Confessions of a Cleveland Sports Fan
Recently, the national media focused its attention on my hometown. As is generally the case when that happens, the focus was not positive. Here is AP reporter Tom Withers, offering his objective analysis of the event: “New York, Chicago, New Jersey, Los Angeles and every other [city] came up short, finishing out of the money. So did Cleveland. As it always does. This time, losing was tainted with bitterness.” The way in which all these cities “came up short,” of course, was in persuading LeBron James to play for their NBA franchises.
Withers’ disdain for the city of bitter losers was nothing new, and if the LeBron saga had been confined to the sports pages, I doubt I would be writing about it. But political commentators soon began focusing on James as well, in ways that both were unfavorable to Cleveland and touched on larger issues. Lew Rockwell highlighted the comments of fellow libertarian Skip Oliva, who wrote: “In the past week, I’ve seen the word ‘narcissism’ used dozens of times by the mainstream press to describe a 25-year-old African-American male who worked his way out of poverty, to earn millions of dollars entertaining people with his basketball skills. Apparently, his transgression was refusing to honor the collectivist whims of the press to remain in his depressed ‘hometown’ by deciding to join two of his close friends in a better part of the country.” In an expansion of this analysis, Oliva defended James on the grounds that “Every actor in the marketplace seeks his own ends through chosen means,” and he even praised James for announcing his decision to leave Cleveland on an hour-long ESPN special: “Smartly, he decided to capitalize on the process for his own interests.” Indeed, according to Oliva, criticism of James was a form of “racism” based not on his skin color but on his status as a professional athlete: “there’s a belief that professional athletes are entitled to a lesser degree of rights and social respect simply because of who they are.”
In other words, LeBron James is not only legally entitled to stiff the fans who’ve been loyal to him and to voice disdain for his native region as part of an overhyped television special, but he is entitled to do so without being criticized, since any suggestion that loyalty to a native region or to the fans who have supported him should carry weight is morally wrong and based on “collectivism” and “racism.”
A different critique was offered by another libertarian, Richard Hoste, at the Alternative Right website. According to Hoste, Cleveland fans complaining about LeBron’s move to Miami were “a bunch of losers,” whose letters to sportswriter Bill Simmons reminded Hoste of “the narratives that oppressed people like the Palestinians, Chechens and Kurds tell themselves. But they are actually concerned about the well-being of their people and its history, not some sports star who happens to sign a contract with a franchise that happens to be located in another city.” Rather than venting about LeBron’s departure, such fans should be “as passionate about hating their government” and espouse “anti-statist positions.”
For different reasons, Hoste comes to the same conclusion as Oliva: Cleveland fans, “losers” whose basketball star rationally decided to leave Cleveland for a “better part of the country,” should just shut up. But rather than prove their points, Oliva and Hoste remind us, yet again, how divorced from reality many libertarians are.
The anger of Cleveland fans at LeBron James is understandable. Cleveland last won a championship in any major sport in December 1964, when the Browns beat the Baltimore Colts to win the NFL championship. Since that time, we have known more sports disappointment than any other American city, as shown by the history whose recitation so annoyed Richard Hoste. James, an extraordinary athlete, seemed to offer the best hope of winning the championship Clevelanders craved, and he endeared himself to us by showing that he knew that history and telling us he would indeed win a championship for Cleveland. And for most of his career, James looked like he was intent to do just that, playing with passion and intensity. But this year he simply appeared to give up in the series against the Celtics, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that James didn’t care if the Cavs lost because he knew he wasn’t coming back. One of the few words James himself spoke in the period following the collapse of the Cavs in the playoffs and the announcement of his departure on ESPN was the statement that Cleveland had “an edge” in signing him to a new contract, a claim contradicted by numerous press reports following his departure. The news that James was going to announce his decision of where he was going to play next year in an hour-long TV show reinforced the notion that Cleveland had “an edge,” since few here believed that James would use such a special to turn his back on fans who had been so supportive of him. But that’s just what he did, after delegating to one of his minions the task of telling the Cavs, moments before he went on the air, that he was going to Miami, and delaying the announcement of his decision until the time for acquiring free agents who might enable the Cavaliers to soften the blow of his departure had largely passed.
