Misery’s Final Days In Cleveland?
I. Familiarity and the Absence of Contempt
Misery is in the air, but it’s an all-too-familiar stench.
It’s late February in Cleveland. I’m driving my car and listening to the local sports talk radio. A deep, unrelenting freeze has taken its annual hold over the city, and summer is a myth, a taboo subject this time of year.
Business as usual in Northeast Ohio.
Despite the apocalyptic cold, and against my better judgment, the sports talk has allowed me to cultivate a small, but growing fire inside, just enough to warm me even as the feeling in every extremity is inevitably lost. The hosts are hyping the unveiling of the “next evolution” of the Cleveland Browns’ logo, which will take place in just a few hours.
The discussion covers every possible angle. Just how drastic will this new logo be? Is the Brownie elf dead? Will there finally be a logo on the helmet? Depending on whom you ask, that’s either a step into the new century or an unforgivable sin against humanity.
Regardless, after the way the Browns soiled themselves to end the 2014 season (going 0-5 down the stretch and flaming out in spectacular fashion after a surprising and exciting 7-4 start), this is pretty much the only thing to cling to.
Since 1999, this is how it goes for the fans of this team. The offseason is the most special time of the year, when it’s impossible for the team to embarrass itself on the field. Off the field, it’s a different story, however.
The Browns are undoubtedly a disaster in every possible way, but if the team could somehow put together a great, new logo, something that gets people excited, maybe it’ll start to feel like a new era for the organization.
Then, shortly before noon, the Browns unveil said evolution:
Business as usual in Northeast Ohio.
II. The Most Perverse Torture in the World
I’m a firm believer in a higher power, and living in Cleveland has only strengthened that belief, but one that is not rooted in the sense that God exists to protect and guide us. It is the sense that we have a perverse Creator — perhaps a bored Creator — who chose Cleveland for a heinous experiment that tests the effect of spectacularly disappointing sports teams on the collective mental psyche of the populace.
God is bored, and we are His guinea pigs.
Cleveland comedian Mike Polk Jr. is perhaps the city’s most vaunted chronicler of sports misery, and he sees our misery as far more circumstantial of the universe’s natural and unrelenting cruelty.
“Regrettably, I fear the truth is far more disturbing in that it is hopelessly arbitrary, a reminder that the universe is a cruel and cold place that holds no regard for man-made constructs such as justice and equity,” he said.
To assume that the universe is made up solely of arbitrary constructs makes Cleveland’s perpetual sports misery all the more terrifying. In the universe’s completely random nature, how is Cleveland dealt such a consistently shitty hand?
“I wish there were some cosmic interference going on,” says Scott Sargent, editor for the popular Cleveland sports blog, Waiting for Next Year. “But unfortunately, it’s just been a string of bad luck and dumb decisions.”
That, also, is a worthy explanation for the 50+ years of sports futility but ultimately of little comfort, especially when we review the fiery wreckage that is Cleveland sports history.
Red Right 88. The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. 1995 and 1997. The Helmet Toss. Bottle Tossing. The 2007 ALCS. The Decision. The NFL Draft.
These are just a few of the things that burrow into an untapped, pure section of a Cleveland fan’s heart and blacken it to match the rest. These events have become so engrained in Clevelanders that they require little explanation beyond their menacing and looming titles. Still, some of us try to forget the painful tears shed as Craig Counsell crossed the plate to seal the World Series for the Florida Marlins in ’97. Others have to actively tell themselves to stop dwelling on the what-might-have-been, if only Earnest Byner had just held on to the ball in the waning moments of that AFC Championship Game in 1988. In 2009, how many of us spent sleepless nights staring at the ceiling, praying that the Orlando Magic would stop shooting lights-out in the playoffs?
So with everything that has happened to these teams, then, how can you blame Cleveland fans for being downright out of their minds at times?
You can’t blame them for throwing bottles onto the field when the officials screwed up a review challenge, costing the Browns a game that, believe it or not, had playoff implications.
You can’t blame the suburban police officer who once put his head in a bucket of urine in the city’s biggest tailgating location, the Muni Lot.
You can’t blame fans for wandering the streets like lobotomy recipients after watching former Indians and Cy Young winners C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee face each other in a World Series game.
You can’t blame the people who burned LeBron James’ jersey after he scorned the Cavs on a nationally televised special by choosing to play for the Miami Heat.
You can’t blame the grown adults doing Johnny Manziel’s “money sign” gesture (well, yes you can).
It’s hard to be in control of your own mind when you root for teams that so actively seek to destroy it. Who wouldn’t be traumatized by the fact that the Browns have burned through 22 — soon to be 23 (and definitely 24, 25 and so on) — starting quarterbacks? That, on its own, is more than enough mental torture to shatter even the strongest will.
