Tuesday, February 8, 2011

In the lap of the Sports God


Dear Omnipotent Sports Deity,

There’s no doubt You’ve had a busy 24 hours lifting the spirits of one fanbase while dashing the hopes of another. The Super Bowl is Your Christmas Eve and like that red-suited wish granter from the North Pole, You deserve at least a small reprieve from Your toils.

Still, as Packers Nation basks in the afterglow of the biggest day on the American sports calendar, I just wanted to take a moment to thank You for giving a rather less fortunate fanbase a small but not insignificant respite from an especially torturous year of athletic agony. For Cleveland fans, there was an unappetizing entree on Sunday's championship game menu, so thanks a heap for saving our collective palates from the bitter aftertaste of another Steelers’ Super Bowl title.

See, I could remind You just how bad the last 12 months have been for Cleveland sports, but You don’t need the gory details, as the 10 million plasma flat screens adorning Your totally sweet moon-volcano man cave have kept You apprised of every crotch-kicking loss and  franchise-destroying player defection. Let’s just agree that it’s been a really awful year, and Sports God knows we’ve had some nasty ones. Like Stephen King once wrote -When you get down to terrible, it’s hard to make subdivisions.

The wretchedness of our teams means we’re left with nothing but taking our sour and pathetic pleasures from cities more fortunate than us. Granted, most every city is better off than Cleveland when it comes to professional sports these days, but our Iron City-drinking neighbors to the East have had it far too good for far too long. A seventh black-and-gold Super Bowl championship would have been yet another stone against this region’s venomously envious heart; another painful slap from a sports scene that in our navel-gazing disillusionment seems contrived to go against us at every turn.

I mean, how many of us Browns fans halfway expected the Steelers to complete their comeback last night just because we’re from Cleveland and one of our rivals is destined to win a title once every couple of years? That’s the kind of ill thinking we’ve been brought to thanks to years of numbing punishment hand out by You, Mr. Sports God.

What kind of sick and twisted deity are You, anyway? Do You derive some kind of cheap delight from our torment? The Cavs are a CBA team; the Indians are strapped by a broken MLB financial system and an ambitionless owner; and the Browns just hired their fifth new head coach in twice as many years of soul-sapping suckitude...and those are the guys closest to any whisper of contention. What a cosmic joke.

And to think I came here to thank You for sparing Cleveland the pain of a Pittsburgh win and the attendant douchey flag-waving of legions of wagon-hopping Northeast Ohio-based Steelers “fans.” How dare You leave us with nothing but the dregs of our dignity, Sir! Damn You for reducing us to the pale and fleeting pleasures of schadenfreude. Such joy is only a candle’s length, as You in Your universal cruelty must most assuredly realize.

So, if it wasn’t already clear, I’m renouncing my thanks to You. In fact, I’m going to go Captain Ahab on Your otherworldly all-knowing Ass: “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

In short: Screw You, You heartless bastard!

Sincerely,

Doug from Cleveland Sports Torture

P.S.- If the Browns win the Super Bowl next year, I will glad renounce my renouncement and build a shrine to Your beneficent love. I’m a hypocrite like that.