More to the point, an expectation of loyalty from hometown athletes, far from being indicative of “collectivism” or “racism,” is simply part of human nature. Human beings are not atomistic individuals but social beings who naturally organize themselves into groups, a process that includes expectations of loyalty from members of the group. Oliva’s incredulity at the reaction to James’ decision to leave Cleveland is even more surprising than his claim that professional athletes are somehow victims of “racism.”
Unlike Oliva, Hoste does not deny the reality of group loyalty; he just doesn’t like the group loyalties Americans actually have. When Hoste compares Cleveland sports fans unfavorably to ethnic groups struggling for a homeland, he erroneously concludes that it is impossible for someone to care about his city’s sports teams and something as weighty as “the well-being of their people and its history.” In fact, love of one’s home city and region is the precursor to love of nation, and it is difficult to see how a healthy, rooted patriotism arises apart from an attachment to one’s native place. Caring about the fortunes of one’s hometown’s sports teams is often part of caring about one’s hometown; indeed, children often learn about caring for their hometowns by rooting for its sport teams.
In suggesting that some Americans pay too much attention to professional sports, Hoste is closer to the mark than Oliva and his belief that professional athletes are victims of “racism.” However, Hoste overstates the case. It is possible to take an interest in professional sports and also take an interest in politics; millions of Americans do. It is also odd that Hoste thinks the alternative to participation in fandom should be espousal of “anti-statist positions,” since the excesses of professional sports have nothing at all to do with “statism.” “The state” did not decree the existence of ESPN, the network that broadcast LeBron James’ decision, sports talk radio, and weekends filled with nearly round-the-clock sports coverage: all of these came into existence because of market forces.
Indeed, an argument can be made that the free market has been principally responsible for the degradation of professional sports over the last few decades. Free agency for players has led to enormous salaries for athletes, salaries that have fueled player arrogance. Before players could entertain the hope of earning enough money in a few years to live lavishly for the rest of their lives, they sought instead to parlay the good will earned in the communities in which they played to be able to operate businesses in those communities following their retirement from sports. Growing up, my family would drive past the dry-cleaning store operated by Mike Garcia whenever we visited my Dad’s parents. Mike Garcia, my Dad told me, was one of the outstanding pitchers for the Indians in the 1950's, a teammate of Hall of Fame pitchers Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, and Early Wynn. When I moved back to Cleveland after law school, my commute regularly took me past the furniture store operated by Browns Hall of Fame receiver Dante Lavelli, and my wife attended Berea High School with the children of Lou Groza, another Browns Hall of Famer, who made his living as an insurance agent after leaving the Browns. I can’t help but think that, as a culture, we’d be better if our athletes emulated the likes of Garcia, Lavelli, and Groza rather than the many athletes today who long to be nothing more than highly priced mercenaries. From the fan perspective, too, player free agency has largely destroyed one of the joys of being a fan, the ability to watch a player develop his talents with one team and spend his entire career with that team.
Then there is the problem of what might be termed owner free agency, with the owners of sports teams betraying fans by moving their franchises to other cities for more money, as Art Modell did with the Cleveland Browns, or using the threat of such a move to extract money from local governments, as countless owners have done. One city that never has to worry about the hometown team leaving is Green Bay, since the Packers are municipally owned. The problem of disloyal owners can also be curbed by opprobrium, but libertarian ideologues are as dismayed by such opprobrium as they are by municipal ownership, as Skip Oliva’s defense of LeBron James reminds us.
It is hard not to get discouraged by professional sports today. But I still count myself a Cleveland sports fan, for both the excitement and the camaraderie following a team can bring. In a country where the sense of community is disappearing, sports at its best can still bring communities together. On August 31, 2004, two close friends and I went to a sports bar to play trivia. The Indians were on TV, playing the Yankees, but they had no realistic shot of making the playoffs and few people in the bar were giving the game their undivided attention. But as the Indians kept scoring runs, more of us started watching the game intently. By the time the score was 17 to 0 or so, all of us were watching the game intently, cheering loudly as the score finally reached 22 to 0, a record loss for the Yankees. We were cheering because we were Clevelanders and we knew what a hated rival the Yankees had been, thanks to fathers who told us about players like Mike Garcia. It is a shame that LeBron James chose to have this generation of Cleveland fathers pass along a different sort of story to their sons, and a shame that ideologues with no understanding of loyalty chose to criticize those fathers for doing so.
