– Ichiro
Three weeks removed from the Super Bowl, I still have a palpable sense of disbelief. Wait, what? The Seahawks won? These guys? Are you kidding me? This really happened?
Well if I have a .gif of it, it must be true.
My first inclination, upon the completion of Seattle's 43:8 manhandling of the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl, was to start writing a long essay about just how much joy this victory would bring to the people of Seattle, and gush with pride and delirium and speak to what it would be like when 750,000 or however many people would line the streets of downtown Seattle to celebrate.
But I know exactly how my readers would respond to something like that: "The LOSE has gone soft! What the fuck is this shit?"
I think it was columnist Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times who spoke best to the nature of the relationship of the Seahawks to Seattle when he said that the cocky, brash football team was a representation of the city's collective id. Seattle has a well-deserved reputation for being mellow, sophisticated and occasionally a bit too passive-aggressive for its own good – qualities that don't seem to jibe with the gathering on a Sunday afternoon at Large Telephone Company Field to root for their football team, at which point the mellow masses literally shake the earth. Seahawks fans are overexcited, overcaffeinated, overstimulated, loud, loud, loud, and also loud. And annoyed. Very annoyed. That annoyance has fueled the frenzy over the years. The Seahawks, as a team, play with a collective chip on their shoulders, and the fans have been bringing that chip to the stands for years. It will actually be interesting to see what home games at the CLink will be like in 2014. They will still be impossibly loud, of course. The decibel level has become a matter of civic pride. (When Kansas City Chiefs fans snatched the Guinness World Record for stadium noise, the Seahawks fans made it a point to snatch the record back.) But I suspect there will be a different atmosphere, one less fueled by frustration. Which is notable in itself, because when you grow up in the Pacific Northwest, sports and frustration are one and the same.
The Sonics won an NBA title in the tape-delayed Finals days of 1979, never won again and are now no more. *sniff* The Mariners have never even been to a World Series, had 10 winning seasons since their inception in 1977, and are, by most metrics, among the worst franchises in the history of not only baseball, but all of professional sports. Seattle is gaga over its soccer team, as the average attendance for Sounders home games is larger than for all but a select few soccer clubs in the world, but the Sounders have fallen into the proper Seattle patterns of constantly underachieving, squandering opportunities, and failing to live up to expectations. The Sounders, I am sure, are aware of what's happened across the street at Insurance Company Field: the Mariners' attendance has declined by over 50% during a decade's worth of incompetence. Seattle fans will be patient with you, but only for so long. With the bearing of the northwest colours – the greens and the blues – also seems to come an aptitude for falling short and a propensity for maddening failure. (And I will get to those blue-and-green wearing guys on the skates up in Vancouver in a future post.) The 12s, as Seattle Seahawk fans are known (the #12 has been retired by the team to honour the fans), have always brought with them 30+ years worth of civic frustration when they pack the CLink – a frustration which a Super Bowl victory has dissipated, if not quite eliminated. Now, constant Mariner shortcomings and intriguing Sounders rumours can be viewed on their own terms, instead of in as part of a collective narrative. For now, that angst has been quelled.
Seattle is no longer in the running for the title of Most Tormented Sports City in America, a short list on which Seattle has featured prominently. Let us turn our attention to the frontrunner for that dubious honour now that Seattle has been absolved of some of its collective burden. OK, Cleveland, you’re on the clock:
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| photo by Yves Marchand and Roman Meffre |
Little did the 79,544 who gathered at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on December 27, 1964, know that they were witnessing the end of the salad days in Cleveland sports. The Browns defeated the Colts 27:0 to win the NFL championship that day, and the Browns haven't won a championship since. The Browns have never been to a Super Bowl. The Indians, meanwhile, were something of a disaster from the get-go, as they rose from the ashes of the worst team in MLB history, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders who went 20-134 and drew 145 fans per home game. The Tribe have not won a World Series since they defeated the Boston Braves in 1948, and often would play before about 5,000,000 empty seats over the course of a season during their days at ‘The Mistake by the Lake’ that was Municipal Stadium. (That isn't much of an exaggeration – the place was huge and the team was awful.) The only thing the Cavaliers have won in their history is the NBA draft lottery on three occasions, and they have reached the NBA Finals only once. They also own the two longest losing streaks in the history of the NBA: 26 games in the first post-Lebron season of 2011-2012, and 24 games back in 1982. The city's attempt at fielding an NHL team, the Cleveland Barons, was the last franchise in any of the four major professional sports to fold in the middle of the season. The Barons merged with the Minnesota North Stars, and it is this collective of North Star sleazebags who then essentially extorted an NHL expansion franchise for San Jose. (One of many reasons for me to hate Team Teal. I can go into more detail on that subject some other time.) If misery loves company, then Cleveland is a city with open arms.
