When Gatski graduated, Sam Clagg, a teammate at Marshall, helped get him a tryout with the Cleveland Browns after contacting John Brickels, an assistant coach with West Virginia ties. The Browns were a new team in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and were set to begin play in 1946. Gatski, who was working in the mines after graduating from Auburn, hitchhiked to Bowling Green, Ohio for the team's training camp. He did not consider a football career a certainty, and returning to the coal mines where his father had died in an accident was a distinct possibility. "I didn't know what was going to happen," he said later. "I just went up there to see what would happen."