Epigram the 1st:
“Have you noticed how their stuff is s— and your s— is stuff?”
–George Carlin
Epigram the 2nd:
“Do me like the woman from my town would.”
–Drake
I traveled to Portland a couple years ago to spend a long weekend with a friend. Portland, if you’re unfamiliar, is like if NPR built a city, which is exactly as wonderful and horrifying as it sounds. We didn’t attend a Blazers game while we were there—I had just paid to fly 2,100 miles; NBA tickets weren’t happening—but Blazers paraphernalia is something you can’t miss in Portland. Or at least I couldn’t. As an NBA junkie, I’m sort of preconditioned to spot Blazers flags in bar windows, but I suppose you could miss such signage while spending hours in the city block-sized Powell’s Books, grabbing a food cart burrito downtown, or while resisting the urge to propose to a pretty twentysomething in a sundress. (You’re a very attractive city, Portland.) But one of the most interesting things about the city of Portland, at least to me, are the pockets of direly committed Blazers fans scattered across the city like so many snowy clumps of powdered sugar on a piece of artisan french toast. (You do breakfast correctly, Portland.)
Being a fan of a sports team is an identity marker for a lot of people—note how many Facebook and Twitter profiles mention a person’s allegiance to a specific team—but in Portland, being a Blazers fan is an especially unique identity marker because A.) Portland isn’t a sports town in the vein of Boston or St. Louis or Cleveland and B.) Portland doesn’t have a professional baseball, football, or hockey team. (Here I note the existence and rabid fanbase of the Portland Timbers, but being an American soccer fan is an identity marker all its own.)
Being a Blazers fan is, I think, being both a part of the city and apart from the city. It’s like being a fan of Z-Ro, but not Jay-Z. Sure, a lot of people like Z-Ro—they compose a not-insignificant portion of the rap nerd landscape—but it’s not like you could fill Madison Square Garden ten times over with Z-Ro fans. To be a Z-Ro or Blazers acolyte is to be part of a sizable subculture. Blazers fans are a proud subculture. They rep Portland as adamantly as anyone. Their identity is held in being both a minority within their city’s larger culture and an advocate of it.
I’m speaking in broad strokes, and, of course, cities aren’t monoliths. In fact, their unmonolithicness is sort of the point of them, but for the purposes of not having to describe the idiosyncrasies of every person within their borders, we try to define them with a handful of descriptors. We peg towns with an identity. Think Pittsburgh and industry, Los Angeles and Hollywood, Miami and strip clubs. There are filmmakers in Pittsburgh, blue collar workers in Los Angeles, and strippers everywhere, but we assign certain traits to cities because it’s convenient shorthand and not altogether false. It’s not like Pittsburgh is Mecca for avant-garde visual artists, and we’ve just been lying about it for decades.
I have lived in Chicago, a parochial city in its own right, for the past four years. Despite being a city with manifold cuisine, a theater district. a phenomenal downtown, myriad diverse neighborhoods—a rich cultural identity, is what I mean—some of its residents—natives, mostly; Chicago is kind of a midwestern LA in that it houses a lot of transplants—have a strange inferiority complex toward the coasts. They bristle at the mention of New York or Boston or Los Angeles. No city shall be as great as the one that invented the pickle-adornèd hot dog! It’s weird. Because Chicago’s an immense, sometimes beguiling city. I sometimes wonder why its residents—its advocates, really—can’t be satisfied with being a wonderful town in the middle of the country.
Because there exists no objectively great city or town. Where you live is a matter of fit, and where you’re from is a matter of what city your mother was in when her water broke. It’s sort of an arranged marriage: it will affect you, but you don’t have to develop affection for it. I’m from a smallish city in upstate New York, and I kind of hate where I’m from. It’s too small for my liking (both in terms of population and worldview) and most of its citizens would build a giant metal dome over the town if they could. They deserve to suffocate beneath a physical manifestation of their own insularity. Most of them, anyway.
