White-on-brown uniforms work, Browns to wear them again in Week 7
October 22, 2015Tristan Thompson, Johnny Manziel, and Coheed and Cambria: While We’re Waiting…
October 23, 2015Don’t give up on them.
Don’t give up on the Cleveland Browns. Please. I’m not asking you to think they’re good. I’m not asking you to believe in Ray Farmer. I’m not asking you to forgive Johnny Manziel or excuse Justin Gilbert or ignore Donte Whitner’s birthdate. I’m not asking you to buy into Josh McCown, even for one year. I’m not asking you to give Dwayne Bowe a break, because that just would be dishonest. I’m not asking you to stop complaining, even if I grow tired of it sometimes. I’m not asking you to think they don’t suck because, to put it crudely and over-simply, they do.
But I am asking you not to give up. Not completely. Not yet. (This applies to the Indians and Cavs too. Those franchises happen to be better and don’t inspire as much rage, hence the Browns opening.)
I’m sitting in my apartment right now, the first place I’ve ever lived that actually includes Cleveland in the address, and I’m looking at my computer through tear-fogged eyes. That last part is the case for a few reasons. It started — in the short term, anyway; I haven’t the time or energy to go all the way back — when I read something that Zach Lowe wrote called “Confessions of a Former Diehard” about the New York Mets.
Zach Lowe is a basketball writer. He writes about basketball for Grantland. That’s his job and what he does. He isn’t a fan or a blogger. He doesn’t have a favorite team, at least nothing close to a clear one. He covers the league objectively, analyzing its trends and doing his best to project a path for its future. He cut his teeth in journalism on law, crime, and government, and it seems that he seeks to approach the NBA with all the predispositions of an honest jury. He isn’t dispassionate toward the game — quite the opposite — but he is toward who wins and who loses.
But here he is Thursday night, publishing something about baseball. Okay, I’ll bite.
I had no idea what to expect. It was weird going to Grantland’s website and seeing his byline under the 2015 MLB PLAYOFFS category. Without doing a deep dive into his archives, I say confidently that this is the first non-basketball thing he’s written since he moved from Sports Illustrated to Grantland around this time three years ago. Other Grantlanders will wade into other waters. NFL writer Bill Barnwell writes about soccer and/or baseball. Katie Baker jumps from NHL to movies to TV. Shea Serrano writes about how many people Kate Winslet murdered in Titanic and when Will Smith stopped being cool. The fences between topics seem low, and that seems like a good thing. But still; Zach Lowe writes about basketball. So it’s weird.
He wrote about growing up a New York Mets fan growing up in Connecticut. His old man grew up in New Hampshire rooting for the Celtics and Red Sox, but suggested that maybe young Zach should pick another baseball team, maybe an NL club. He glommed onto the Mets early, and off he went.
He wrote about trying to follow the Mets while away at college and talking about them with suddenly distant friends. He wrote about staying up way too late to watch a game in extra innings, then waking up the whole house to tell them that Todd Hundley hit a walkoff dinger. He wrote about all of the little things that you notice and savor about the players you watch every day, about how you pick up their tics and they grow more familiar. I’ll shout until the cows come home that sports fandom is an objectively silly thing, but we form relationships with these teams and players. Real, actual relationships. It’s absolutely bizarre, and it’s completely real.
These sports and these teams become sturdy walls we can lean on. They provide comfort, if not always immediately. Lowe wrote about watching the Mets during summers home from college when friends had moved away, times when home somehow feels like a lonely place. Everyone has felt that, no? The circumstances may differ, but the phenomenon is the same. Home can be lonely, from roughly ages 12 to death. People part ways and friendships become less vibrant despite promises that they won’t. Nights out come in.
And in times like those, sports can be a damn powerful thing. I’m certain that I’m projecting things onto my boy Zach here, but I digress. Some excerpts:
It was when I was home from college during the summers of 1996, 1997, and 1998 — peaking with that Astros game — that the Mets began to mean something even deeper to me. Like a lot of college kids, I lost touch with most of my high school friends. I saw them now and then when we were all home, but those get-togethers petered out as we got older. I was home most nights after working my day job as a lifeguard and water polo coach, and I’d set up shop after dinner in the downstairs TV room — alone. The games were too serious to watch with my parents, and I needed access to a computer so I could email my college buddies…
I could have been lonely in those summers, but the Mets became my refuge. I experienced that weird sensation where you get to know the players’ habits so well that you almost feel like you understand them as people…
I spent more time with those Mets during those summers than I did with human beings I actually knew.
