Waiting for Next Year

The hat, sitting behind glass, is a 1997 Cleveland Indians “World Series Champions” hat. It is haunting to see, because it’s a wormhole to an alternate reality.

As sports fans know, that year was the closest the Tribe has come to winning the World Series in the last half-century. I remember a late night in October, a Sunday and thus a school night, watching game seven of the Series in our television room, watching in agony as we lost, 3 to 2, to the Florida Marlins in 11 innings. Along with all of Cleveland’s sports failures, it’s something that is hard to watch, even nearly 20 years after the fact.

Cleveland fans should be prepared to relive our past. This Saturday night, ESPN will broadcast its hour-long 30 for 30 documentary titled Believeland at 9:30 PM.

As a Cleveland sports fan, it’s painful to watch. But it’s a finely manicured look at a proud city’s sports failures. Heck, after ESPN’s complicity in LeBron James’s “The Decision,” I figured they owed Cleveland a good documentary on our unique sports history, and director Andy Billman (a Cleveland native) more than delivered.

The storylines of the three Cleveland teams (the Browns, Indians, and Cavaliers) are intricately woven together telling the viewer the history of each from its peak to its nadir, all the way through to the present. The documentary opens with the Randy Newman song “Burn On”, from the hit movie Major League, a comedy classic about a fictionalized Indians season. Near the end of the introduction, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, being demolished, is shown on fire right when Randy croons “burn on, big river.”

Fitting ever granular detail into an hour is impossible —i.e. no mention of Cleveland’s only recent champions: the Cleveland Crunch indoor soccer team —but Billman and ESPN excel at not only telling the teams’ stories, but the city’s.

There’s rarely a sports franchise that doesn’t exist in some sort of dependent symbiosis with the fortunes of their city. Even in cases like the Yankees, there’s still a tie of course, but some cities and teams depend more on each other than others. Cleveland is one of the more dependent ones. Our fanbase is loyal, but we can only offer so much, especially in a region that hasn’t adapted well to the modern economy.

Cleveland is a city defined by its sports teams — they are a trio of civic religions. Clevelanders don’t expect respect from anyone anymore, but we want you to respect our teams. And by beating you, somehow you’ll begrudgingly respect us. That’s our logic anyways… Laugh all you want. We beat you.

It hasn’t really worked out that way for us like it has for other cities. In my short lifetime, all three teams have had brushes with greatness, each getting the closest they’ve gotten in 52 years.

Believeland has an all-star cast of the stars of Cleveland yesteryear: former Indians Kenny Lofton, Jim Thome, Charles Nagy and manager Mike Hargrove; former Browns Earnest Byner and coach Marty Schottenheimer; and Craig Ehlo, the Cavalier guard who Michael Jordan … well, let’s not relive that one.

Each one recollects their personal data points on the graph of Cleveland’s sports landscape. Nagy, who I wanted to bring to my seventh birthday party, pitched for the Indians for 12 seasons, including the last (extra) innings of the 1997 World Series after José Mesa blew the save. A winning starter with a good record, it didn’t work out, and the rest is Cleveland sports history.

Mesa, along with Art Modell, is somebody Cleveland fans are wont to forgive, less forget. Earnest Byner, who was the central player in “The Fumble”, spends a fair amount of time on camera discussing the era of the Browns team known as the Cardiac Kids, and Modell’s moving the team to Baltimore.

Not to give anything away, but there are lots of tears in this documentary, and especially in one of Byner’s scenes. Strong men also cry, and cry they do. If you care or cared about the Browns in the late 1980s and early 90s, whether you’re a lapsed Browns fan or one of the devout, you will probably cry too.

The documentary is loosely narrated by Scott Raab, a Cleveland native and a gonzo journalist at Esquire. He is author of The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James, the first book I ever read on my Kindle on a family vacation immediately after LeBron left Cleveland for the Miami Heat. Raab reacted the way a lot of us did to LeBron’s departure: Burn the witch. Well, not LeBron personally, but any memento one had of him. This was a learned behavior, as lots of Browns fans did this when Modell took the Browns to Baltimore. Now that LeBron is back? Well, Raab is okay with LeBron again, as are most Clevelanders.

My personal LeBron story was that I sat two rows behind him once, watching my high school basketball team win the Division 1 Ohio State Championship. He was sitting in the audience because his school was a smaller school, and thus in a lower division. They would have kicked the crap out of us, but there he was, on the verge of being drafted. “This guy is going to play in the NBA?” I scoffed. I was quickly converted into a believer.