I’m a Cleveland Cavaliers fan because of this town. There were no local sports teams, so I decided to root for my cousin’s favorite team. So here I am: a Cavs fan, but not a Clevelander. I’m trying to figure out whether or not this is important. Ostensibly, it’s not. I’m about as devoted to the Cavaliers as any fan of the team, and I’ve been to Cleveland a handful of times. If I had grown up on the shores of Lake Erie, I don’t think I would be extolling Cleveland’s virtues to non-residents at parties. I’m also just not wired that way. Some people like to define themselves by the groups they are a part of—fanbases, cities, country clubs—but I’m not one of them. One of my favorite things about living in a colossal city is the anonymity it affords me. I can go days without being recognized on the street by a friend or acquaintance. I can just a be a dude on the corner, waiting for the light to change; that recession into nothingness is comforting to me.
But this strong city-team-self triangle—I’m from Cleveland, I love my hometown, and I’m a huge Cavaliers fan—is a crucial part of fanhood for some people. It’s not something that can be easily dismissed. I’m trying to understand it from the outside. Cities—though they’re really just a mass of flesh, concrete, and steel—breathe. They are frighteningly organism-like. And what better way to celebrate that almost-organism than by watching your favorite sports team— ambassadors of your favorite city—assert their dominance over another city’s athletic ambassadors while in the company of fellow residents of your beloved metropolis. You can do this in places all over the country: they’re called sports bars and arenas.
The point at which this native-sports-fan-as-identity-marker thing becomes problematic is when people indulge in the fallacy that to truly understand their passion, you have to be from Sports Town X. I have heard some misguided Clevelanders engage in this nonsense. Which: I get it. People like exclusivity when they’re on the right side of the velvet rope. Clevelanders are almost never on the right side of the velvet rope. Their city is economically depressed; their sports teams have a history of futility; and they’re often on the wrong end of hacky jokes from Sportscenter anchors. My friend from Alliance once deadpanned “Surely, there is nothing worse than being from Cleveland.” What can you say to someone who condescends to you? You don’t understand. You’re not from here. Erect the ol’ giant metal dome over the Mistake by the Lake and embrace your antipathy for outsiders.
I’m not saying most Cleveland Cavaliers fans are like that. Nor are most Bobcats, Blazers, Thunder, Kings, T’Wolves, Grizzlies, or Pacers fans. But those angry, defensive thoughts happen; I’m perplexed by the people who think them. From what I can tell, one of the aspects of The Decision that most angered Clevelanders was the perception that LeBron had turned his back on Northeast Ohio. In deciding to play in Miami, he had not only abandoned the Cavs, but he had yanked his roots from Cleveland’s soil. He would rather live in South Beach, nestled against the bosom of a glitter-pocked stripper! absolutely no one thought after watching The Decision. But you see my point. Clevelanders didn’t just lose a great player: a native son spurned them. We can find the inverse of that sentiment in columns about the extension Russell Westbrook signed this winter with the Thunder. Sure, Sam Presti wanted to lock down one of the best young players in the league, but mentioned in almost every story about the signing: Russell Westbrook actually likes playing in Oklahoma City. The implication is that a player preferring to play in a small market is rare, which it is.
In a season that’s all over except for the crying and the Anthony Davis-related prayers, Cavaliers fans are tempted to look toward free agency, which I know will invoke some sore feelings from Clevelanders. Why should the Cavs have to overpay to lure free agents to their city? It’s where they live, after all; they like it. Regardless, all money being equal, O.J. Mayo would rather play in LA than Cleveland. As someone who moved from small town upstate New York to Chicago, I empathize, and if you don’t understand here’s a tautology: if more people wanted to live in Cleveland, more people would live in Cleveland. More people prefer Chicago, Boston, Phoenix, Dallas, etc. Why would NBA players be any different? There is the odd Russell Westbrook type, but most NBA players would prefer a swank apartment in SoHo to a McMansion on the outskirts of Sacramento. They don’t hate your stupid town. They just found one they like better. It’s got killer Indian food, and they can live near the ocean. Around such criteria do people make a stupid town a home.
