O'Donnell: A wail of two cities - Trubisky's Cleveland bears much resemblance to Trubisky's Chicago

MENTOR, Ohio - The temptation was too great.

By holiday timing and family ties, a visit to a city where its NFL team:

• Has grossly underperformed in 2019;

• Was directed by a half-cooked head coach who insists on calling his own plays and inspires all the cheeriness of Mitch McConnell hosting "Saturday Night Live";

• Lived and died with a young quarterback who entered the new campaign with enormous expectations and failed to progress.

Take your pick - Chicago or Cleveland?

Since Cleveland was the terminus, the bold and insouciant segued roughly 25 miles Sunday from Public Square to the northeast, to the far lakeside suburb of 48,000 where Mitch Trubisky grew up.

The object wasn't to talk to the high school football coach or the pastor or the wide receiver who caught Trubisky passes during the magical 2012 championship season of the Mentor High Cardinals.

The goal was to touch everyday people, to hang tellingly among the organic of Ohio football.

They were the Mentorites who were certain to express mitigating thoughts about the treatment of their hometown hero by the City of Bored Shoulders to the west.

Along with the notably clement Christmas week weather, the day set up perfectly:

• The Browns were kicking off at 1 p.m., Eastern, vs. Lamar Jackson and the blindingly hot Baltimore Ravens at FirstEnergy Stadium.

• The Bears were hosting Kansas City and incandescent Patrick Mahomes at 8:20 p.m. on NBC'S "Sunday Night Football."

The mystic traveler plotted his route and trip timing so he would be caught in after-game Browns traffic in downtown Cleveland.

The micro goals were to listen to the end of CLE-BALT on the radio and to be able to stare - stoplight by stoplight along Euclid Avenue east - at the downtrodden departing the game.

Coach Freddie Kitchens and the Browns certainly did their part.

As 10-point underdogs, they somehow were leading the Ravens 6-0 with the ball and 2:09 left in the first half.

Then, like Matt Nagy with his dreaded laminated call card, full frontal Kitchens kicked in.

On a third-and-1 at their own 27 and Baltimore with no timeouts, the Browns tried to run some sort of haze-ville halfback pass involving Kareem Hunt.

The Nagy-like "trickeration" netted minus-8 yards and the Browns had to punt.

Enter the MVP-bound Jackson.

In the final 110 seconds, the Ravens QB masterminded not one but two touchdown drives - two plays, 63 yards followed by seven plays, 75 yards.

As one Cleveland writer brown-and-served it: "It was like the point in a nonconference game when the Big Ten team suddenly realizes it's playing a team from the MAC."

Final score: Baltimore 31, Cleveland 15.

So the trodden were certainly down and showing it as the trip east moved on.

Around East 110th Street - very close to where Charles Oakley grew up - Marconi's miracle produced another twilight residual:

Chicago's three primary Bears-blasting clear channels were kicking in on the car radio.

On AM-670, Olin Kreutz and crew were attempting to be restrained in their pregame analysis - it is an Entercom sister to the team's primary rights holder after all.

On AM-720, Ed O'Bradovich and Dan Hampton were reheating their one-ring lather over all the 2019 Bears aren't.

And on AM-780, Ron Gleason, Jim Schwantz, Jay Hilgenberg and all were staying in their lanes as "analysts" on the Bears flagship.

(Rod Serling note: Most bizarre segment on any of the Sunday pregame shows was provided by Hampton. He drifted into a windy lament about Steve Cochran, the talent-challenged poseur who was poleaxed by Nexstar Media as WGN's morning placeholder last week.)

(During the ramble, Hampton sounded as if he might be due for a concussion protocol.)

Finally, Mentor.

First stop - by suggestion of a very nice fellow from the Chamber of Commerce, who grasped the concept - The Happy Moose.

Much Mentor High football memorabilia on the walls, but none prominently featuring Trubisky.

A framed Austin Carr jersey from his time with the Cavs.

The obligatory photo of LeBron James.

Nine people at a curving 20-seat bar, seven wearing some kind of Browns regalia.

The Cowboys-Eagles game playing out on the big screens.

Dejection in the air.

A college-aged girl walked in to pick up some carryout.

She spoke to an orange-clad couple at the bar.

"Were you at the game today?"

"Oh yeah," the middle-aged man replied. " 'Nother disaster. Kitchens oughta run out of town before morning."

The girl nodded, checked her order and left.

Emboldened, the visitor leaned across a stool and said:

Well, at least you've got Trubisky on national TV tonight, right?

The orange-clad man snapped out of his funereal catatonia and said:

"Who?"

Mitch Trubisky is on "Sunday Night Football" tonight, the newcomer feigned cheerily.

"Who they playing? They're terrible, too, this year, right?" the man answered.

"Who the hell's going to stay up for that game?

"Besides, who they playin'?"

OK, Trubisky town pulses No. 1: fading.

Second stop: The Hooley House Sports Pub.

This looked much more like a think tank for Trubisky-ites.

Semicircular bar, nearly full, a drunk 40-something on a corner stool who did some obliging Carl Reiner choreography by pratfalling off of it not once but twice before the Bears-KC began.

But about that game - at 8:10 p.m., nowhere to be found on any of many TV screens in the place.

The insouciant called Danielle the Bartender over.

Are you going to switch to the game pretty soon?, the visitor asked.

"What game?" she asked.

The Bears and Kansas City are on NBC. Mitch Trubisky's playing.

"Oh, Trubinsky (sic). I think he grew up around here. I'll put it on the main screen for you, hon."

"Hon" and only one of the other 20 or so at the bar were the sole patrons who watched.

Danielle switched the sound to closed-caption, so the jukebox played on, all songs that were ripening a minimum of 30 years ago.

As Mahomes and Co. were in the midst of their steady grind, the Beatles' "In My Life" came on.

"Oh man, I got this on vinyl," the corner drunk let all know.

His running mate wasn't going to let that pass.

"This was the first song I learned on guitar," he parried.

"I can still play it, pretty much."

"Great album," a truck driver sort bar left added.

" 'Runger Soul.' That was it ... 'Runger Soul.'

"Where 'n the hell they come up with that name?"

By halftime, the archaeological dig was over.

The VFW and American Legion were scratched off the "to visit" list.

Besides, it turned out both were closed.

Buffalo Wild Wings was also a non-starter.

So the insouciant began his trip southwest back to the hotel, Jeff Joniak and Tom Thayer on the car radio for no good reason at all.

And one Lake Erie vision lingered:

Somewhere in Mentor, there's a cozy kid's bedroom where the mom has probably kept the Cleveland Browns bobbleheads on the dresser and the Sandy Alomar poster on the wall.

And if there is an NFL lord of mercy, in a week or two, Mitch Trubisky will get to spend a few nights in that room.

And the voices and words of the maddened herd in Chicago will be nothing more than faded static - far, far west where the freight trains and big airplanes chug.

And for a night or two, Trubisky will get to breathe his own air once again, however lost and floated his football star may seem right now.

Perchance to dream anew.

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.