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Unfortunately, many of the professional athletes in my area are thugs. I could recount stories of their behavior but the stories would lose perspicuity without going into detail and by going into detail the stories might be unsuitable for polite conversation. As far as I know, none of these thugs is local and if they were to leave our crime rate would slightly decline (although the decline would be insubstantial in the grand scheme of things).
Anyway, I remember the libertarian Robert Nozick once praising professional sports as the epitome of the market place. The opera, he maintained, because it cannot survive without subsidies, should go the way of the dinosaur. The aesthetic of libertarianism is WalMart and McDonalds. It's certainly uglier than the socialism practiced in smaller European countries.
I'm not writing this to denigrate sports. Athletic contests obviously have an important function in society, and have had so since the days of the Greeks, but their commercialization is unfortunate and at times makes them unbearable. Without the rife commercialization, the LeBron story would not exist.
An excellent post, MAR. Libertarians are almost as ugly as the socialists and communists they hate.
"It is a shame that LeBron James chose to have this generation of Cleveland fathers pass along a different sort of story to their sons, and a shame that ideologues with no understanding of loyalty chose to criticize those fathers for doing so."
I agree Tom, it is a shame. One redeeming feature about this ugly episode is that I never really saw Lebron James as representative of the Cleveland character. (He quit when he was down) For me the Cleveland charachter was best represented by Marty Ball --three yards and a cloud of dust, bitter winds blowing in from the lake in December, the field frigid and covered with ice, while devoted fans in the dog pound went crazy with tough delight. Art Modell, Lebron James, et al. are the new breed of cavalier who think men should live by the bottom line and on bread alone. South Florida is a good place for those types -- I hear it is hotter than hell down there.
Mr. Piatak is brilliant, as usual. I am also a Clevelander, and though not much of a sports fan count myself very lucky indeed to have seen the Indians beat the Yankees in 2004 like a rented mule. I was also lucky enough to see LeBron James score 20-some unanswered points against the Detroit Pistons in a playoff game in one of the greatest individual athletic achievements I have ever seen live. But my attachment to the place I was born in is great enough for me to suffer when my fellow Clevelanders suffer, and suffer they do. I was in utero while my father and grandfather were at the stadium in 1964 watching Jim Brown and his teammates beat the Colts. Soon after, I was born in a world in which a Cleveland sports team would never again win a championship. It was also a world in which Ted Kennedy was negotiating an immigration policy and LBJ was negotiating a trade policy which would profoundly change the economic future of my home town and my country. I can understand why libertarians would weigh in on the latter two events which have arguably been devastating to Cleveland, but why they feel obliged to comment on Cleveland’s sports miseries is surprising. It was once pointed out to me that the problem with libertarians is that they expect people to cheer Mr. Potter and boo George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Now, they evidently think that if Herb Brooks was rational, he should have tried to coach for the Russian hockey team in 1980 instead of sticking with a bunch of “losers.” LeBron James is of course a free man, and the owners of the Cavs and the fine people of Cleveland realize this fact just as much as Jessie Jackson does. We are just profoundly disappointed and saddened that a man who professed an attachment and love for Cleveland that seemed as great as ours has shown us he does not feel that way after all. He will take his talents to Miami, which will no doubt soon be adding several basketball championships to their Super Bowl and World Series championships. I will still root for Cleveland, to the extent I root at all. It does give me some comfort that if Cleveland somehow wins a basketball championship next year in a showdown with Miami it will have the makings of a great movie, whereas if Miami wins it will be met with a shrug and an “of course.”
Oh cmon guys libertarians have nothing to do with LeBron James, although I confess I think this generation of libertarians might be the dumbest yet.
Daniel,
Anarchists are a rather coloful lot, but they can not be taken seriously. Their theology is private interpretation, their philosophy is every man for himself, and their culture is like the tower of babble where language, custom, blood and soil mean absolutely nothing and the word love is reduced to a strong desire or inclination. No sacrifice, no "self" denial, or at least no dieing to self for something outside the self,--- such as family, friends or neighbors and therefore nothing to receive and nothing to hand on. It is a philosophy of life at least as barren and lonely as a country road in Georgia on the hottest summmer day!!! I do not say it is a life that cannot be tried or lived to the bitter end.(The Existentialist embraced it along with death) I simply say that even on his worst day, Don Quixote was a more noble "human" being than these types.
Let me see. Brooklyn Dodgers leave loyal fans in Brooklyn and head for Los Angeles. Some old timers are still hurting.