It is bad enough to put up with bad franchises. Cleveland’s misery is always compounded by repeated symbolic stabbings through the city’s collective heart. Owner Art Modell ripped the Browns out of the city and relocated them to Baltimore after the 1995 seasons, where the newly-christened Ravens have since gone on to win two Super Bowls. This act was so audacious and brazen by Modell that even the other NFL owners blushed, which is no small feat. A new Cleveland Browns franchise was quickly cobbled together and took the field in 1999. Browns v. 2.0 has been awful, making the playoffs only once and usually amassing double-digit numbers of losses. The franchise has suffered through constant turnover at the management level, going through multiple owners and GMs and coaches and showing itself to be about the most dysfunctional operation in all of professional sports. 2013 was a terrible year for the Browns, who have now cleaned out the front office yet again recently, and now we have these bizarre rumours about Jim Harbaugh running about, which is making people crazy here in San Francisco, but this comes after the Browns got stiffed by just about every viable coaching candidate they tried to interview. Folks in Cleveland are not amused by any of this.
Any success the Browns have had in the post-merger era has inevitably come crashing down in memorable fashion – and by 'memorable,' I mean that Cleveland fans can only wish they could forget. There was Red Right 88 in 1981, and back-to-back collapses in AFC Championship Games against the Broncos now known simply as The Drive and The Fumble. Any time your failures are given a title, it isn't a good thing. On top of this, some of the game's brightest minds couldn't figure out how to win in Cleveland. Long before he was a genius, Bill Belichick was a flop as Cleveland's head coach. Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome, a lifelong Brown first as a player and then as a GM, suddenly was able to turn water into wine once the club relocated to Baltimore. Packers/Seahawks architect Mike Holmgren and the former front office staffers from the 49ers dynasty of the early 1990s all got to Cleveland and suddenly had no idea what they were doing. It's baffling and confounding at every turn.
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| infinite facepalm |
C Tony Peña/Sandy Alomar Jr. (.300)
1B Paul Sorrento (25 HR in 2005)
2B Carlos Baerga (.314 that season)
SS Omar Vizquel (best defensive shortstop ever)
3B Jim Thome (612 career home runs)
LF Albert Belle (.317, 50 HR, MVP runner-up that year)
CF Kenny Lofton (.310 that year)
RF Manny Ramirez (.308, 31 HR that year)
DH Eddie Murray (Hall of Famer)
I mean, look at that team! That team is ridiculous.
But the Indians just happened to run into a pitching staff with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz in the rotation – two of them in the HoF, the third likely to join them, and all of them rising to the occasion this time around on the game's biggest stage.
For once.
The Braves went to the playoffs 14 consecutive seasons and managed only one World Series title. Of course is had to come against Cleveland. Timing is everything. Cleveland always seems to bring out the best in their opponents, be it John Elway or Michael Jordan or a young Willie Mays. That 1954 Indians team done in by The Say-Hey Kid and swept by the Giants in the World Series won 111 games. They were one of the best teams in history and it still wasn't enough. The Indians' rise to prominence in the early 1950s coincided, of course, with arguably the greatest team in the history of the sport, the New York Yankees who won five consecutive World Series from 1949-1953.
And then there are the Cavs.
*shudder*
Ted Stepien did more to damage this franchise in three years of ownership than you would think possible. He made all sorts of boneheaded free agency signings and traded every first round pick the Cavaliers had in NBA drafts in the 1980s – including one which the Lakers turned into James Worthy, a key member of their championship teams throughout the decade. The NBA had to step in and award some supplemental picks to the Cavs after Stepien was gone, realizing that the franchise was doomed otherwise. (Hell, it probably was doomed, anyway, since it’s Cleveland we’re talking about here.) They also had to change the rules so that teams couldn’t trade 1st round picks in consecutive seasons. This is known as the “Stepien Rule.” Stepien also marvelously declared one day that the Cavaliers were relocating to Toronto and being renamed the Toronto Towers – much to the surprise of both the NBA and the people of Toronto. The Cavs were drawing about 3,900 fans a game when Stepien finally sold. A particular shrewd draft day in 1986 brought them first overall pick Brad Daugherty, Ron Harper and Mark Price (they also avoided the carnage of a draft that is still a black eye to the league), a core around which they built a playoff team. Unfortunately, the Cavs came to be Michael Jordan’s favourite puppet, whose strings he routinely pulled and twisted into knots. (Now would be a good time to point out that the guy Jordan usually tormented, Craig Ehlo, went to school here.)
