Cleveland's all about winning now
Posted: Sunday, June 03, 2007 5:38 PM
Hard to believe it, but the hottest sports city in the United States right now is Cleveland. The Cavaliers are in the NBA Finals and are in possession of LeBron James, the hottest property in the NBA. The Cleveland Indians are neck-and-neck with Detroit on top of the major leagues in run-scoring, and have a 2.5-game lead over the Tigers in the AL Central.
I assume it will end badly, though. This isn’t an opinion based on any fact but an emotional reaction.
Cleveland always loses. It’s like Boston, except the disease isn’t limited to the baseball team. In the past 20 years, every team in Cleveland – Indians, Browns and Cavaliers – has lost a title or a shot at a title in horrific fashion.
The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. The blown save. I won’t go into detail. Clevelanders are all too familiar with the painful details. The rest of you can go here to read all about it.
There’s one angry Clevelander (Okay, there are thousands of the breed, but I’m talking about one in particular) who is already hunkered behind the barricades, ready to repel insolent East Coast columnists who dare to suggest the town is cursed. “Is Cleveland cursed? ‘Woe is us,’ proclaims the national media meatheads from their predictable pedestals. ‘Cleveland sports are cursed,’” writes the entertaining Chris McVetta.
Locals will tell you it’s all due to the “Curse of Colavito,” named for the Indians outfielder and hero who was traded to the Tigers in 1960 for Harvey Kuehn and a handful of beans. But that’s too easy. Cleveland last won a baseball title in 1948. The Browns, who were the dominant team in the NFL through the 1950s, last won the NFL championship in 1964, two years before the first Super Bowl. Since then, nothing, zilch, nada.
I grew up in the wilderness outside of Painesville, Ohio (I lived on Paine Road on the rim of Paine Hollow through which flowed Paine Creek. And my mother – rest her soul – wondered how I could leave such a happy place.), which is about 30 miles east of Cleveland. The Indians were my first sports love, followed closely by the Browns. I left town before the Cavaliers were created, but they’re still the home basketball team.
I’m no kid, but I have not seen a major Cleveland team win anything since 1964. I’ve never seen the Browns even get to the Super Bowl. (They had a team, the Crunch, in something called the National Premier Soccer League – a league of such renown I was unaware of its existence until today - that won a three championships, but if I never heard of them, did it really happen? Fittingly, the team no longer exists, but its Web page does.)
You’d have to have grown up in Cleveland to truly understand it. Kansas City has won a World Series, Tampa Bay has won the Stanley Cup, Pittsburgh has won titles in baseball, football (five of them) and hockey (twice). Baltimore has titles, Miami has them. Oakland and Cincinnati have them. Even Minneapolis has two World Series banners.
The closest most of us natives got to a title was the movie “Major League,” which came out before the Indians became almost the best team in baseball during the 1990s. Most people think of that as a funny baseball movie. I watched Cleveland get into the playoffs – even if it was filmed in Milwaukee County Stadium – and got all weepy. I still do.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
That’s why I don’t have a lot of patience with my Yankee-fan friends when they bewail the fact that their team hasn’t won the World Series since 2000. My team hasn’t won one since 1948, for pete’s sake. Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.
The Cavaliers – formerly known as the Cadavers – aren’t favored in the NBA Finals. But they beat the Spurs twice during the regular season, and LeBron could pick this year to make us start forgetting about Michael Jordan. I’ll hope the Cavaliers win, but I won’t expect it. History has taught me never to get my hopes up too high.
Still, for the next two weeks, it will be nice to see Cleveland in the spotlight. It doesn’t get there often.