I haven’t looked at this summer’s free agents much lately. I’m starting to lean towards the Cavs trying to sign a veteran, established starter type. I’m over the team being horrible, plus if the contract is three years, the player is off the books before Kyrie’s extension comes up. If the Cavs offer more money over three years than anyone else offers for four, and the player still chooses to go elsewhere, that will be frustrating. Is there really Indian food that good in other places?
Another excellent article. I’ll say this again: Clevelanders are not upset that LeBron left Cleveland. They are upset about HOW HE DID IT. No one in Cleveland blames anyone for leaving Cleveland. It happens every day*. LeBron just happened to do it in front of the world, saying, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach.” I mean, really?
Cleveland has a long, well-documented history of heartbreak. So when LeBron joined the ranks of those breaking the city’s collective heart, you could almost sense the city pleading, “How could you?” This used to upset me most, until I realized that LeBron was from the Cleveland area, but never a Cleveland fan. He’s a FRONTRUNNER (see Cowboys, Yankees …). And, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if LeBron didn’t know the city’s sordid sports history. Because there’s no LeBron mentioned there (until now).
* I was born and raised in Cleveland but moved to Austin, TX a long time ago. I have now lived in Texas longer than I had lived in Ohio. My kids, native Texans, root for the Browns. Does that make us any different than you? Not really. The key here, I think, is youth. My sons root for the Indians, Cavs & Browns because at an early age they picked up my passion for them. They looked around and couldn’t connect with any other pro sports team, so their experience has been watching the Cleveland teams with me. And I think that’s cool.
I think we can land Eddy Curry if we just give him a tour of Melt and finish the meeting with a Parmageddon.
@Dano – I think the only reason I ever find myself wanting children (I am still pretty young) is for exactly that. I was born in Cleveland, but I spent most of my formative years in Texas and North Carolina, along with College in Florida. But my Dad, and by extension my brothers and I were always “from Cleveland.” The Browns, Cavs and Tribe were a big part of our relationship, and I think that’s great. Fandom has a special way of being sorta hereditary. And Colin, we’re glad to have you!
/Has no idea who Z-Ro is
If you’re not from Cleveland and you choose to be a Cleveland fan, that’s cool (maybe you have even more cred. You weren’t born into it and yet you choose the joys of Cleveland fandom). If you’re not a cavs fan at all (let’s say you’re a warriors fan to choose a totally random team) but you pretend to like the cavs to further your writing career that’s not as cool.
I’m a Cavs fan, but live nowhere near Cleveland. I started following them when I went to the University of Akron, and really grew to like them a lot, but there were times when I felt like an outsider among some of my more hardcore friends since I’m not a Tribe or Browns fan and only followed the Cavs since like 2003. I grew up near Toledo, so if I were to have picked a local team as a youngster I would more likely be a Pistons fan (but I only liked players as a kid, and didn’t care for basketball as much as a teen). While I can’t explain the identity personally (I don’t live near my most favorite teams in any major sport), there definitely is a unique one in Cleveland about their teams. And I don’t know that it’s a bad thing, it just is what it is.
While I don’t doubt someone can be a great, dedicated fan without having grown up in a town, I still agree with those who say “you don’t get it.” There is a lineage of being a Cleveland fan/Clevelander that is relevant. Like the city, Cleveland sports WERE dominant and it was the subsequent decline and all too frequent heartbreaks that so closely resemble the city’s history. The economic boom of the late 90′s and its correlation with the brief hope with the Indians is not a small deal. There have been numerous studies on the economic impact of a championship for a city. We are the case study for what happens when a city does NOT win.
Another interesting question:
If the Cavs were moved from Cleveland, would you still be a Cavs fan? ……
Everyone of a certain age also needs to remember that many of the dreaded “front-runner fans” joined the fanbase during the LeBron years. It’s hard to even imagine as a longtime Cleveland fan, but we were a juggernaut and very entertaining during those years. I wonder how many of those have continued to follow the franchise.