Um, yes. Been there, bro. BEEN. THERE. BRO. There was a stretch when I was in high school — maybe some middle school too, my memory of that time is worryingly hazy — during which I now realize that I was depressed. Nothing sexy, no handfuls of pills washed down with gin or hopeful naps behind 18-wheelers, just garden variety depression. Fairly standard stuff, I’m afraid. Parents divorced, sleeping too much, mood sullen, grades in the shitter. Unwelcome life events and adolescence make for a lousy cocktail. My parents were keen to it at the time and wanted to help, but I didn’t want it. It was fine. I was fine.
I spent a great many nights in the basement. I spent a great many nights by myself. There was a TV down there, and there was a computer down there, and there was a PlayStation down there. I didn’t need much more, except to sneak upstairs to load up on crap sustenance. I would just zone out. Lots of video games in those days. There were a few years when I would get both NCAA Football and Madden because you could actually load your college players into your pro draft. It was the coolest thing in the world. Problem was, NCAA never had real player names because of licensing issues and whatever bullshit explains why players can’t make any money. There would just be guys like QB #10 (i.e. Vince Young) or RB #5 (i.e. Reggie Bush). You could put the players’ real names in, but you’d have to type in every name by yourself, punching in the letters one at a time on a clumsy interface.
I fell in love with Madden‘s franchise mode because that’s the only way the Browns could ever be good
I fell in love with Madden‘s franchise mode because that’s the only way the Browns could ever be good
So what I would do is, I would print out page after page after page of college football rosters, dozens of teams, always starting with Ohio State and then working down through the top 25 and the major conferences. I would take those stacks of rosters, and I would go one by one entering the names into the NCAA video game, making sure that details like jersey number, height, weight, and skin tone were all accurate. And I would do that for every single player on the roster. And I would do that for dozens of teams. For the star players, I might edit their attributes to better approximate what I thought of their abilities. In all, I must have entered thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of player names into that video game. If that sounds like the biggest waste of time in the world, then your hearing is just fine.1
I would play NCAA for a while, and when a season was over I could export a draft class. Then I could import said draft class into Madden and I could draft the players I just played with in the college game to my new team in the pro game. Then I could play with those players. I spent hours of my life for that payoff.
This has turned into a terrible tangent, but there’s a point. I was so into those video games because I was so into the real-life teams. I fell in love with Madden‘s franchise mode because that’s the only way the Browns could ever be good. I imported my own draftees so I could always draft the best players, because that’s the only way the Browns could ever get it right. I could take control of Ohio State in NCAA and turn Tresselball on its head by running trick plays and recruiting crap punters. It was a fantasy just as much as any role-playing game, and it was born out of my love of sport.
I don’t have many clear memories of nights spent in that basement, but one night sticks out. May 22, 2003. The night of the NBA Draft lottery. Need I say any more? The night the ping-pong balls fell Cleveland’s way. The night the Cavs got the No. 1 pick. The night that guaranteed that LeBron James would be a Cleveland Cavalier. I think I jumped up and screamed when NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik — Russ Granik, you beautiful bastard — held up the card indicating that the Grizzlies got the No. 2 pick. One card and one team left: No. 1 and Cleveland Cavaliers. What?
Point is, I was a lonely miserable idiot for a while, and sports pulled me through it. Whether it was watching actual games or re-enacting them as video games — or the occasion where I got my lazy ass off the couch to actually play them — they provided solace. I didn’t have to talk to them. I didn’t have to explain myself to them. They were just there for me, like a good dog. I knew more about sports than I knew about anything. (Certainly, if it isn’t already abundantly clear, than I knew about the fairer sex.)
Reading that Zach Lowe had a similar experience — similar in my head, anyway; just go with me here — was heartening. It was especially heartening because the Mets are in the World Series for the first time since 2000. It was all the more heartening to read Lowe, who I always knew as an analyst rather than fan, rekindling his fandom and discovering anew the singular joy of being a sports fan.
If you read his piece, you know I’m lying. He is happy for the Mets, yes, but it isn’t the same as those summers home from college.
I had spent years envisioning this moment — the Mets ruling the city, blitzing through the playoffs, poised for a long run of dominance. This is the exact thing for which you invest your time and heartache. This is the payoff.
And I’m out.
