WICKED WORRIED WITNESS – Paranoia From a Cleveland Sports Fan Near Boston
by BT ~ May 1st, 2010.I am a witness… to Bill Belichick and Manny Ramirez as heroes in Boston. What is it like to be a Cleveland fan in New England? It’s complicated, and very lonely.
“What’s up with the hat?” I get that a lot around here.
When the Cleveland Cavaliers play the Boston Celtics in the NBA Eastern Conference semi-finals, I will again be exposed to tired Cleveland jokes but that is only one price I pay for being a Cleveland sports fan living in Massachusetts – a place that can only be be described as a wicked arrogant state of fandom. Wicked arrogant. When I first moved here, I knew a guy who was best friends with a guy named “Sully.” Back then, the fans around here weren’t so wicked arrogant. They had no right to be. They were haunted by ghosts. I felt kinship. But I’ve been here a long time.
During the 2007 American League Championship Series, in which my Cleveland Indians were up 3-1 on my friends-and-family’s Boston Red Sox and then lost three straight stupid baseball games, I was with my girlfriend when a knucklehead asked me, “What’s up with the hat?” My girlfriend has learned to laugh along… or is that a mask for laughing at me? I am from Cleveland; pardon the inferiority complex.
Another time, I walked into a convenience store to buy a newspaper when the clerk saw my hat and said, “Cleveland Browns? I never heard of such a thing.” So I asked, “you never heard of the Cleveland Browns?”
“I’ve heard of the Browns,” responded the clerk. “I just never heard of anyone rooting for them.” Bill Belichick, the legendary coach of the New England Patriots, was first a bad coach for the Cleveland Browns. And so it goes.
I live in a region that has professional sports pulsing in it’s collective bloodstream in much the same way as the place that I was raised. Cold weather, a hard work ethic, and a liberal inclination are just a few similarities of Boston and Cleveland. But an inappropriate passion for sports is perhaps the biggest point of kinship. It really is like religion.
Although I long ago chose to live in New England, in a beautiful Cape Cod town, I cannot do anything about my allegiance to Cleveland teams. It is a life sentence of agony. I grew up in Cleveland dreaming of playing center field for the Cleveland Indians. I’ve since learned that Cleveland is a great place to be from, but to root for its teams is like sitting on a plane waiting for it to crash. You know the crash is scheduled, you just don’t know when.
The stories of brutal defeats, often told, are never worth repeating. Legends are created in games against Cleveland. Michael Jordan and John Elway’s finest moments have came at the expense of Cleveland fans. So, in fact, did Paul Pierce’s. For almost half a century, cheering for Cleveland professional sports teams has been like having your limbs pulled from your body while coyotes chew out your eyeballs. During certain years, the coyotes have seemed to have rabies.
Sure, I know that Cleveland has had some glorious sports years in its history. When you are my age, reading stories of the glory days of Cleveland sports is like reading of the Pelopennisian War… maybe it happened. Gosh, it’s written down. Yet as far as I know, Bob Feller and Helen of Troy are both mythical characters. My age, by the way, is middle age, and that’s what it is like to be a Cleveland sports fan – medieval torture.
Historically, Cleveland’s best players spend the prime of their career in New York or Boston. Luis Tiant, Dennis Eckersly, Manny Ramirez, Victor Martinez, Chris Chamblis, Craig Nettles, and CC Sabbathia were all once Cleveland Indians. As a friend pointed out, this leads to the sad irony of rooting for a perennially crappy team; I get more sympathy than insults.
And now I am reduced to hope that the superest of superstars, homegrown Lebron James, unlike me, will stay when he has a chance to be a free agent. He won’t go to the New York Knicks. I didn’t. And I know that I would have stayed if the Cleveland Indians offered me the centerfield job.
Instead, as a transplant from Cleveland rooting for a Cleveland guy to stay in Cleveland but first beat the team representing the place I choose to live, I could be conflicted. After all, I love my friends and family and they are all Boston Celtics fans. I am not conflicted. I am just wicked worried about being a witness.
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