But then the Cavs fans had something truly special to cheer about when, in one of those ever conveniently random twists of the NBA lottery, the dismal franchise landed the #1 pick in 2003 and landed local hero LeBron James, one of the greatest talents the game has ever seen, who would then pretty much single-handedly take the Cavs to the verge of an NBA championship in 2010.
And then he did this.
Now, I don’t think LeBron quite realized at the time what he jerk he made himself out to be with The Decision at the time. Taking his talents to South Beach made sense from a basketball standpoint – like every other player, LeBron wants to win NBA titles, and all of the pieces came together in Miami to do so. But in the process, he publicly dissed his hometown and made himself look completely selfish, selb-absorbed, and oblivious. He made a city that’s already been the butt of 1,000 jokes into even more of a laughingstock.
Suffice to say, the fortunes of the Cavs have dwindled since. The Cavs reached the NBA Finals in LeBron’s last year, but without King James around, all involved with the organization have been revealed to be impostors. The Cavs recently fired GM Chris Grant, as he has squandered all sorts of high draft picks and made a mess of things.
And there has always been this hopeful narrative that LeBron would decide, after winning however many championships he wins in Miami, to come home again and make amends for the way he humiliated the city. Given how disheveled this franchise is at the moment, the chances of that seem remote. But as Raymond Carver put it, "when all hope appears lost, the sanest thing to do is grasp at straws."
It wasn’t always this bad, of course. Cleveland’s glory days were in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, with the Browns winning three NFL championships and the Indians’ fair amount of success. Cleveland sports were ahead of the curve when it came to integration, quickly coming to benefit from access to a greater talent pool. (Not surprising this sort of thing happened in Cleveland – after all, the original Rock 'n' Roll concert was an integrated event.) The Indians signed the AL’s first black player, Larry Doby, in 1947. They didn’t hesitate to sign up Negro League legend Satchel Paige during the 1948 season to aid them on their way to a championship. The Browns, meanwhile, had some of the great black stars of the era, such as Marion Motley and Jim Brown – a fact which didn’t go unnoticed in places like Washington, where the Redskin Potatoes were still openly practicing discrimination and Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich used Cleveland's routine domination of the 'Skins to take the franchise to task:
“Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone three times yesterday.”
"For 18 minutes the Redskins were enjoying equal rights with the Cleveland Browns yesterday, in the sense that there was no score in the contest. Then it suddenly became unequal in favor of the Browns, who brought along Jim Brown, their rugged colored fullback from Syracuse. From 25 yards out, Brown was served the ball by Milt Plum on a pitch-out and he integrated the Redskins' goal line with more than deliberate speed, perhaps exceeding the famous Supreme Court decree. Brown fled the 25 yards like a man in an uncommon hurry and the Redskins' goal line, at least, became interracial."
And the Browns were innovators on the field as well, as head coach Paul Brown brought a higher eye for strategy, preparation, and organization to the game than had ever been seen in the NFL. His teams were not only talented but extremely well-prepared. He set a standard which coaches have drawn on ever since. Brown, of course, got into a rift with owner Art Modell and eventually got fired in 1963, having won 7 league titles during his tenure. The Browns have won once since. I guess you can never have too much of a good thing in Cleveland.
Jeez, and I thought Seattle had it bad all these years.
Cleveland needs some love. These are great fans in Cleveland. Great fans. Browns fans who piled into the 'Dog Pound' were (in)famous for their rabid enthusiasm:
"Will the next person that sees ANYBODY throw anything onto this field, point 'em out...and get 'em out of here - you don't live in Cleveland, you live in Cincinnati!"
– Sam Wyche
The good people of Cleveland have endured half a century of misery, and live in a city which has struggled mightily through the recent recession. The Indians fell into disrepair after the great run in the mid-1990s, the Browns are terrible and the Cavaliers verge on hopelessness. The Indians hemorrhaged attendance so badly that they sit near the bottom of MLB now, their still lovely downtown ballpark looking sadly desolate most nights. Cleveland can be a tough sell to free agents, given that the teams suck and the weather can be pretty terrible. But a spirited push by the revamped Indians last September landed them a playoff spot. Given the bizarro offseason moves by Detroit, the Tribe might have some hope in the AL Central.
The LOSE is down with Cleveland, and not just because Cleveland is good for business. This town has truly been tormented. Give Cleveland some love.
There, I went soft. Don't get used to it.