I’m so far out that I don’t feel right about coming back in. The enjoyment would feel phony. Real fans draw the deepest satisfaction from living and growing with the players: forgiving their failures, watching their growth, rejoicing in small achievements that only the diehards notice during a random game in June, and finally basking in it with them — very much with them — when it all clicks. One of my best friends from college is a Royals fan, and we made grandiose plans 15 years ago to fly back and forth for games if they ever met in the World Series. It was fanciful — dreams for a reality that would never happen. Now that moment is almost here, but the universe in which those two guys made those plans is long gone.
I made a sports fan choice, and I’m living with it. Almost everyone I know over 35 has given up following at least one of their favorite teams. Life intervenes.
Negotiate that choice carefully. If there is one team that means more to you than the others, hold on to some part of it. Because when they become relevant again, when they finally hit big, it freaking hurts to be on the outside.
Can you even imagine not being part of that when it happens to your favorite team, in any sport? There’s a substantial cross-section of reasonable people who wouldn’t really give a damn, but if you’ve read this far, you are not one of those people. If you’ve read this far, you’re a sports fan. It can be a very dumb thing to identify with, but it can be a beautiful thing. Sports are about belief: in the team, in the spectacle, in each other. They’re about togetherness and pride. Perhaps we as a society should look elsewhere for our heroes and fulfillment, but heaps of us don’t. Whatever the reason, we rally around sports. We rejoice in them together, and grow closer for it.
This is why I ask you not to give up on the Cleveland Browns. Or the Indians, for that matter, or the Cavs, or any team that you grew up rooting for. I’m not asking you to ignore blemishes or start a pep rally. Being informed about the team enough to know who you want to get cut is its own form of fandom. It’s better to hate them than to forget about them, for the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Just don’t give up. Because one day, one of those franchises is going to win it all. And you don’t want to be the one on the outside when it happens.
- A few years later, you could download a fully-named roster in seconds. I’ve never had the heart to calculate how much time I spent doing it myself. Oh my god I’m an idiot. [↩]
75 Comments
Oh and I’m tougher then oribasi. None of you will run me off. It’s a shame that person decided to leave because good or bad at least they contributed which is more then I can say for a lot of the people I read who post comments.
Ok fair enough. If you do go on the national sites though, just please don’t tell anyone you’re from Cleveland, ok? I kid, I kid. Have a good one dude.
Um if you think I’m bad you should try that yourself and see what happens. The good news is these days less and less people care about Cleveland nationally. In fact they almost feel sorry for actual Clevelanders. Key word being almost.
Great article! Slogging through those rosters typing in the player’s data reminds me (to a lesser degree) of the summer I logged all of the Cleveland Indians players’ stats for ‘Tony Larussa Baseball’ on the Sega Genesis because season mode didn’t save your stats, just your standings. Every game – win or loss – ended with me going through the box score, line by line, and updating my players’ stats in my spiral notebook… I did that for over 100 games. It was such an incredible waste of time and on a pretty craptastic video game to boot – so know that you are not alone!
just fyi, I’m not sure oribasi’s departure was voluntary. I think it was WFNY’s early culling of a commenter who consistently and intentionally pooped in the pool. Now the commentary seems more self-regulating with consistent peer pressure to play nicely with the other children.
It was pretty much as such during the Lerner ownership. The only time he poked his head above his ascott was when we complained loudly enough.
That’s unfortunate if true and a shame.
In Michigan they call the annoiversary of the day Darren McCarty caved in Claude Lemieux’s face as “Turtle Day”. Those Avs battles were epic.
My favorites were Probert and Kocur. To this day, sometimes the best cure for the blues is watching a bunch of old Probert and Kocur fights from back in the day. They made some pretty epic Little Caesars commercials too.
My favorite all time “Red Wing” however, was Bruce Martyn, who did the play by play on WJR for a while. Living in an area of Cleveland where I only got 3 channels (if the wind was blowing in the right direction), I never got to see much hockey on TV. Somehow, I was able to pull in WJR, and I have so, so, so many memories of listening to Martyn’s signature “he shoots, he SCORES!” with my Dad that will live with me forever.
Hextall was insane. When I was a kid I thought he was cool, but now I realize he was a psycho. he calmed down by the time he got to the Blue Jackets tho.
I wonder if I know him…I went to school with a kid (he transferred into Orange from Heights (i think)) back in the late 80’s. he was a goalie. hated Patrick Roy. Loved Grant Fuhr.
