David Craig's Blogosphere

Since it's LeBron day, and since I'm a Clevelander at heart, we got to say something. I don't feel much one way or the other about it really. It's good to see an Afro-American have such power, sway, money. (It's a little late for Andrew Jackson's Cherokee Appalachian nation in 1838, but we'll take what we can get.) And if there's a sin here on his part, it seems almost childlike. These professional athletes never get the fan part of the equation. I think of Cliff Lee's comment that Cleveland baseball loses players because the locals don't buy enough tickets. Completely clueless, but in a stupid and forgivable way. Bread or tickets, the heating bill or tickets. A tough choice.

Pro sports/ESPN, and they really seem to be the same thing, are the world in the Biblical sense. Aquisitiveness gone mad as the seed for it. The Cavs will stink. So what, really. Miami and LA can vie for glitziness until both are washed into the sea.

But we each have sins enough. Dear old Cleveland, you will have my heart right down to the empty blast furnaces, to d. a. levy and the vast steel gray lake on a winter Browns afternoon. Give me the orchestra, the theater, Mark Stieve's book store. Give me old friends and classmates, decimated public golf courses after an outing; give me the parks, the memories. Pro sports is something we do to celebrate the rest. Beer will do just as well.