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Window on Main Street 073108
Optimism out of place in Cleveland
There they go again. The guarantors of greatness, the emperors of expectations, the pundits of pride, the witnesses of a winning Browns season.
They are sports writers, commentators and columnists who, at the beginning of each football season, hand out hope like Barack Obama at a union hall meeting.
"They" are really all of us poor Cleveland sports fans who routinely get our hearts broken by ... you name it. The merchants of misfortune, perhaps?
So this football year, I propose we should all just shut up and, like they say in AA, "One day at a time." Let's take a page from baseball and pretend it's the ninth inning of a no-hitter. Don't say anything. Then, maybe we wouldn't be so disappointed when that monkey hops on our back again.
The only break we got was that field goal last year, when the ball did a pin ball ricocheted off the goal posts and fell our way.
But if you have lived in Cleveland a while, then you know why I am cautioning you. You know the drill which always ends with a broken heart and a broken play. What is maddening is this stuff keeps on happening.
And so we begin another gut-wrenching 16 weeks. As autumn approaches, hopes are high, and some ink-stained wretch always manages to utter the "C" word, for championship. As if it were a real possibility. Poor things. Don't they know that saying the word unleashes (dirge music, please) the "Curse of Cleveland," and we are helpless to do a thing about it.
If this little old lady from Chagrin Falls gets it, then why don't others? We are never going to win a Super Bowl or a World Series, the NBA championship or the Stanley Cup. That's just the way it is for Cleveland. Curses are forever.
What is so frustrating is the curse of Cleveland has nothing to do with football. Football is an innocent bystander. The curse began with baseball. Everyone thinks it's because the Tribe traded Rocky Colavito, but it really goes all the way back to mascot Chief Wahoo, the smiling Indian -- ah, excuse me, "native American."
Here's the bottom line, according to my friend Jackie. No Cleveland sports team will ever win any championship until the Tribe gets rid of the chief and gains a little political correctness.
Jackie is moving in a couple of weeks. She says it's the winters here that got to her. She lies. She just can't take it anymore.
If you grew up with the chief, you know how beloved an image he is. Even if he is not politically correct, he is historic. Besides, no one set out to do damage to the native Americans when they adopted the grinning Indian logo and mascot. It was an innocent time. We didn't know any better, because we did not have day-to-day contact with any "real" Indians. Excuse me, native Americans.
But the younger generation doesn't get it and perpetuates the pitiful promise of a parade with ticker tape.
So, as baseball season fizzles to an end and football season revs up, can we all agree on one thing? Just shut up, it ain't gonna happen. Chief Wahoo says so, and Rocky Colavito agrees.
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