Fuck Yeah, Cleveland!

I found this article on the web awhile ago… written about a guy who dislikes sports.  I have tweaked it below to fit any of the Cleveland followers who do not care about sports, which seem to be the minority but are still just as important!!!  No offense to the fans of course, we have mad respect for you all, too!

Cleveland and Sports… Meh…

I admit it. I don’t carry my weight in the company of Clevelanders. I don’t discuss sports.

For most Clevelanders, talking sports is as basic and natural a transaction as watching TV, tossing back beer or going to the bathroom. It’s a universally understood way for fellow Cleveland residents to structure interactions, for friends and family to build bonds.

I only wish I could be involved in the dime-store philosophizing, the displays of technical sophistication, the vicarious passions of virtuosity, victory and defeat. There is a sweetness to this tradition of caring so much and so artfully about something that matters so little. And to be so passionate about something despite disappointment is of course, admirable. It gives all Clevelanders a sense of belonging and unity.

The extent to which sports mean nothing to me measures my alienation from my culture, but I can’t help it; when talk turns to the most fundamental bond of our community, my overwhelming response is tedium.

This means I spend a significant part of my life maneuvering around the issue. Confined spaces such as elevators in Tower City, where athletics conversation can’t be escaped, make me anxious. Taking a cab or the rapid is likewise like rolling the dice. Small talk doesn’t center around the crappy weather, everyone is quick to discuss the score, Browns, Cavs, Tribe… That’s how we determine the season.

Going into bars is asking for it, so I work hard to keep to myself and away from the game that is naturally playing on the television there. Even at home I have to hustle, jumping for the remote whenever a coach or player is going through the hundredth iteration of why they won/lost.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m don’t feel the need to obstreperously express disdain for all sports. When I can, I pretend knowledgeability to head off embarrassing silences and spare others discomfort. When that fails, I diffidently explain that I don’t follow the activity under examination.

And if pressed, I point out that it’s not the playing that bothers me. I go to a Tribe game every other year or two, after all, and if necessary I can even admire the athletes’ prowess in the final minutes of when the Cavs are reaching for the playoffs.

The problem is the baggage that has long since smothered the play. Call me stubborn in my refusal to get interested, but I have better things to do with my leisure than surrender it to the commercialized, banally competitive, jargon-ridden, overexposed, overbearing domination that sports exercises over our Cleveland culture.

I do resent it that so much of my society’s time, money and attention is consumed by something I don’t care about. I do resent it that even close friends become droning pod people when sports comes up. I do resent it that sports talk serves as such a casual superstructure of exclusion for so many Clevelanders in the office, the tavern, on the radio, or wherever.

But mostly I just hope for a crumb of reciprocity. I don’t assume you want to hear my thoughts on, say, exhibits at the Cleveland Art Museum, so perhaps you could back off when your concern for some quarterback drains the life from my face.