As far as an individual leaving Cleveland is concerned, I like many of you, no longer live there. I don’t even live in the US anymore, and for that I am lucky to be such a dedicated sports fan. It allows be to talk to old buddies without a problem as we still have something in common. For someone who is not a fan of his hometown team, or simply doesn’t have one, it isn’t as meaningful. I don’t really have family there anymore either, so it is one of my only remaining ties.
Platitude alert: Everyone is different. I’m as much of sports fan as a Cleveland fan (after living in Boston and NYC it became very clear how often one can be a fan of team without actually caring about the sport), but I don’t think anyone who didn’t grow up in Cleveland can truly grasp what would happen if we were to win a championship in any of our 3 sports. I think the city would completely lose its shit if it were the Cavs or Indians, and we would prove the Mayans to have only been off a couple years if the Browns pulled it off.
Portland has more strip clubs per capita than any city in America – so Miami needs a new “thing”.
Also, Portland is the greatest city ever to visit – it’s literally a people circus and the animals don’t bite. But as Colin so eloquently put it – there is a horrifying aspect to Portland. http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/insufferable-portland_631919.html
That triangle you spoke of – to say it is important to some fans and that “It’s not something that can be easily dismissed” is an understatement.
The driving force that creates the sports environment we live in is BUILT and SUSTAINED by these city-team-self love triangles or school-team-self love triangles.
Colin – I love your writing and the passion of this blog more generally. So I don’t mean anything personal, but I have to disagree with you. Being from Cleveland does matter. And its not in a “velvet rope,” “we’re insiders” sort of way. It has to do with understanding the culture of the city, and how closely linked it is to the culture of our sports team. As Ben described well, Cleveland is a beat up place, and the failures of our sports teams have coincided with the economic struggles of our city. For me, my sports loyalty to all things Cleveland is deeply connected to the pride I have in my home, especially as I get older and live more places. That type of connection is not something that a non-Clevelander can have. That does not mean a non-Clevelander can’t have a different connection to the teams, but it is not the same connection as a Clevelander.
One way to illustrate this is the example Ben raised: If the Cavs left Cleveland, I would not root for them. I root for them precisely because they are from Cleveland, and I love Cleveland. A non-Clevelander, by definition, can not root for them for the same reason (because they can’t possess the same love for Cleveland). They may have their own reasons, but those are different. And, thus, the experience of being a fan is different.
I don’t see why this is even a controversial or debatable topic. Fans experiences vary, and one obvious dimension over which they vary is personal connection to the hometown.
Tom, that article ends up skewing into divisive, partisan politics. Try to be more careful with the links.
On the other hand, I do think that some people from outside NE Ohio proper ‘don’t get it.’ It’s really hard to put a finger on why, but I’d guess that it relates to having the “heartbreak montage” played whenever we get close, but still inevitably fail. There’s just this overwhelming sense of bitter pessimism that’s been ground into Cleveland fans from a very young age. I mean, the Indians built Jim Thome a statue, and what he did is, to some people, on the same relative level with LeBron.
What I’m trying to say is, I shouldn’t have to take sh*t from Panthers fans about having never been to the super bowl. It’s just the feeling of hopelessness that comes from being the constant butt of terrible jokes. People from CANTON make fun of Cleveland. My geology professor told that “Cuyahoga is Indian for ‘river that burns’ ” joke in class. Again, the dude was born and raised in Canton.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. End rant.
Was it nsfw or something? I thought it tied into what Colin said about NPR designingPortland
I’m talking about the later part where it gets into debates about Obama, Goldschmidt, and Koch-funded swipes at light rail. The first part absolutely ties in. Maybe I’m just really sensitive about light rail…
Agreed…I am a Cleveland fan through my parents, and have never even been to the city personally. Nonetheless, I probably spend more time thinking about the Cavs than about anything else, and will be up until 3AM working tonight because I want to watch them play a meaningless game against the Bobcats for two and a half hours. And whether they win or lose, I will remain emotionally conflicted over the matter for the rest of the night. So it goes.
