Speculator Sports

 

Cleveland loves it sports teams, and there have been times Cleveland sports teams have loved them back.

Just not always.

The above cartoon by the late Plain Dealer sports artist Dick Dugan is from some time in the 1970s, when I grew up. Both the football Browns and the baseball Indians (today the Guardians) were in a long draught, as well were the newly arrived basketball Cavaliers (with the exception of a "miracle" year when the wins exceeded the losses.) Better (albeit not always permanent) days eventually arrived for all three teams, as well as the profits that come from better days. However, this post concerns itself not with profits per se, but with how a professional sports team manages to stay afloat, sometimes audaciously so, no matter if the days are better, worse, or somewhere in between.  

 

This is the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, built in 1931 and in service until 1995. When I was growing up it was the home of both the baseball AND the football teams, something I didn't much question. You mean to tell me there are cities that have separate stadiums for baseball and football? That's plain weird. 

I found out later that not only is it not weird but fairly commonplace. Cleveland's one-size-fits-all approach to professional sports (as well as the occasional rock concert and even more occasional Billy Graham religious revival) was what was unusual, as well as something that could serve as a scapegoat. You see, because football is played only once a week, there's more of a novelty value and thus it becomes easier to fill 80,000 seats. Since less people attend baseball games (because there's more of them), it could seem like you're watching the Great American Pastime in the Grand Canyon. Also, that the Indians were losing many of their games, thus affecting attendance, made the Grand Canyon that much grander (maybe if mules had taken fans to their seats, that would have drummed up interest.) The baseball club was owned by some kind of local consortium, one of its owners also a member of the Cleveland Board of Education, the implication being that keeping the Indians on life support was a another kind of civic duty. The duty got dowdy, and the team was put up for sale. Everyone from City Hall to the local sports radio call-in hosts panicked. Suppose the new owners move the club to a different city?

Before the team changed hands, a plan was approved by voters for a new baseball stadium (and right next door, a venue for basketball, which would free up the Cavs from playing in an arena in the middle of a corn field situated halfway between Cleveland and Akron) that would be paid for by a tax on booze and cigarettes, neither one in short supply in a working-class metropolis. You'll note I have two different pictures of the outside of this then-new (1994) stadium. The first has the last name of the two brothers, shopping mall developers, who bought the baseball club while it was still at the old stadium. Now look at that second picture. While I would like to think changing the club's name from the "Indians" to the "Guardians" is a very "progressive" thing to do, I'm afraid it's just a coincidence. An insurance company bought the naming rights (though not the team itself, which is owned by the Dolan family.) The 31-year-old stadium is now undergoing $200 million in renovations, mostly with taxpayers' dough. After all, it's city- and county-owned. The Guardians just play there.

 

Now, I momentarily want to go back to when the club was still called the Indians. Whether because they were inspired by their new digs, or, more likely, owner Dick Jacobs hired people who knew how to put a baseball team together, in its second year at Jacobs Field, the club went all of the way to the World Series. In the months leading up to that, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened. The eyes of the nation, perhaps the world itself, were on Cleveland, now justifiably dubbed The Comeback City!

"The Comeback City, eh? Well, I'll burst their bubble. Heh, heh, heh!"

OK, I don't know if Browns owner Art Modell actually said that, but announcing the team's move did clip the wings of a city that saw itself as a rock'n'roll phoenix rising from the ashes of a burning river. Modell was an out-of-towner but had lived in Cleveland since 1962. Surely in those 33 years you might have thought he had some affection for the place and wouldn't think of moving. In fact, he even made a promise not to move, until he declared the promise "null and void." Modell had his reasons, most of them mercenary, a few of them spiteful. As I said earlier the Browns and the Indians shared the old Municipal Stadium, which as the name implies, was owned by the city, a city that couldn't afford to maintain it. Modell agreed to basically lease the stadium, for $1 a year, and become responsible for its upkeep. He also constructed loge boxes that could be rented to anybody who wants whatever a loge box has to offer (I wouldn't know, I've never been in one.) The money earned from the loge boxes went to Modell, even if the person or persons boxed up were there to watch an Indians game. The Indians objected to this and it's one of the issues that led to them demanding the city or county or state build them a separate stadium. Modell was offered a chance to be part of the new stadium, but he declined, only to watch the ballpark net a whole lot of moolah when the team went to the playoffs and World Series. And of course this made Jacobs Field's own loges desirable to rent. City officials, not wanting Modell to feel too left out of Cleveland's renaissance, offered to finance improvements to the old stadium, but Modell issued a "public moratorium" on such talks. He couldn't very well talk to officials from the city of Cleveland while at the same time talking to officials from the city of Baltimore (which a decade earlier had lost the Colts to Indianapolis), now could he?

