Browns rookies lose kickball game, bond with Cleveland kids

Browns rookies left the baseball diamond at Frederick Douglass Recreation Center with a 1-0 kickball loss, but the afternoon was built for connection, not the scoreboard. More than 100 local children met the 2026 rookie class outside the Cleveland rec center on Tuesday, June 16, then spread across the playground, football field, baseball diamond and basketball courts for an afternoon that mixed competition with a lot of hands-on interaction.

The rookies chose simple, participatory games that kept them moving with the kids instead of standing off to the side. Spencer Fano, the Browns’ first-round offensive lineman, said the group had lost the kickball game 1-0 and wanted a rematch. Wide receiver KC Concepcion said giving back to Cleveland kids meant everything to him because he wanted young fans in the city to know they could look up to him. The rookies also spent time on the football field and basketball courts, giving the visit a looser feel than a formal appearance and letting the kids meet the players where they were comfortable.

For Ronnie Chappelle, the event was the kind of surprise that sticks. He said he was shocked when the Browns players showed up and said he caught two balls during the game, a small stat line that mattered more to the children than anything on the final kickball card. After the games ended, the rookies helped hand out ice cream from a Cleveland Police Athletic League truck, turning the afternoon into something closer to a block party than a polished public relations stop.

The setting carried its own weight. Frederick Douglass Recreation Center opened in 2021 as part of the city’s neighborhood resource and recreation network, and Cleveland lists the site at 15401 Miles Ave. The city says those centers serve as year-round gathering spaces with sports, enrichment, afterschool programming, mentoring and summer camps, which made the Browns’ stop feel tailored to the place rather than dropped in for a photo.

Cleveland PAL added another layer to the day. The organization traces its roots to the late 1930s, was officially incorporated in 1956 and joined national PAL chapters in 1966, making the ice cream stop part of a much longer youth-sports tradition in Greater Cleveland. The rookies’ rec center visit also came during a week when the Browns launched youth football camps and nearly 250 athletes in grades 2-8 took part in three days of drills and games, reinforcing that the team’s outreach around Northeast Ohio was designed to be active, not ceremonial.