ball until the Cardinals gave up.

Paul Brown's own version, in the Cleveland Press the next morning: "Why shoot a popgun when we have a cannon?" The cannon called it "all in a day's work." "I actually felt better in the last half than in the first," Brown said. "Got my second wind, I guess." He didn't love the conditions. "I don't like playing on muddy fields," he said. "It definitely has to be a short yardage game. There's little chance for cutting and breakaways."

37 carries

Cleveland scored 7 in the first quarter, 14 in the second, 7 in the third and 6 in the fourth. After Brown's 2 short touchdowns, Milt Plum, who threw only 14 passes in the rain and completed 11 of them for 139 yards, hit Ray Renfro for a 5-yard score and Bill Howton for another from about 30 yards out, and Junior Wren ran a Cardinals fumble back 44 yards. Lou Groza made 4 of 5 extra points, which is where the 34 comes from. Chicago's only score was a 1-yard sneak by quarterback King Hill, who led the league in fumbles that year. Attendance was 19,935.

The AP noted that Brown had come "within two carries of the league record," which belonged to Harry Newman of the Giants, 39 carries in a 1934 game. Newman was the rookie tailback who'd thrown the only completion in the Giants' no-first-down win over the Packers 26 years earlier; the NFL was a small world. Brown's 37 broke his own club mark of 34, set against these same Cardinals the year before. It stood in Cleveland for 45 years, until Lee Suggs carried 38 times in 2004 and Jerome Harrison 39 in 2009, which is still the team record. The league record is Jamie Morris's 45, for Washington in 1988.

The season

Brown ran for 1,329 yards and 14 touchdowns on 290 carries in 1959, a 4.6 average, and won his third straight rushing title in his third year in the league. The Browns went 7-5 and tied for second in the East behind the 10-2 Giants.

The Cardinals went 2-10, tied for the worst record in the 12-team league. It was their last autumn in Chicago. They'd traded Ollie Matson to the Rams for 9 players that February, split their "home" schedule between Soldier Field and a minor-league park in Minnesota, and moved to St. Louis in March.

Meanwhile, that same afternoon

Two thousand miles west, 92,394 people packed the Los Angeles Coliseum for Game 3 of the World Series, the first World Series game ever played on the West Coast and, at the time, the largest crowd in baseball history. The Dodgers beat the White Sox, 3-1, with Don Drysdale winning and Larry Sherry saving it. Bill Veeck had guessed 75,000 would show up.

Both Chicago teams lost that day, one in the rain in front of 19,935 and one in the sun in front of 92,394. The Plain Dealer put them on the same page the next morning: "Vet Furillo Saves Dodgers Again" on top, "Underdog Browns Riddle Cardinals, 34-7" underneath.

The rest of Jim Brown

He led the NFL in rushing 8 times in 9 seasons, every year but 1962. He never missed a game, 118 in a row. He finished with 12,312 yards and 106 rushing touchdowns, and went into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 1971. On July 14, 1966, at a press conference in London, where he was filming The Dirty Dozen, he retired at 30, at the top, because he had better things to do. Nobody has ever left the sport that well.

Who's the best running back you ever saw? Tell us in the comments.