It has been said for years that on a Monday following a Browns victory, everybody in Northeast Ohio walks with a bounce in their step and has a smile on their face.
It just makes everybody feel better in those football-crazy town, even those who are just casual fans of the sport.
That’s what sports do. They are the most visible part of a region’s personality.
And that is why what the Cavs have done is so important, so crucial to how others perceive us, and how we perceive ourselves.
By winning the NBA championship, and erasing a 52-year drought of major pro sports titles in the process, they have focused the spotlight on not just the city of Cleveland, but also on the entire community in such a positive way.
Sports grab people’s attention and get them in the door. Then once they’re inside, you show them all the other things that make the region special.
That’s why so many people were in tears on Sunday night as the Cavs turned back the Golden State Warriors 93-89 in Game 7 of the Finals to win the championship. They immediately understood what it meant. They knew its implication.
And sports – in this case, basketball – is just a small piece of it.
Indeed, this is so much bigger than putting a ball through a basket.
Despite all this, I am always amazed by those among us who simply don’t get it. They are the elite, for whom sports is nothing more than silliness performed in front of legions of men who walk around on all fours and devour cans of beer they pry open with their teeth.
They don’t lower themselves to know – or care – about the players or the teams or the leagues or the scores. They’re much too busy – too smart and too important — for such trivial nonsense.
But in all their attempts to be cool and smart, they’re being boorish and ignorant.
On Monday morning, when I told a neighbor – who is an engineer for a Big 3 car manufacturer — that the Cavaliers had won the championship the previous night, she looked at me, shrugged incredulously and snobbishly and said, “Who are the Cavaliers?”
Not an hour later, another woman, who prides herself on knowing more about everything than you do, finally told me after she pooh-poohed everything I was telling her about the Cavaliers and the significance of what they had done, “OK, if it makes you happy, I’m glad for you.”
And, just like the other woman, she was serious. I thought she was going to come over and pat me on the head and offer me some purple dinosaur treats.
Ladies, were you living under a rock? Are you living under a rock?
Or did you fall and hit your head?
The second woman finally explained away her incredible aloofness by saying, “I’m not a sports person.”
So I can say that I don’t know who Donald Trump is and can get away with it by simply saying, “I’m not a political person”?
Or I can say that I was not aware that there was a water crisis in Flint, Mich. and can get away with it by simply saying, “I’m not a city services person”?
Or I can say that I was not aware there was terrible flooding in Houston a while back and get away with it by simply saying, “I’m not a weather person?”
To not know about what is going on around you, whether or not you are interested in that type of thing, is irresponsible and embarrassing.
And to be unaware of its big-picture effect on you, is even more so.