I wasn’t born when Mike Phipps was around, but Warfield was my Grandfathers favorite player. he had season tickets from the AAFC days until 1984. he told me that when they traded Warfield, he almost gave them up. Saying the name Mike Phipps to my Grandfather was like saying Voldemort to the young’ns out there
just found this clip. Its got Bruce martyn, McCarty and Hextall. Appropriate I think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdUoJt6yPag
With all due respect, Will, I think you present a false choice: always cheer your team and maintain hope or give up and walk away. But we don’t have to treat the entertainment presented for our consumption as wide-eyed thumb suckers or embittered exes.
Little kids can follow sports teams one way, adults another. When I was young I followed the Indians obsessively, internalizing everything I read and heard and thinking they were just a player or a decent break from competing. I accepted every cliche the players said, was warmed by every newspaper canned story angle. Years later, after reading the sordid details in Pluto’s “The Curse of Rocky Colavito”, I was faced with the reality that the team I couldn’t give up on objectively had no chance – no money to make payroll, no farm system, no competence. The managers knew it, the players knew it – hell, the writers knew it, but sports editors use set story lines and children aren’t yet smart enough to read between the lines.
I have never “given up” up on the Cavs, whatever that means. But I sure wasn’t going to pay attention or throw money at them while an owner disemboweled them, or when a GM stripped the team for rebuilding and then screwed up the rebuild – why would I? I’ve never “given up” on the Browns, but I don’t have to believe that they could win with Shurmur coaching, or that Lombardi or Farmer are competent to create a vision and execute it competently. Here’s a more mature fandom for people old enough to have seen countless regimes, players, and coaches all mouth the same platitudes: be objective. Trust what you see. Understand that a coach in training camp saying that a draft pick “is picking things up nicely” or saying in mid-season that the team “is working to get better every day” is as meaningful as the cashier advising you to have a nice day.
Forget the romantic idea that carpet-bagging athletes rep a city they never saw before they played here and will leave soon thereafter. If on some level the team pleases you – even when it’s losing – have at it, enjoy. But if the team sucks in a way that aggravates, especially if they suck consistently, walk away without guilt. You’re the customer, remember? You know when the food or service is bad, you know when the band can’t play, you know when actors can’t act. You know soon enough when a coach can’t coach or a GM doesn’t have a clue (hint: the Browns under Marty and Belichik started playing differently almost immediately, even if they didn’t win right away; the minor leaguers under Hank Peters were making headlines well before they got to The Show and turned the team around). You can come back and cheer when you like what you see. No guilt, no regrets. The onus is on the team. Loyalty in entertainment must be earned. We owe nothing.
Mac was a beast!
i remember that well!
Channeling my Simpsons’ voice: Banned for life!
So far the self-regulation works pretty well in this forum (and frankly there are only a few dbags we can and usually do steer around) but good to know trolls can eventually be banished by WFNY to the Island of Misfit Commenters.
Yeah hes not in too good of shape these days. Hope he gets healthy.
TRS is a browns fan whether he admits it or not … that’s why he’s over here. it is much too easy to be a patriots fan … now , if you want a real challenge , be a browns fan.
that settles it … i am voting for HARV as our next president !
Oh hadn’t heard a few years back I knew a girl who knew him I think he was having problems then but that was last I heard. Anyways we better watch talking about other teams is frowned upon in here these days.
if you shower everyday, then the day you don’t, you notice the stench and are disgusted.
if you haven’t showered for a year, the first moments of cleanliness will be glorious.
hi MG … have you actually tried this & are speaking from experience ??
Im a WFNY OG. I do as I please LMFAO
http://media0.giphy.com/media/1i0QjPGJjCn9m/giphy.gif
I never made it to a full year 🙂
It’s funny…when I first saw the title of this article I assumed it would be about the Indians, not the Browns. The fact is, just the way the demographics and fanbase of the NFL works…the Browns will *always* have support in this city, especially if they start having winning seasons. I don’t think you ever have to worry about fans permanently deserting the Browns at an unrecoverable level.
I do think you have to worry about that with the Indians, however. In recent years, it’s been a major struggle to get anyone downtown to the ballpark after opening day…EVEN if the Indians have a winning record. That’s alarming. There are a lot of factors at play here, many of them having to do with economics…but unless something chances, there is a very real chance that in 10-15 years Cleveland will not have a MLB team anymore.