Tough to be a Cleveland Fan

Mike I have to completely agree with your earlier post Would it be Cleveland? Being a Cleveland sports fan is tougher than being a fan for any other city. I don't care what anyone else says, being a Cavs, Indians and Browns fan is tougher than being a fan for any other city or team PERIOD. No city has been victim to such a major championship drought in all sports other than Cleveland. We all know the Tribe haven't won it all since 1948, the Browns 1964, (before Super Bowls so it makes us seem even lamer) and the Cavs... sorry Lebrons... made it to the Finals that one time last year and got swept.

To be honest it really pisses me off when I hear other fans, from other cities complain that their teams haven't won lately. Like right now the Cubs are arguably the best team and baseball. Now there is a lot of talk going on about how they can break their "curse" and end the long suffering for all their fans. OOOOOOOkkkkkkk Chicago people unless for some reason you only like the Cubs you have no idea what suffering is. Weren't the Chicago Bulls of the 90s one of the best teams in the history of the NBA? Didn't they win 6 titles in 8 years? Sounds like Chicago sports fans had something to be happy about even if the Cubs haven't won a World Series in 100 years.

Now let me go to my most hated city right now. No not Pittsburgh, not Detroit... Boston. Yea Boston. If I hear a Sportcenter anchor refer to it as the "Nation" one more time I'm gonna go wicked retahded. (tough to type one of those horrible Boston accents) Anyway my point is before their first championship in 04, Red Sox fans were the fans who had suffered the most. Just like the city of Chicago the city of Boston had a lot lot of other things in the sports world to be happy about. For example the Patriots are the best team of this decade in the NFL. Oh and the Celtics won the most championships in NBA history. But ohhhh nooooo the Red Sox haven't won since 1918. I mean come on. How greedy can you get? I'd be happy with one championship... just ONE in any sport. Well besides the Cleveland Crunch/Force winning all those indoor soccer championships. Those don't count. Although if at age 70 I have yet to see a legit Cleveland championship I'll probably be the crotchety old guy reminiscing about the good old days of Hector Marinaro and Otto Orf. Ok sorry about the tangent I didn't think there was ever a time in my life I'd get to name drop Hector Marinaro and Otto Orf so I wanted to take full advantage. Anyway going back to my whole point here. While other specific teams and their fans have suffered through droughts, no city has suffered through more crushing defeats and a total championship drought across all major sports teams other than Cleveland. If you look at any city, chances are they have had at least one team in a major sport win a championship in the last 45 years. (I'm assuming the Indians aren't gonna win this year so it will be 45 years in 2009 since our last championship). Not Cleveland though.

It's not just that we lose, its that we get so so close before we lose. You try to keep your hopes from getting high, but before you know it they have skyrocketed into outer space. And then just when your hopes are at their highest point and you actually start to have the thought that we might win seep into your brain... we lose.. and it sucks... a lot. I went through this last year with the Indians in the ALCS. My hopes were at all time highs. I tried to keep them down but they went sky high. I even thought the stupidest sports cliche ever... "this is our year". Well we all know how it turned out for the Indians. After we lost game 7 the soul shattering depression was so bad that I couldn't bring myself to do anything except drink natty and then sleep for the rest of the week. I think I made it to only one class that week. The feeling of getting so close and then failing is much harder then just knowing you suck. Like when the Browns returned in 1999 I pretty much knew they were gonna suck and I accepted that. Sure it hurt me but at least I knew what to expect week in week out. Last year when they won 10 games but still managed to miss the playoffs was much harder on me than a 4-12 season ever could be. Again, my hopes got high and then crushed. Same story different team.

I think that watching these games day in and day out has shortened my life exponentially. In fact Cleveland sports have taken so many years from my life, I am baffled that I have not some how magically been transported back in time. Sweet life me. I guess I should be thankful though that I was not alive/too young to remember the "The's" of Cleveland. Every Cleveland fan knows what I'm talking about when I say the "The's" and they all shutter when one is mentioned. So I'll try to keep mentioning them as limited as possible. I'm pretty sure if I witnessed one of those in person it might have been too much for my feeble heart to handle. Like I said, I wasn't alive or was too young so at least I didn't have to go through those. But lucky for me and all other Cleveland fans in my generation ESPN Classic seems to have a "How Much Cleveland Sucks at Life" segment every week or so. So if I really want to, I can relive those truly terrible moments in our city's sports history. And usually for some reason whenever one of those games comes on I inexplicably can not change the channel until I have seen enough to make me 100% depressed. If any one else suffers from a similar condition please let me know.

But as hard as it is at times to be a Cleveland fan I'm not jumping ship. I'm not gonna go become a bandwagon fan for some other team. I'm a Cleveland fan for life. I wouldn't change it for anything. Plus I feel like its making me tougher for failures later in life. I mean in the future, lets say I get fired from a job or something... That will be nothing compared to being a 9 year old kid on the verge of tears after watching the Indians blow game 7 of the 1997 World Series. Any other hard ship is kiddy games compared to stuff like that.

Plus above all else, Cleveland has the most loyal fans in the world. Sure we are sad, depressed and get pissed a lot, but we always support our teams... especially the Browns. No matter how bad the Browns are every game is a sellout and people get downtown at 6am on game day to start tailgating. How many other teams have fans like that. Probably not too many. Like I said it sucks at times to be a Cleveland fan, and my liver probably hates tough losses more than the rest of me. I can never imagine rooting for any other teams. For me it will always be Browns, Indians and Cavs(possibly Gladiators, the Monsters... ehh probably not). And when we finally do win a championship its gonna be the best day of my life. But until then I guess I'll be stuck watching ESPN Classic episodes of the Drive and the Shot (sorry) and crying both inside and out. Hopefully this will be my last depressing blog for awhile. Hopefully the Indians can turn it around and if not only 56 days till the Browns first preseason game! Oh and we still have Lebron for at least 2 more years.