Cooley – lol you just made my day.
As a service member living over in Germany for 12 years, it was hard to see anything on the Armed Forces Network worth watching except for when the Indians were in the playoffs, the Cavs were in the playoffs and the Browns were in the wild card vs Pittsburgh. They claim to show everything and every team, however, the big market teams get the lions share of the air time.
I can sympathize with every Ohioan and Clevelander about the misery that is our franchise(s) riddled past, but we wallow so much in the past that we do little to shake it off and try to assume a better posture for the future. I was angered by the stupid letter that Mr Gilbert wrote to the PD the day after the Decision. How can a man who had success in business even think that by giving the house away, you could in fact put together a better house which would outperform the team he went to when competing in a league who leaves teams like the Cavs in the dust when it comes to the championship run?
My days of getting sucked into the vortex of emotion and the roller coaster of excitement started in 1986, when I was old enough to memorize every player and jersey number on the Browns and Indians. Number 19 was the only number I would look for in packs of football cards. Cory Snyder and Joe Carter were the only Indians I would love til Sandy Alomar Jr and then later the whole 1995-1997 teams. It is hard to stomach how the economical landscape of my beloved city has driven talent away, knowing it will take lottery picks and luck to peice a team together for even minimal success. It is also hard for me to explain to my wife, who is not American, how much and how great and how good it feels to be from a city like Cleveland, where so many great things have happened and so many talented athletes have played. She doesn’t get it, she chooses not to and this is fine, but it only makes my point clearer to me: IF YOU ARE NOT FROM HERE, YOU WON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE!
I will never turn my back on my city, I will always wait for next year, I will always keep the faintest glimmer of hope in my heart and in my mind, I will still be from the greatest city a man can be from.
Thank you and GO TRIBE!
I was raised in a small town about an hour north of Dayton and now live in Columbus. As a child, I also was a fan of players (both NFL and NBA; I loathe baseball) more than I was of teams, and I certainly didn’t inherit my allegiance to Cleveland sports from my family. Proximity might suggest I become a Bengals fan, but I loathe the franchise and I tell myself that it is mostly due to Mike Brown.
Both sides of my family were raised just south of Toledo. My paternal side of the family is more a fan of sport than they are of any team or city, and I think this is a result of having lived in Florida for a few years before coming back to start a family in Midwest Ohio. My maternal side of the family is similar, but they tend to root for Detroit teams if any. Aside from a brief stay in Michigan, they have lived in western Ohio their entire lives. I have a soft spot for the Lions because of this.
I’m not sure when or why my love for the Cleveland Browns started (sometime in High School, 01-05,) but it has continued to grow ever since. I started following the Cavaliers when Lebron James arrived; call me a front runner if you must. I watched 90% of their games in my college dorm with my roommate (a much more avid Cleveland fan than I was at the time) during the 05-06 season and have kept up the habit ever since. I used to love Lebron James, as all of us did. My interest in that Cavaliers team also fueled my interest in the Browns, and I am now an unconditional fan of Cleveland sports (save for baseball, though I wish the Tribe the best.)
To answer Ben’s questions…
1.)If the Browns or the Cavaliers were to leave Cleveland, I would no longer be a fan of either team. I would wait until a team returned to Cleveland before I invested so much of myself (emotionally and financially) into another franchise.
2.)When Lebron left, I went through the same stages of grief that we all experienced. Since his departure, my love for the cavaliers has only intensified, and in turn so has my love for the NBA in general. I have accepted our situation, and have reason to hope for the future (Kyrie, but before we even drafted him it was Dan Gilbert’s money and will.) I still watch 90% of the Cavs games, and have even attended 4 of them over the past two years; I never went to a game while Lebron was in town. Cleveland and the Association owe a lot more to Lebron James than just the wins, national spotlight, economic boost, etc. while he was here. If it weren’t for Lebron James, I probably would never have become a rabid Cavalier or NBA fan. They’ll continue to get my attention and money for the foreseeable future.