Braves desert Boston for Milwaukee, and then Atlanta.
A's desert Philly for Kansas City, then desert KC for Oakland.
Rams desert L.A. for St. Louis.
Colts desert Baltimore for Indy.
Brett Favre breaks Green Bay's heart and heads for NY Jets, then desesrts Jets to don the Vikings purple.
Whirlpool deserts Galesburg, IL and heads to Mexico. Ditto Amerock and many others.
I could go on. These are business decisions.
LeBron James obviously doesn't think Cleveland is the city where he can, in the long run, maximize his earning potential and media exposure.
Why is that anyone's concern but his?
That's business. Capitalism is the force of creative destruction and the American Way.
Let me see. Brooklyn Dodgers leave loyal fans in Brooklyn and head for Los Angeles. Some old timers are still hurting.
Braves desert Boston for Milwaukee, and then Atlanta.
A's desert Philly for Kansas City, then desert KC for Oakland.
Rams desert L.A. for St. Louis.
Colts desert Baltimore for Indy.
Brett Favre breaks Green Bay's heart and heads for NY Jets, then deserts Jets to don the Vikings purple.
Whirlpool deserts Galesburg, IL and heads to Mexico. Ditto Amerock and many others.
I could go on. These are business decisions.
LeBron James obviously doesn't think Cleveland is the city where he can, in the long run, maximize his earning potential and media exposure.
Why is that anyone's concern but his?
That's business. Capitalism is the force of creative destruction and the American Way.
"LeBron James obviously doesn’t think Cleveland is the city where he can, in the long run, maximize his earning potential and media exposure.
Why is that anyone’s concern but his?"
According to "Capitalism is the force of creative destruction and the American Way" it is nobody's business but his. And if the fans in Cleveland who helped pay is salary and support the NBA want to call him a traitor to their fair city and a greedy bleeder of the game that is their business as well. As the old Marine sergeant wouldorder when the enemy was within the wire, "Every man for himself." It is the American way????
Mr. Sweeney,
Honestly my favorite amateur/college coach was Bob Knight. He recently remarked concerning professional sports, that if the NBA was playing on Channel 5 and there was a documentary about frogs mating on channel 6, he would prefer to watch the frog show even if the reception on channel 6 was a little fuzzy. I tend to agree with him.
Perhaps creative destruction is necessary, but it is very painful to be the destroyed, and at the risk of sounding like a whiner,Cleveland is often disproportionately destroyed both economically and athletically.
Robert,
Now I think youre probably right. How many true thinkers do they have in their corner? I daresay you could count them on one hand; Gordan, Raico, Hoppe, and Raimondo but the rest are just boring to me now.
To Mr. Piatak:
I believe, on principle, in patriotism and loyalty. I view the outsourcing of American jobs, for example, as disloyal and a rather shallow policy that neglects many important facets of life. And viewed from that perspective, James' decision was most certainly betrayal. But the main people to blame, in my rather informed view of basketball, are the front-office people of the Cleveland Cavaliers. They were - in terms of forming a team that could beat the best during the playoffs - utterly incompetent over the past 3 seasons.
To have believed that a crew of mediocrity like Delonte West, Mo Williams, Anthony Parker, and Antawn Jamison was "doing everything they could possibly do" to help LeBron win the title was shear foolishness. They had an opportunity to trade for Amare Stoudemire, and Allen Iverson pretty much begged them to let him be on their team for less than a million in salary (the 76ers only paid him $650,000 after he came back from his 1-week "retirement"). Also, Tracy McGrady was willing to take a paycut each of the last two seasons to play with LeBron, and Danny Ferry stupidly turned him down.
Contrary to what many would say, getting those guys (whether 1 of them or all 3) would have worked and it would have made Cleveland a legitimate "team" in the sense that when they played someone like Boston or Orlando, it wouldn't look like 1 on 5. You might say that LeBron gave up against Boston, but I've never seen someone try harder than he did last year against Orlando, and he looked like he was by himself with no one capable of helping him at all the crucial moments.