(Source: Robot Butt)
I don’t know what God gains from all this anguish. It’s the first thing I’ll be asking Him when I finally get the chance.
III. Rising from the Ashes
You know that scene in Jurassic Park where Dr. Grant discovers the Velociraptor eggs in the wild and realizes that the animals have mated, that “life found a way”?
Cleveland sports teams are not unlike those genetically engineered dinosaurs, rising from impossible depths to do the unthinkable.
And yet, despite the new and innovative ways in which disappointment rears its unspeakably ugly head, our city continues to survive, clinging to the promise of Next Year.
This could be that year.
You have to take a step back to consider how all this came to be. The reborn Cavaliers, having risen from the ashes of certain and eternal NBA obscurity through the return of LeBron James, look like one of the best, most complete teams in basketball.
They went from the league’s trash heap to absolute contenders in one season — half a season, really — thanks entirely to James and a couple of incredibly shrewd trades. It’s mind-boggling to consider just how fast this turnaround has been. We’ve seen championship teams come together quickly before, but it’s not supposed to be like that in Cleveland. Where are the painful years of rebuilding?
With all of this in mind, if the Cavaliers do win the title this summer, the result will be unstoppable bedlam. Cleveland fans are trained to believe that the worst can — and will — happen. As far as anyone in this city is concerned, there are no alternatives. It’s been going on long before many of us have been alive. You have to understand that the minds of fans have been so tortured that everyone is teetering on the edge of fragility and pure insanity at all times.
So if a championship does actually happen, if the Cavaliers once and for all dismiss the belief that Cleveland sports are Satan’s playthings, no one will know how to react.
We can speculate, of course. Cars will surely be tipped over and set on fire. People will climb to the top of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and slide down the glass façade butt naked. People will forget about the Browns for five minutes. If you don’t want to get involved in the celebrations, you sure as hell better lock your doors and close your windows.
Cleveland might fall like Rome if the Cavaliers win it all, but what a way to go out.
“I do fear the come down from the elation,” Polk says. “I also wonder what sort of an effect it will have on our collective identity. We’re really all in on this ‘scrappy, hapless, lovable loser’ personality as sports fans and to a lesser degree as citizens…I would love to have to face this positive dilemma, but I am curious to see how we would respond.”
The added wrinkle is that none of this was even supposed to happen.
The Cavaliers had their chance the first go-round with LeBron. It didn’t work out, and the team was destined to accept its role as an insignificant, mediocre patsy for the better, luckier organizations.
The Browns and Indians would maintain the status quo, and we’d carry on like we always did. The blueprint was working to perfection for nearly four years.
Then I read the homecoming letter from James, wiping my eyes like a cartoon character in disbelief.
Is this really happening?
The day that Sports Illustrated letter appeared, I spent hours on the phone with my friends, all of whom were beside themselves in anticipation of what was to come. Suddenly, the Cavaliers were instant contenders. It was a true shock to the system. No one knew whether to cry or scream. No specific emotions; just screaming.
I could feel summer again. The vibrant green grass, the cloudless blue sky. My legs were telling me to run, to run and never stop because the pent-up supply of adrenaline and excitement would never run out. I think an animal talked to me, I can’t be sure. My life suddenly felt like a dream sequence from The Big Lebowski.
I forgot what it was like to have a sports team give me that feeling. It had the feeling of stars aligning. It feels like Cleveland got so lucky that we shouldn’t talk about it, just in case the universe made a mistake and hasn’t realized it must be corrected.
Not too long ago, Cleveland’s ascendance to relevancy seemed all but lost. I know what it was like to walk the city in the mid-2000s and feel like the apocalypse had already come. I remember seeing Public Square as a desolate waste, not the green paradise it will soon become. The sidewalks of the city were barren, mostly because there weren’t many storefronts to peruse. I didn’t even really hear…anything. No voices. No people talking. No cars.
In your mind, this is probably how you’ve always envisioned Cleveland to be. You know about the river catching on fire, that’s an easy one. And you hear so many movies, television shows and comedians use Cleveland as the go-to joke when in need of a punchline that requires what is supposed to be the most destitute place on Earth.
But now? You can’t go one day without reading an article that labels Cleveland as a “city on the rise.”
Young people want to live here. Renovations are happening all over the place. The Flats are alive again! The Republican National Convention will be here in 2016. We’ve got good food, great beer and beaches where the water isn’t usually too toxic to swim in. Cleveland is even beginning to turn into a walker’s paradise.
However, if Cleveland truly wants to enter the 21st century and become the city that captures the nation’s envy, the only thing that will create that reality is a championship from one of its teams. It’s the last missing piece to the puzzle.
The Cavaliers gladly volunteered to carry that torch last fall. But once the initial excitement wore off, it didn’t take long to realize that it sure as hell wouldn’t be easy getting to where we are today.
