Gary will be returning with a new blog on August 11. This week, he’s asked RCN’s John Leone to guest blog. RCN-TV viewers should recognize John from the Lafayette College basketball broadcasts on the Lafayette Sports Network.
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Only those who have ever earnestly invested themselves emotionally in the life of a chosen major league sports franchise will understand the following. Others need not indulge me. I’m not talking about the weekend warrior here. I’m talking about those loyalists who pass along their rooting legacies to their young children, who risk otherwise happy marriages, whose palms sweat in the late innings of innocuous game number 86 sometime in July, or during final fourth quarter drives in late September. I’m talking about those for whom the major national and religious holidays include the first day of spring training and the start of OTAs in the middle of summer. I’m talking about those of us for whom the line between healthy diversion and debilitating vice has become dangerously blurred. How debilitating, you ask?
I have been a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball and the NFL’s Cleveland Browns for the past half century.
Those of you who’ve read this far may be old enough to remember a time when such loyalties could be deemed well-placed. Younger folks, on the other hand, will have the sense that the author here is the Marquis de Sade. But remember, we’re talking cornerstone franchises here – Rust Belt cities where these respective sports were born and whose roots run deep. These were franchises that represented the best in us – blue collar players who bled for blue collar towns with a blue collar effort…and yes, an occasional championship. These were franchises that actually did have glory days. To underscore such history, the Browns are likely the only franchise that has ever effectively traded its owner. When Art Modell took his collection of football paraphernalia to Baltimore, a city revolted and fought the good fight to keep its soul at home. I mean, who are “The Ravens” anyway? The name, the colors, the records, and the memories are where they should be – with the Cleveland Browns. But I digress.
Once the NBA Syracuse Nationals left my hometown in 1963 for greener pastures in Philadelphia, I became the very young resident of a city without a major sports franchise. In retrospect, I was in essence a free agent fan lured not by big contracts and perennial championships, but rather by the enticements that all kids gravitate toward – cool team colors, gaudy box scores, a first trip to a big league stadium, and extended family influences. How could I have known that the two teams of my choosing would represent rival cities, 90 miles apart, and whose fan behavior toward one another on game day would make the Bloods and the Crips blush?
But how I arrived at this precarious place – a die-hard fan of two franchises whose decades-long run of ineptitude has been nothing short of epic – is a story for another time. My younger friends and even my own children have come to look at me with a mixture of sympathy and incredulity. Why would an otherwise normal person, not a resident of either town, actually choose to follow these teams? Only recently, the Pirates set a DiMaggio-like record for franchise futility, failing to reach .500 during a streak spanning two full decades. Be aware, that includes all franchises from all major professional sports – not just baseball. But even by the Browns’ more recent standards, the Pirates have been in a good place.
Remember, this is a franchise (the Browns) whose failures have been classic. So iconic have their heartbreaks been that they’ve christened them in a sort of morbid remembrance. Even casual NFL fans know of them by name. So while the Steelers have “The Immaculate Reception,” the 49ers, “The Catch,” and the Titans (who are they, anyway), “The Music City Miracle,” we Browns fans are left to ponder “Red Right 88,” “The Drive,” and “The Fumble.” Even our stadium has been unofficially dubbed, “The Factory of Sadness.” I could go on, but you get my point.
And still, fully aware of my own fatal attraction, as my Pirate summers would all too soon inevitably melt into baseball oblivion, I could always turn to Cleveland’s football-version of Christmas morning: Draft Day. And like most gifts on Christmas morning, the newness and glitter of the next promising draft class would soon fade, as the promising packages of highly-touted future stars invariably represented as so many lumps of coal. And just as quickly I’d be back to the Bucs, trying to keep up with which veterans they’d jettison to contending teams at the trade deadline for more promising prospects – again, and again…and again. Perennial sellers.
And so the cycle would go: year, after year, after excruciating year. My children are grown now. As heirs to my Browns-Bucs plight, they’ve witnessed and lived through the years of frustration. And if I’ve failed to teach them anything worthwhile, at least loyalty and persistence haven’t been among the lessons lost.
None of my kids are named Job, (though my wife, Julie, is most certainly the female equivalent) but maybe, just maybe, they are about to experience the Biblical lesson for which he is known.
Clint Hurdle has at long last energized the baseball ghosts of Clemente and Mazerowski in Pittsburgh. And anyone who still believes that “there’s no crying in baseball” wasn’t witness to the Bucco’s wild card win over the Reds last October. One TBS broadcaster’s eloquence captured the moment that night. As the camera panned the packed stadium and the hysterical crowd, I heard him say, “Now I know what 20 years of frustration, unleashed and dressed in black and gold, looks like.” How can you not love the romance of baseball?
And even Cleveland’s (new again) football front office has NFL followers taking notice with the drafting of Johnny Manzeil. That gift hasn’t been opened yet, but there it sits. And if nothing else, Browns football is relevant again and hope springs eternal.
So you’ll please excuse me if I guffaw at the plight of the Cubs or the Curse of the Bambino. Pittsburgh football fans have had the Steelers, and Cleveland’s baseball folks have at least sniffed success with the Indians (and, of course, the “Return of the King” this NBA season). But for a fan whose enduring loyalties forever shift with the seasons between the castaway teams of these two cities – summers in Pittsburgh and autumns in Cleveland – a new standard has to have been set for, well, I’ll let you fill in the blank. My family and close friends have given up trying.
Gotta run. The Pirates are on the west coast, so it’ll be a late night. And the Browns are into their first week of training camp. Have to see how the QB competition between Hoyer and Manzeil is going.
Finally, it’s the most wonderful time of the year!!