Ordinary guys with superstar names get along famously ❘ Average Joe

With little fanfare, three blockbuster names in Cleveland pro sports sat down together earlier this week at Akron Family Restaurant. There was Mark Price. There was Josh Gordon. And there was Joe Thomas. No autograph seekers, no starstruck whisperers – even with a professional photographer on hand to document this unusual summit. In fact, the only head-turning moment was when the photographer somehow managed to explode a bottle of ketchup all over himself.

The topic of this meeting was living with a famous name, and the Mark, Joe and Josh who sat down together were closer to being your everyday Tom, Dick and Harry than to being superstar athletes.

That would be Mark J. Price – not the Cleveland Cavaliers fan favorite of the 1980s and 90s, but the Beacon journalist and history columnist. That would be Josh Gordon – not the unpredictable former Cleveland Browns wide receiver, but the president and partner at Full Spectrum Marketing in Akron. And that would be Joe Thomas, not the first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Fame nominee, but the metro editor and spinner of musings whose columns make Bob Dyer say, “Not that I need any help, but damn, he makes me look good.”

As a longtime co-worker with Price and a friend for several years with Gordon, I arranged this meeting. I’ve routinely commiserated with each separately about our mutual predicaments. The time felt right to fully coalesce into a support group. We three fellows have been through the ups and downs of name recognition thanks to our celebrity “doppelgangers,” as Gordon calls them, and the chatter is kicking up again with my NFL stunt double just days away from learning whether he’ll get the gold jacket and bronze bust for his storied career as a Browns offensive lineman.

The badgering begins for an Akron Joe Thomas

Football's Joe Thomas has come a long way from when I first heard about him.

Scot Fagerstrom, Beacon Journal sports editor, eagerly came up to me one day in the mid-2000s to tell me to keep my eye on an underclassman named Joe Thomas who was playing college ball at Wisconsin. If the stars align, he said, the Browns would have a shot at drafting him someday – and they should take it.

“If that happens,” I replied, “I hope they give him No. 73 (for my birth year), and I’ll buy the jersey.”

The stars aligned perfectly.

Here to score some points is Mark Price (from downtown!)

Mark J. Price was the first to visit my desk the night of the 2007 NFL Draft.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” he said – only half-joking.

As it happens, Price the journalist was a young man working at the Richfield Coliseum in 1986 when his co-workers informed him that Georgia Tech’s Mark Price was coming to the Cleveland Cavaliers thanks to a draft-day trade.

Price the NBA player went on to thrill Cavs fans with his workmanlike performance, his reliable free-throw shooting and his sweet three-point shot.

But for Price the journalist, that also meant rolling his eyes at the unending stream of wisecracks. And fielding prank calls at all hours of the day from jokesters who searched the phone book for celebrity names. (Hey kids, go ask your parents what a phone book is.)

Mark J. Price – he uses the middle initial to distinguish himself from the player – has met the other Price twice.

“You’re the second person I’ve ever met with that name,” Cavalier Price told journalist Price. The first, he said, was television actor Marc Price, who played Skippy on “Family Ties.”

And though the basketball player hung up his high-tops in 1998, the legacy still follows the journalist into places like the doctor’s office.

“You’ll be in the waiting room, and they’ll call out your name, and everybody looks up to see if you’re him,” Price said.

Marketing Josh Gordon and editing Joe Thomas know the feeling; I can personally attest that you can’t get away from the curiosity and joking even during a colonoscopy. 

I should note that some fellow Thomases preceded me in the famous name quandary; my brother Danny was often ribbed about the eons-ago TV actor. My poor brother Dave had to move to Ireland to try to get away from all the heckling about the Wendy’s founder. My dad, Ray, is a good apple, but he’s not the local car dealer whose catchy commercial jingle aired for years on WAKR.

And we all got a good apple in football’s Joe Thomas.

Josh Gordon still carries baggage from a Browns flash in the pan

“I would love to have your problem,” groans Gordon as we chat about the extra attention our names summon.

My wife met Gordon when she was working the education beat at the Beacon, and she insisted that we meet each other simply because of our fun Browns connection. (Well, decidedly more fun for one of us, as the two players' career paths would reveal.)

“It was all great for about a year,” a sighing Gordon said of sharing names with the once-promising receiver. But the athlete’s star plummeted as struggles arose both off and on the field.

Before Josh Gordon Fever cooled in Browns town, the marketing guy who had that name first endured an amusing mix-up. He and his wife learned she was expecting, so they had to cancel reservations at a fancy sushi restaurant in Cleveland. Gordon received a strange follow-up phone call from the manager, earnestly asking him to reconsider, and a lightbulb went off.

“I don’t think I am who you think I am,” Gordon politely told the persistent manager.

And in another instance, Gordon discovered that he had somehow amassed a wealth of reward points from a hotel chain that also happened to handle arrangements for the Browns. When he asked a representative if that reward amount was correct, they found that he was accidentally intercepting credits intended for a VIP client. One push of a button and he was busted back down to Average Josh. But he got to keep the points, perhaps the best thing Josh Gordon ever did for Josh Gordon.

In my own experiences, there was a day when I happened to be grabbing brunch at a Fairlawn restaurant while wearing an orange team logo fleece and a Browns ballcap.

I went to the cashier to pay the bill and presented my credit card to her. She looked at it closely for a second, then said “I’ll be right back” and excitedly disappeared.

When she returned, a manager followed her and looked me up and down. Then he looked over at her and shook his head “no.” Her smile drooped.

“Everything OK with my card?” I asked.

“Yes, no problem at all,” she said, still visibly crestfallen.

Fame, what's your name?

Price and I lucked out with our famous names, even if we occasionally disappoint people who were hoping to encounter the real deal. As for Gordon, for as long as the player's name is remembered, at least he's got an easy ice breaker whenever he's introduced. But there's always a moment when the name is heard, eyes light up, and we watch our new acquaintances ponder whether or not to pounce on the chance to make a quip. Usually, they take the bait.

All three of us have endured lots and lots of those conversations. Does it get old? Sure. We're not the first to carry the famous name burden, and we won't be the last. It just gets to a point where you have to laugh and shrug it off. I always think of the endless Huck Finn groaners that Tom Sawyer, the former U.S. congressman and one-time Akron mayor, has had to put up with — and his good nature in quickly moving the conversation along to other topics. I got a better deal than he did out of this famous name game.

And the hype building for my guy ahead of the Canton enshrinement announcement next week is well deserved, Gordon said.

Citing a book title from Price’s and my former Beacon Journal colleague David Giffels, Gordon noted that football's Joe Thomas is the embodiment of what Giffels calls the Rust Belt work ethic of “The Hard Way on Purpose.” He's a rare bright spot for a franchise that has yet to reach a Super Bowl. He could have sought a ring elsewhere, but he refused to give up on Cleveland. He stayed and played and gave his all every week. In doing so, he built an unassailable case for election to the Hall of Fame.

Sure, I could be a Joe with a less-common last name (say, Montana or Burrow or Namath) and maybe not have to worry about all the chiding, but sharing a name with an all-around good guy who won the hearts of Northeast Ohio has been pretty good to me.

Thanks for bringing honor to our name, Joe Thomas. I think I’ll keep it.

Beacon Journal Metro Editor Joe Thomas feels obligated to disclose that while he was laughing at photographer Jeff Lange's exploding ketchup mishap, he knocked half a bowl of coleslaw into his own lap. Email him at jthomas@thebeaconjournal.com

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Average Joe: Ordinary guys chat about their Cleveland-famous names