People say he gave up in Game 5, but what are you asking him to do in order to beat Boston? 35 points, 14 rebounds, and 12 assists just so your team can win by 6? Imagine saying to someone on your team, "all you have to do for us to beat this team 4 times is produce 4 legendary playoff performances". That simply is not fair. He shouldn't have to get a triple-double including 30+ points, or score 21 points in a single quarter so his team can beat one of the best teams in a single playoff game. How about Game 7 at Boston two years ago when he played incredible, scoring 45 points? He scored half of Cleveland's points, put every ounce of effort into winning, and they still lost. If anyone wants to tell me that he wasn't trying at that time, they're completely off the mark.
LeBron may have left even if they did win the title, but Cleveland put together a pretty sorry team for the purposes of accomplishing that goal. And had they won, LeBron's attitude might have been a while lot different.
What's amazing to me, as someone who follows basketball quite a bit, is that everyone is either condemning LeBron or Dan Gilbert. The true culprit is Danny Ferry, the General Manager. Dan Gilbert is just a rich guy who loves his franchise (and region, as a Midwesterner) and wants to win. He has no clue how to evaluate talent, but he'll throw money at anything that his hired experts tell him will work. He put all his trust in Danny Ferry (and to a lesser extent Mike Brown), who is one of those smug prigs who thinks he has it all figured out when he doesn't, and the poor personnel decisions of Ferry sunk all the high hopes of LeBron helping Cleveland win a championship.
In conclusion, LeBron was disloyal but, on a personal level, I can understand why the shear incompetence of the Cavaliers in making personnel decisions the past 3 seasons got to him. They completely failed to build on his awesome play in taking them to the 2007 finals.
I REALLY wish that non-Clevelanders would stop voicing their opinions on something they know absolutely nothing about. It isn't about business, it isn't about racism is any way, shape or form, it isn't political, it is all about the heart and soul of Cleveland. Our city is made up of the most incredible mix of people from all different ethnic backgrounds and economic levels. One thing that brings everyone, and I mean everyone together is the love of our city's professional sports teams. Our fans are known world-wide for their spirit and allegience to their teams (no, I don't mean the single bottle throwing incident, I mean the decades of unwavering devotion)... there is no other NFL team that has a network of "Browns Backers" as widespread as the Cleveland Browns have traditionally had. There is no other professional team logo more well known than Chief Wahoo. Clevelanders want a championship for their city as much as LeBron James does. He grew up here and he "gets it". He knows how we feel and he has the desire to obtain that championship ring for himself. Heaven knows that LeBron has earned enough money already. I haven't heard him say that his decision to go to Miami is about anything other than a desire to win. I don't think that any Clevelanders begrudge him that ring. We just wish that he could have shared his victories with us. I wish LeBron well, and hope that he can share his career highlights with his children some day. However, I will continue to share the wonderful times I have experienced at "snow bowl" Browns games, the World Series playoff games at Jacobs Field where nobody wanted to go home, we just wanted to stay in the stadium because the feeling of victory was in the air. The All-Star game where our own Sandy Alomar was honored as VIP of the game. I will also share my memories of the filming of "Major League" at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium where my friends and I sat in the stands while they filmed the overhead shots of the crowd back in the days when the Indians were the laughing stock of Major League Baseball. I love my Cleveland sports teams whether they win or lose. I scraped up dirt from the end zone and I rescued some old, uncomfortable Cleveland Municipal Stadium seats for the sake of tradition and I pray that in my lifetime I see this city get the positive recognition it deserves. Cleveland is far from being a city of "losers". It is truly a city of loyal, hardworking, genuine people who know what the words community, tradition and honor mean.
I find it amusing that some folks are championing unrestrained capitalism here in support of Lebron's departure to Miami. Professional sports and capitalism?
Let's see... in all but a couple of cities the billionaire owners get their playpens funded almost entirely by taxpayers. Here in nearby Pittsburgh - whose teams I root for so I write this as a fan, not a sports hater - even the sports-mad populace voted heavily against the referendum to build not one but two new stadiums to replace Three Rivers Stadium whiched housed both the baseball Pirates and football Steelers; not that it mattered, because the pols did an end run around it by grabbing regional development dollars and using their sycophants in the media to tell everyone it "won't cost you any more tax dollars!" Except folks now wonder why the libraries are broke, crumbling and understaffed, etc.
So a few years later owners of both teams have seen the value of their franchises soar, while the old stadium -opened in 1970 at a cost of $35 million - was imploded; oh by the way that stadium was by then $40 plus million in debt!
If the small business I work for, or Chronicles Magazine for that matter, wanted a full section of newsprint each day along with five minutes on every TV newscast to promote our businesses we could have it - but only after opening our checkbooks! We won't get it for free, as these teams do.
