“The Mistake on the Lake…”
“The Factory of Sadness…”
“The Cleveland Curse…”
It’s kind of a running joke at this point. The Cavs are chasing a championship, but stand almost no chance of coming out on top of the dominant West. The Indians seem to be constantly listed as a “surprise team” at the beginning of every year but just can’t seem to get things going right. The Browns are… sigh.
They call it the Cleveland Curse. The last trophy to enter Cleveland came by way of the Browns in 1962. That’s over 50 years ago, for those who don’t want to do the math. For 50 years, loyal Cleveland fans have sat eagerly by -- waiting, hoping, praying – for another sweet taste of victory. We sit through brutal blizzards in November, drenching rain in June and a year-round atmospheric condition where crippling depression manifests itself into something you can feel in the air (no, don’t try to verify that).
But you know what? We keep doing it.
People from around Cleveland are, if nothing else, hardy. Persistent. Determined. It takes guts to live in an area of the country where it can be sunny and 70 then pouring and storming, only to leave you with three inches of snow on the ground when you wake up. But we’re used to it. We deal with hardship in stride, take it on the chin and keep on walking. We’re tough. We’re bred from coal miners and steel workers. We come from railroaders and farmers. Our hands get dirty, man, and that’s the way we like it. Things are seldom easy but, hey, that’s life, and the light at the end of the tunnel will be all the more worth it when everything’s said and done.
As a boy, I learned football from my grandpa. My brother taught me the intricacies of basketball while we were in high school. I came to appreciate baseball during the summer after my freshman year of college. Growing up in the middle of nowhere -- my high school was neighbored only by cornfields and, uh, more cornfields -- life wasn’t always easy. The nearest Walmart was a 20-minute drive to the next town over. Our main attraction was an out-of-service railroad depot and a Clay Museum. Half of my class came to school wearing rubber boots and left chewin’ tobacco in the drinking fountains. Sometimes, I feared the amount of potholes in the backroads outnumbered the amount of citizens. I didn’t grow up with the coolest clothes or the newest gadgets or even cable. Things got hard sometimes, but I saw my parents deal with it in stride, take it on the chin and keep on walking. What else could I do but … the same?
Life gets tough sometimes, but if you don’t go sit in the stands and hope that you’re eventually going to win, you’re missing out.
Where I’m from, our lives are kind of reflected by our teams. We don’t always win. We’re not the darlings of the country. Sometimes, we’re even the joke. But -- aside from the occasional drunken Texan who stumbles in with promises of “fixing things” only to mess around and leave when he gets bored (that’s a parallel to the oil industry. And, ya know, Johnny) -- we’re the hardest working, most determined people you’re ever likely to meet. Northeastern Ohio is a rough place to live, but we’re just as rough. And that’s not going to change any time soon.
So, yeah.
They may call it “The Mistake on the Lake.”
They may call it “The Factory of Sadness.”
They may call it “The Cleveland Curse.”
But us? We don’t give up that easily. We’ve always believed in ourselves. I guess that’s why we call it “Believeland.”