 

The whole thing landed in court, the NFL itself also becoming involved. A deal was struck. The physical team could physically move, becoming the Ravens (Edgar Allen Poe was born in Baltimore) while the Browns name and records could stay in Cleveland, as long as Cleveland agreed to build a new football stadium for a new expansion team with the old name and records attached, which it did at jaw-dropping speed. The old stadium, the site of two World Series and six NFL Championship games, was razed, much of its debris turned into an artificial reef on Lake Erie. It cost $270 million, some of it paid for by the NFL, some if paid by new owner Al Lerner (a minority owner of the Modell-era Browns who some say encouraged the move to Baltimore) and a huge chunk of it paid for by further taxes on smokers and drinkers. Another good reason to live the clean life (just as long as not too many people live the clean life, or else risk a budgetary shortfall.) Now, when the baseball team got its new stadium, it almost immediately went to the World Series, and there's been two more since then. The team didn't win any of them, but still, it got there. The Browns? There's been no Super Bowls, I can tell you that. They've been in the playoffs exactly three times. Last year they were 3-14.

The dismal showing hasn't discouraged Jimmy and Dee Haslam, an out-of-town billionaire couple who bought the Browns from the late billionaire Al Lerner's billionaire son in 2012. The Haslams appear to have extraordinary optimism in the franchise's future. The above enclosed stadium has yet to be built, but it looks like it's going to be. The Municipal Stadium was in service for 64 years. The Browns stadium, Cleveland's newest stadium, is 26 years old, and apparently that's 26 years too old for the Haslams (both of whom are in their 70s and really shouldn't be practicing ageism.) Like Modell before them, they're moving the team out of town. Unlike Modell, they're not going all the way to Baltimore, just Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb. The Haslams have just purchased a 175-acre site (which will include restaurants, hotels, and apartments along with the stadium itself), not far from Cleveland Hopkins Airport, for $76 million. Does it mean this it's all going to be privately-owned-and-operated? I'm afraid local officials, or at least their constituents, aren't getting off that easily. This past Monday the Ohio Legislature took time out from demonizing LGBTQ folks to pass a bill that the governor signed giving the Haslam Sports Group $600 million towards the 2.4 billion project (the Haslams were expecting more.) And just what is the source of this $600 million? Unclaimed funds, i.e., usually small sums that Ohioans have yet to collect from old bank accounts, uncashed checks, and security deposits. Why haven't they collected this money? They're probably unaware they're owed it and, unlike owners of sports teams and the politicians that enable them, don't have bookkeepers, accountants, and business managers around to make them aware of it.

Well, that's it. I have nothing else to say on the subject. Unless a legendary hero of medieval lore suddenly were to materialize in front of me. If he did, I'd say this to him:

Just be grateful Sherwood Forest doesn't have a professional sports team. Faster than you could rob from the rich and give to the poor, they'd be doing it in reverse!

Vital Viewing (That's Enfranchisement Edition)

 

For those of you who live in Ohio, the deadline to register to vote in the 2024 elections is October 7, this coming Monday. Above are all the things you need to know and do and be in order to register. However, it may not be all that easy to read as at some point the words shrink quite a bit (just what you need in an election where there's bound to be accusations of fraud and voter suppression: small print.) So as a further service I've included the following video provided by the good people at the Cuyahoga County Board of Election themselves in the hope of making things a bit more clear:

Get all that? Good. Now just to make sure you do everything you're supposed to do to fully participate in our democracy, I'd like to add a cautionary tale of what could happen if you DON'T do everything you're supposed to do.

Actually, this cautionary tale takes place in the Queens, New York of the 1970s but I think it applies equally well to Cuyahoga County, Ohio of the 2020s as a man of many, many opinions suddenly finds himself unable to act upon a single one of those opinions. Watch:

Don't end up like Archibald. Register!