When LeBron returned, as did the Browns, it was amazing how many people didn’t burn their souvenirs and jerseys. We may have gotten both LeBron and the Dawg Pound back, but things aren’t the same. They never are. With the Cavs, arguably, they’re better, and with the Browns, they are far, far worse.

Which brings me to the most infuriating part of the documentary.

The scene that bothered me most was hearing David Modell defend the legacy of his adoptive father Art in such tone-deaf ways:

David Modell (Courtesy ESPN)

Now that I am older, I am more sympathetic than most Browns fans to the political and economic realities of what went on around the time of the Browns move. But nothing has made me want to punch my television more than watching David Modell spew this crap since the time I watched his father tell me from a parking lot in Baltimore that my team was no more.

No matter: the Browns effectively “never moved…” they were just “paused for a period of time.” Okay, David Modell. It’s like a divorcee telling his four children, “Mom never left. She was just paused for a period of time.” And after remarrying four years later, those kids saying: “But daddy, why does mommy look different?” “Hush kids, she’s your mother now. Nothing changed.” Yes, she’s mom, but younger and with a facelift. And way worse.

The crux of the Browns moving was the Gateway project, which Republican Conventioneers will see in a few months: What were formerly Jacobs Field and Gund Arena are now Progressive Field and “The Q” (Quicken Loans Arena), built in the mid-1990s. A sin tax measure to give the Indians a new home and the Cavaliers a downtown locale (they previously played out in the boonies) brought pressure to Modell’s Browns.

Modell was among the last of a dying breed of millionaire owners. There are no real Art Modells in the NFL today. He did do a lot for Cleveland, and was active in charitable works and politics. He brought Reagan to meet with the Browns.

(Courtesy ESPN)

Cleveland Municipal Stadium hosted both the Indians and the Browns, and Art Modell ran the place for the city. He improved it, added loges for corporations and wealthy attendees, and the Indians were his tenant. It was old and outdated, but it was our cathedral. Wresting the Indians away to a new home left Modell without a big client and a really old stadium. Loge sales plunged after the Indians left.

Believeland handles the Gateway controversy quite well. Billman brings in civic leaders to tell their side, as well as former Browns operatives like Jim Bailey to tell theirs. It’s a Hatfields and McCoys situation that flares up whenever the past is debated. Whomever you believe, one thing’s for certain: Gateway played a role in the Browns departure. Believeland doesn’t go into the rabbit hole, but gives an outside viewer a good perspective.

Naturally, since the Browns have long been the outsized mega-church of the three civic religions, they get a little bit of special treatment. Paul Brown, Jim Brown, Bernie Kosar: Art Modell scared them all away, and viewers get most of the story there. The hatred of Modell in Cleveland isn’t just tied to “The Move”—all of his other sins were amplified because of it. The Browns that left were… actually good. They went to Baltimore and won the Super Bowl five years after leaving.

I remember the end of the Browns in 1994 and attending some of those final games. All of the sponsors pulled their ads. A stadium without advertisements is a weird thing to see. Watching the last game, and seeing Earnest Byner and other players going to the Dawg Pound (where fans actually ate Alpo dog food to demonstrate what crazed fans they were) to shake hands with fans and say goodbye was like ripping off a Band-Aid.

The last Browns game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium (Courtesy ESPN)

The fans were throwing plastic seats and rows of wooden bleachers and chairs onto the field. Not at their team, but at their owner. It was a divorce neither the players nor the fans wanted, like kids split in a custody battle.

Today, the chairs are a collector’s item, as are scarce Cleveland Municipal Stadium bricks. Most of the stadium became a reef in Lake Erie. After years of searching, I acquired a brick that then-mayor Michael White gave out to the politically connected. If you think a man is crazy for buying a $50 brick, what does that make somebody who owns original blueprints to Cleveland Stadium from the 1930s? Answer: Thrifty, since they were way cheaper than a chair, which go for as much as $500.

Not much time was spent on the new Browns, and there could be a separate 30 for 30 on just that. Suffice to say the best player in “new” Browns history was our now-former kicker, Phil Dawson.

Documentaries aren’t meant to offer hope, and Billman doesn’t offer it. Nor does he need to. Cleveland sports fans are like the Irish: pessimistic optimists who like to wax poetic about the past and throw back a few pints. Only Ireland’s potato famine lasted a handful of years, while Cleveland’s championship famine has lasted half a century, and our economic woes have created a smaller diaspora.

The city’s boosters have secured the Republican National Convention this summer. They had hoped it would bring good PR to the city and economic benefits. It won’t, no matter the nominee. Donald Trump wants to make America great again. His path to that possible future goes through Cleveland. If history is any guide, Cleveland will disappoint again and Republicans, like Cleveland sports fans, will be left waiting for next year.