Not because the games themselves were stressful (though the team had to overcome a rough start), but because of everything happening off the court. Rather than focusing on the impending excitement of the playoffs and a very possible trip to the Finals, people were far more concerned with:
Why Kevin Love isn’t in more of LeBron’s Instagram pictures
Why Kevin Love and LeBron aren’t better friends
Why Kevin Love can’t score 35 points per game
Why Kevin Love doesn’t come to every fan’s house and have dinner with them
Where Kevin Love is playing next year because it’s DEFINITELY not Cleveland*
*Even after his surgery, when Love posted a picture to Instagram thanking everyone for their support, some people speculated that it sounded like a guy who was DEFINITELY leaving in the summer
I forgot speculation is the price to pay when you have a good team. Even with a dozen games left in the regular season, we are still looking at Next Year, and what we might lose.
Clevelanders nitpick great teams and blindly follow perennial losers. We get excited for the prospect of a good season, but are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rationality has never had much of a chance to survive here.
But again, you can’t fault Cleveland fans. These are simply the conditions in which people have been raised.
Which begs the question – why? Why do we put ourselves through so much emotional turmoil?
“Teams are a part of us and how we feel we are represented good and bad,” says Ken Carman, a host on 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland. “Maybe I’ve become addicted to the struggle, but it’s the promise of seeing something I’ve never seen before, and being a part of something I’ve never been a part of before that keeps myself and a lot of us coming back.”
Don’t mistake any semblance of anxiety or even insanity for a lack of knowledge or passion, though. Everywhere you go, these teams are all anybody wants to talk about. When things are going well for a team in the city, you feel it. It makes you want to go out and experience Cleveland with everybody else. I can’t tell you how many strangers I’ve high-fived throughout various playoff runs. And how many strangers I commiserated with when things went awry.
“As perennial also-rans, we have a connection that successful sports cities simply do not,” Polk said. “We have been tested, and tested and tested. So if you meet a Cleveland sports fan, it instantly tells you something about their character.”
This season, I’ve had conversations about the Cavaliers at grocery stores, gas stations, bars, the gym — you name it. And it’s been with people who have never cared about sports a day in their life. They’ve felt it, too.
They know that if the Cavaliers win the championship, this will be the greatest summer in the history of the city.
With a championship in tow, anything would feel possible. Cleveland would exist in an entirely new light, with the chalkboard officially wiped clean. No longer would there be that mental block of being a perennial loser. The renaissance would finally be complete.
The sleeping giant that is Cleveland’s bright future has shaken off its hibernation and is ready to emerge. It’s time to break out for good.
IV. A Harsh Punishment
It’s April now. I fucked up.
As the NBA playoffs were starting, I had a moment of weakness and envisioned what it might be like to have a victory parade to come down Euclid, with all of the Cavaliers dancing on top of a bus or something. Maybe Timofey Mosgov would reenact his famous local Brew Garden commercial.
I know I’m not supposed to do that, but I’m a weak man.
In the car once again, I was listening to the early moments of the first quarter of that final game against Boston, on my way to a friend’s wedding. It was a day to celebrate love, and the beginning of something beautiful.
But I got out of my car before Kevin Love dislocated his shoulder on what sure seemed like a dirty play from Kelly Olynyk. I had but a few brief moments to take in my beautiful surroundings — the weather was perfect and the farm we were on featured a breathtaking view of distant rolling hills and animals out to pasture speckled on them. It was peaceful and calm. I wondered if all of these senses would be enhanced after the Cavs won the title. If maybe I could come back here and feel the warm wind in a way I never thought possible.
Then my phone blew up and the world went black.
I know now that Love is out for the rest of the postseason, and the Cavaliers will have to begin the next two games of the second round without J.R. Smith.
And as I write this, the Browns have drafted Danny Shelton and Cameron Erving, both of whom were not quarterbacks the last time I checked (which was many times, right up until this was published, just to be sure).
Oh, and the Indians have the worst record in the American League.
I did this, and I have to live with the consequences.
There is, of course, plenty of hope left for the Cavaliers, as any team that features two of the top-10 players in the NBA will always have a fighting chance for a title.
Still, Kevin Love’s injury feels so perfectly Cleveland that it’s almost hard to fathom. Or maybe it’s too easy.
Prior to Love going down, everybody in the city was finally giving in, ready to entertain the thought of a potential Cavaliers championship. Now, fans have to convince themselves that, though the road just got much tougher, this could still be the team’s year. We’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring impending destruction.
What we do know, though, is that the universe isn’t done punching Cleveland in the crotch just yet. It still has some misery in store for us. But we’ll always be looking ahead, always convinced that everything will soon change for the better.
And if it isn’t this year, there’s always…eventually.