Since Pittsburgh doesn't have a basketball squad I also root for the Cavs, so I join Mr. Piatak in lamenting the departure of "King James" from the Cleveland. Much of professional sports disturbs me greatly, but it does have the effect of bringing friends and family together for fellowship and kinship, so there are positive outcomes from it. If however, these closed shops known as professional sports leagues are truly capitalism, then Heaven help us.
I remember avidly watching the Yankees and Dodgers in the 1978 world series as a kid, and it seemed to me to be a competition between two teams from two great American cities, and that is one of the things that made it so exciting. I thought it so great because I thought the teams were FROM somewhere. Then I found out that the LA Dodgers had been the Brooklyn Dodgers and just moved to LA. Now they seemed to be from nowhere, and that made the game lose a lot of it's appeal. In the next few years I turned my back on professional baseball as all those teams turned their backs on their home towns. It seemed like a rootless game with no purpose except money.
After player strikes, team moves, free agency, outrageous salaries, government subsidies, illegal drugs, assaults on coaches, performance enhancing drugs, corked bats, league-modified baseballs to up the number of homers, corporate ownership, lack of loyalty on the part of both owners and players, sex scandals, (need I go on?), I no longer closely follow professional sports.
Oh sure, if I hear the local team won, yes, I'm happy. If they lose, oh well. I prefer to actually play sports myself or support the local high schools teams, along with my college alma mater.
It saddens me to see people waste what little time God grants us here on earth worrying about whether some team wins or loses that is owned by some global corporation or egotistical owner and that fields a team of players most of who are not locals. None of them give a hoot about the local fans.
I am more astonished that while entire towns are about to empty civic services like police and garbage disposal because they ran out of money and once great cities turn to abandoned ghost towns in the United States (and even in Britain, Spain, and other places)...
the mainstream American media is focusing on LeBron James!
And to top it off, of all people - OF ALL PEOPLE - Lew Rockwell joins in on that mainstream media shenanigans of talking about a disloyal sports star. Come on, man, break off from that media hypnotisation and distraction. That's why you started your own website!
I am not suggesting that we must all be depressed and worry about serious matters 24/7, and I am not suggesting we must all have an obsessive and complete rejection of mainstream media (which is still generally meant more for upper middle class mediocrity's infotainment amusement) - but I really wish that bone-thrown-to-puppies distraction issues were seen as such more often.
Allen raises a good point. As a child I was really shocked and saddened when I found out that the people on Cleveland teams were very rarely from Cleveland. When there is a star from the region, like Bernie Kosar or LeBron James, it is especially exciting. Soccer is a wretched little sport I have no interest in, but the one thing it seems to have going for it is the nationalism it instills in even the most globalist of countries. But when I heard the German coach brag about how many players on his team were from other countries, I thought "what the hell is the point?" I guess they are just LeBrons gone global.
This article reminded me of a program I got as a gift when I was a kid. My family and I are huge Philadelphia Flyers and hockey fans, and one day as a gift my grandfather bought me a program from an antique store of the 1934 Atlantic City Seagulls. In the back of the program were listed the names and offseason occupations of the players. I will always remember one mans occupation was listed as "goldminer". As a kid, I couldnt understand how pro athletes would have to work outside of their sports. My father told me that those were the days when athletes werent spoiled brats who believed that they deserved to be paid millions upon millions and team loyalty actually meant something.
Even more insane than the James decision, check out the Illya Kovalchuk saga in the NHL right now. It makes me want to vomit when I see how the NHL has begun turning into the NBA thanks to the ex-NBA vice commissioner Gary Bettman.
For those of you who want a good laugh, google Steve Carrels spoof of the Lebron James decision.
I neither know nor much care about LeBron James, but in this short phrase Mr. Piatak sums up the most bizarre conviction of many libertarians:
"he is entitled to do so without being criticized"
Has any libertarian ever addressed this?
That is, the oddity of saying not only should government not prefer, say, Mom & Pop stores over Wal-Mart, but that it is somehow immoral to have and advocate such a preference?
Cleveland never should have traded Colavito to Detroit.
#3 "South Florida is a good place for those types"
I read Ernest Byner took the Jax Jaguar running back coach job earlier this year--but that would be North Florida, I do suppose.
