The winner: Al Lerner won in the banking arena won back the browns, and won the hearts of everyone who knew him.(Posthumous inductee: Al Lerner)(Obituary)

If football is playing in heaven, then Al Lerner is watching the Browns from a celestial loge. Sitting in a comfy chair, he's leaning back, puffing on a Cuban Montecristo No. 2, thinking about game strategy. "Carmen, Butch, boys," he's whispering, "let's do it right this season. Let's win."

Alfred Lerner liked winning. And he won a lot. A man born with a heart of gold who developed a Midas touch, Lerner recognized the silver lining where others saw only clouds. He took risks when others called him foolish. He made millions doing exactly what he wanted to do. And he freely gave of his time, money and compassion wherever it was needed.

"Whatever he chose to do," says Carmen Policy, Cleveland Browns president and CEO, "he did it full bore, and he always did it right. He was so loyal and generous to anyone who came into contact with him. Cleveland was fortunate to have him as a team owner. The players loved him. And everyone who worked with him was inspired by how tireless and passionate he was about bringing a football team back to Cleveland."

In his quest to reestablish the Browns, Lerner attended virtually every event, went to every organizational dinner and helped with the most mundane clerical task or the difficult job of securing sponsorships. He worked 20-hour days to do it. And after he bought the team in 1998 for $530 million, he went to every game--home and away. He attended practices and talked shop with players and coaches.

Acquiring the Browns was the last big deal he did in a string of exceptionally successful business ventures, and according to his associates, it energized the man who built higher and higher pedestals for himself, only to keep climbing off them.

"Al Lerner was put on this planet to work," says Lerner's Columbia University buddy and lawyer James Berick. "Once he started, there was no stopping him. He lived his life as though it were an elegant chess match. He was brilliant, a genius in the true sense of the word. He could see the ripples long before the stone hit the pond. He lived to work, and it was a treat to work with him. And he loved sports, especially football. Bringing the Browns to Cleveland brought a new spark to his work. He loved the team and everything about putting it together."

But before the Browns, before banking and real estate, before he was a Marine, and even before he met Norma, the 15-year-old girl who became his wife of 47 …