 

Vital Viewing (Comedy 2 Night Edition)

1943-2024

Comedian, actor, musician, and, having spent part of his childhood in the area, Cleveland booster Martin Mull died this past Thursday. Here he is sometime in the 1980s as a guest on David Letterman's NBC late night talk show. As it turns out, Mull was something else other than just a comedian, actor, musician, and Browns fan:

"Representational" doesn't quite describe Mull's retro-photorealistic collage-like paintings. Not that "retro-photorealistic collage-like" describes the artworks all that much better, but I like 'em:

The Ides of August

Sunday Morning

Carpe Diem

Self-Portrait

Band on the Run

Some noted celebrities have taken notice of Mull's artworks, and used them for their own endeavors:

So was painting just Mull's hobby? Actually, it was his main line of work. Or rather, it's what the Rhodes Island School of Design Bachelor of Fine Arts (1965) and Master of Fine Arts (1967) graduate would preferred to have been his main line of work, but fine art doesn't always pay the bills, thus the comedy, acting, music, and boosting. A closer look at how he paid those bills:

Martin Mull first came to public attention in 1977 playing wife-beater Garth Gimble on the late-night black comedy soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Doesn't sound too pleasant, I know, but if it's any consolation his character got his comeuppance when he was fatally impaled on an artificial Christmas tree. Mull's stint on MHMH didn't end, however, as he soon returned as Garth's identical twin show biz brother Barth. This led to the spinoff Fernwood 2 Night, the titled small town's local TV station's misguided attempt at a talk show that had host Barth spending as much time fending off announcer/sidekick/buttinski Jerry Hubbard (Fred Willard) as he did interviewing guests:

Fernwood 2 Night eventually morphed into America 2 Night, which had Barth and Jerry moving to California and interviewing real-life celebrities but with the same disastrous results. That show ended its run in 1978, but it wasn't the end for Mull or Willard, who nearly two decades later would make...

...sitcom history. Martin Mull had for some time been appearing on Roseanne where he played the title character's boss and later business partner Leon Carp, who was eventually revealed to be gay. Fred Willard played Scott, Leon's old flame, and the two eventually decided to get married (some 20 years before the Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples could do so.) Now, Mull and Willard were straight in real-life, but here at Shadow of a Doubt we hold no objection to heterosexuals playing homosexuals as long as it's done with some understanding of what that state of being must be like (or at least as much understanding as you're likely to get on a sitcom.). And they did. Unfortunately, all I could find on YouTube was the following clip in which someone very obviously pointed a video camera at a TV screen and started recording. It's still very watchable, but just not listenable. Turn up the volume all you want. All you'll hear is a mutter. Undaunted, I went to the website IMBd and found out just what  muttering went on between Mull and Willard. It's just below the video. Watch (that's Norm Crosby officiating) and then read:  

• 
  
• Scott: I love you in a way that is mystical and eternal and illegal in 20 states.
• Leon Carp: That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
• 
  
• 
  

• 
  
  
  

 Martin Mull did a lot of movies and TV guest shots in his lengthy career, but it was as a stand-up, or rather sit-down, comedian that I found him at his funniest:

That ended kind of abruptly, but who else but God always leaves them wanting more?

Finally, a hometown promo:

That was from the early 1990s. These days we have two downtown stadiums, one for the Browns and one for the Guardians, as well as a casino and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but even if we didn't, Mr. Mull still would have convinced me to stay, just as long as he made me laugh in return for doing so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Riposte

Castro Street

West Hollywood

Christopher Street

Downtown Cleveland?!?!

 

2023-2024 has not been exactly the best of times for the LGBTQ community, has it? In the last year or so, some 500 bills targeting gays, lesbians, and in particular the transgender community have been introduced in state legislatures across the USA. Not all of these bills have become law, but enough have to give any queer person pause. Yet the Pride celebrations continue unabated, and not just in such historical LGBTQ meccas as San Francisco and Greenwich Village, but even here in the flyover rust belt metropolis of Cleveland. Nevertheless, the question must be asked, given all the bad news, what exactly is being celebrated? 