To quote my friend Tom:
"Cleveland last won a championship in any major sport in December 1964, when the Browns beat the Baltimore Colts to win the NFL championship."
Some of us who grew up in Baltimore would prefer not be reminded of this, thank you very much.
We prefer to remember these two games:
December 29, 1968 - NFL Championship - Baltimore Colts 34, Cleveland 0
December 26, 1971 - Divisional Playoff - Baltimore Colts 20, Cleveland 3.
I was at one of these games, but I cannot remember which one.
I shouldn't want to bring up any nightmares for Tom Piatak, but I distinctly remember the Browns circa 1980 losing the AFC championship in Cleveland to Oakland. The weather was almost as dreadful as the famous Green Bay-Dallas Ice Bowl. The temperature hovered at about zero and the winds were gale force. At game's end, the Browns decided not to trust Don Cockroft(one of the last straight-toe kickers) to kick a 20 year field goal to win the game. Instead, Brian Sipe threw a pass into the end zone that was intercepted, crushing the Browns' hopes.
Cort @ 23:
You know, I wrote "Baltimore Colts" with you in mind, as a reminder to younger readers that that's where the Colts were from, and that's where they should have stayed. Ironically, before turning the Cleveland Browns into the Baltimore Colts, Art Modell had been quite critical of Irsay's moving the Colts to Baltimore, and once a year he invited the Baltimore Colts Marching Band to perform at Municipal Stadium at halftime. My admiration for Johnny Unitas only increased when he told the Indianapolis Colts to take his name out of their record book, since he had been a Baltimore Colt, never an Indianapolis Colt.
Mr. Leaberry @ 24:
I remember it well, a horrible end to a wonderful season. It is universally known in Cleveland by the play Sipe called leading to the interception, "Red Right 88."
I have proof that when it comes to sports, at least in the movies, liberty and tradition do mix. Check out a 1998 movie, "Baseketball" (not a typo). It was written and produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, those two "South Park" guys. It embodies the spirit of freewheeling liberty, but will warm your hometown heart as well.
Mr. Bowen,
I meant no disrespect to the Floridian character, just the fact that it is hot down there. Faulkner always mentioned the suffocating and opressive heat in the South, and I too have endured it every summer for over fifty years. That's why we drink iced tea or snow-cones with a lot of bourbon, some sugar syrup,and a big clump of mint, so the heat doesn't hurt so bad. The North has its own problems with long winters and that freezing type of hate and resentment they have towards light and the sunny side of life. It is ironic that Southerners always tried to freeze the North out of existence, while the North always tried to burn the South to the ground.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.
In New Orleans, where the snow-cone machine was invented, we call them "snowballs," not the more correctly descriptive "snow- cones." No one knows why. But we are very proud of both facts - technological and philological.
My father grew up a Tulane fan because he lived in uptown New Orleans and could take the St. Charles Avenue streetcar to the Tulane campus and walk to old Tulane Stadium. My mother grew up an LSU fan, because she was from rural Louisiana, and it was required to hate New Orleans and all its works. At one time (long ago), Tulane was LSU's great rival, and therefore bayou Acadian and red-clay Baptist alike hated Tulane.
It was a good world to grow up in.
While trivia-addled denizens of sports bars sob in their beer over the "loss" of another ball-hogging showboater whose success is based on the fact that he can jump higher than the others, Paris today is the fitting stage for the last hurrah of perhaps the greatest athlete the world has ever seen.
Two days ago, the fortunate few who watched him emerge from the ghostly mists at 7,000 feet elevation atop the Col du Tourmalet, the highest paved road in the French Pyrenees, still charging, still forcing men fifteen years younger to give their all to stay with him, knew they were watching the passing of greatness. This cancer survivor, near death a few years ago, came back not only to compete again in the most grueling athletic event in sports, the Tour de France, but to win it an unheard of seven times. I speak, of course, of Lance Armstrong, an athlete who can be mentioned in the same breath as Pheidippides, and a story that a father can be proud to relate to his son.
I beg pardon: the Tour de France does not enter Paris til Sunday.
Mercenary athletics is not a healthy thing for any society. Any society where "ten people move, and ten thousand do nothing" and ten million more watch them on little screens is a culture that has serious trouble coming to it.
Would that we could restore the days where actors, mercenary athletes and others of the lower orders were not allowed inside the city walls. Those were sane times.