That's easy. You see......um......well......ah......hmm......er......um......I tell you what, why don't you watch eight minutes of the Pride march that took place this past Saturday morning in Cleveland while I do some head-scratching and try to figure this whole thing out:

I've now decided there is something to celebrate, and that's the celebration itself.  This is the second Pride march I've participated in--my little UU church group wasn't caught on camera, I'm afraid--and there were a whole lot more people there this year than last year, the marchers--both members of the LGBTQ community and their allies--totaling around 7000. 7000! No official count yet on how many people watched the march or took part in the festivities held afterwards, but it was easily in the thousands as Cleveland's downtown was transformed into a sun-drenched super-duper cosplay Mad Tea Party for the masses. The glam masses, that is. Now, is there anything else I can tell you that the above video doesn't? Just this. There was more a sense of camaraderie between those marching and those watching this year. I dare say it was even communal. You saw all the waving to and fro in that clip, but there's more. Every so often a watcher yelled out, "Thank you for doing this!" Whenever they waved or I heard the thank-yous I felt at one with those people, an exceedingly rare occurrence for li'l old self-absorbed me. Hey, if it takes 7000 people to get over myself, so be it. I responded by mostly waving back at the crowd, but at one point I remember yelling out, "And thank you!" because, really, the marchers needed the watchers as much as the watchers needed the marchers. Without anyone watching, the whole shebang would have been nothing more than a huge exercise in talking to yourself (and I do that enough on my own anyway.) Thank you for doing this. Such an expression of solidarity is a reminder that as much as it may resemble Mardi Gras, a Pride march or parade is still very much a political statement, a form of social activism. Nothing to celebrate? Darling, we have not yet begun to party!

 

 

 

 

 

Wait Until Dark

 

You want to experience all four seasons? Spend a week in Cleveland.

What follows two days of rain in Cleveland? Monday.

I must say, nobody tells Cleveland jokes better than Clevelanders themselves. You can't depend on out-of-towners to tell them. They're still making cracks about the river catching on fire. That was 55 years ago, folks! We've moved on. There's a lot of jokes to be made of our weather, but outsiders get that wrong, too. People who never lived in Cleveland or never visited Cleveland think it's this 365-day snowstorm. If that were true it might actually bring some piece of mind as there would be some predictability and consistency to the weather. No, Cleveland is not colder or snowier than any other northern U.S. city that lies just south of Canada. Instead, as you may have gathered from the above two jokes, the weather is erratic. I don't know if it has to do with Lake Erie being the shallowest of the Great Lakes or what, but you just can't depend on the weather to stay cold or warm or rainy or dry or sunny or cloudy or snowy or non-snowy. It plays havoc with people's wardrobes. You can't put spring clothes away for the winter or winter clothes away for the spring because spring at any time could make a cameo appearance in winter and winter could make a cameo appearance in spring. You've heard of the January thaw? I think this year we had January thaws, plural, because every week of that month there was cold followed by warm followed by cold followed by warm again. Not this year, but I remember one winter when a snowstorm dumped a foot of snow, followed a day later with temperatures in the 50s, which resulted in massive flooding. Not that you had to worry too much about drowning, because the next day temperatures were below freezing, and the flood waters had turned to ice! When it comes to climate change, Cleveland has always been ahead of the curve.

I bring all this up because as you may have heard Cleveland was in the path of Monday's solar eclipse, and nobody in our humble little metropolis could quite bring themselves to believe that we were going to be allowed to experience this historic event because something somewhere was bound to fuck us over, mainly the weather. For the first time in my life, I think Clevelanders actually wanted two days of rain followed by a sunny Monday, but with our luck it probably would be the other way around.

Oh, wow, Holly's back on TV! That's almost as newsworthy as the eclipse (all you out-of-towners needn't concern yourselves with what I'm talking about.) As you can see, the prediction early Monday morning was a mixture of sun and clouds. In fact, I only remember the sun so it was a rare occasion of normally pessimistic ol' me seeing the glass as half full. What follows are pictures from around Northeast Ohio on the day of the eclipse, and after that some personal recollections. 

As with any historic event that you're fortunate enough to know ahead of time is a historic event (so that leaves out the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) there were souvenirs.

 

 

Does that mean I'm allowed to run a red light?

Wear special eclipse glasses and you won't go blind (not even if you're spanking the--well, this is a family blog, so I won't say.)

Edgewater Beach, about two hours before totality. See Downtown Cleveland in the distance? 

Downtown's center, Public Square.

 Cleveland Clinic Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This infant girl is well-protected from the harmful rays of the sun.

Cuyahoga Falls.

Final score: Guardians 4, White Sox 0.

Terminal Tower. When I was a kid, this was Cleveland's tallest building. It's since been surpassed but is still the city's most iconic structure. 

 

Totality over Cleveland.

39 miles southeast from Cleveland, Akron also got to experience totality.

Totality over Akron. I know, it looks a lot like totality over Cleveland. Well, what did you expect? It's the same sun and same shadow of the moon, just taken with a different camera in a different location.

I was on the road by 6:15 AM, and it was raining. Just as I thought, I thought, Nature's Cleveland branch isn't going to let us see this thing. I arrived at work thinking this much-hyped eclipse was nothing but a celestial tease, God having the final say on who tells the best Cleveland jokes. However, when I emerged from the building later on, the sun was out with nary a puddle on the ground.

I headed home but I wasn't going to stay there for long. Despite all the dire predictions, the traffic hadn't seemed all that busier than usual. I figured I'd go watch the eclipse in the Cleveland Metroparks, a swath of which isn't far from where I live. I turned into the park and then into a picnic area, a place I'd been to many, many times before, and where there's usually ample parking. Well, not this time. Cars everywhere as well as people everywhere, the first real evidence I had that, yes, this eclipse was in great demand. I turned around to leave, which proved a bit tricky. As I said, there were people everywhere, including right in the path of my car. Somehow, I managed not to hit anybody, and was back out onto the parkway. Now, the Metropark system (dubbed the "Emerald Necklace") is countywide, so there are plenty of picnic areas to choose from, but I figured if this one is jam-packed with cars, by now they're all jam-packed with cars. So I left the parkway altogether and went back on the main road.

Not too far away was a suburban branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. More cars than usual, but I easily found a parking space. From there it was just a short walk to a small park of sorts, really just an expanse of lawn, in front of this bedroom community's City Hall/Police Station. There were people, but not too many (I now pitied those poor fools who chose the crowded Metroparks.) I decided to try on my eclipse glasses:

What th--?! These glasses that were supposed to protect you from becoming blinded by an eclipse did that by blinding you before the eclipse! How the hell was I supposed to find the eclipse when I couldn't even see the sky? Sure, I could just lift my head up, but in what direction? I took off the glasses and looked at the people around me, and decided the best I could do was to look in the same direction they were looking. I put the glasses back on, and viola! There was the sun, or rather, a portion of the sun.

This was about an hour and fifteen minutes before totality. If you scroll upwards to that one picture of the various phases of the eclipse, the phase I first saw was maybe the third phase on the left. I have to admit I was a bit startled by the sight. In fact, I almost fell backwards. Seeing the sun with a bite taken out of it in a photograph just isn't it the same as seeing in real time. I almost felt like I was at Fatima (yes, I know that wasn't an eclipse, but still) and a LeBron James-sized Virgin Mary would show up at any minute and entrust me with three secrets, a responsibility I'd just as soon not take on at this point in my life. Somehow, I managed to compose myself. It helped that I took off the glasses.

Nothing I saw from there on in, including the totality itself, filled me with as much wonder and awe (as well as unease) as that first look at what was after all only a little bit of the eclipse, which is a good thing because it meant I could be analytical, my preferred state of being. Leave the visions and apparitions to the prophets. It's what they're paid for. Now, I didn't continuously look at the eclipse. The glasses went on and off. In my present analytical state, I wanted to see how dark it was getting at ground level as the sun gradually disappeared behind the moon (or the moon's shadow.) I was surprised to see it wasn't much. Even at the point where there was more moon than sun, it was still fairly bright outside. Shows you the power of the sun's rays. So why do clouds give it such a hard time?

Finally, maybe about 20 minutes before totality, by which time there was just a skinny crescent sun, was there a dimming of light that I recognized as "dusk". Then came nightfall. I looked up and actually couldn't find the corona at first. Only for a moment. Then there it was. As I said, I wasn't as transfixed as when I first saw the earlier more-sun-than-moon eclipse. Still, I was planning to spend the whole four minutes examining it when I heard a horn honk. Back here on Earth, the few cars on the road, headlights now on, made it clear that the vehicle's drivers weren't indifferent to what was going on. After that, I just marveled--my analytic state was taking a beating--that 3:15 in the afternoon looked like 9:15 at night. 

Then the natural light gradually came back on, and the artificial light gradually went off. I looked at the emerging sun maybe two more times, and that was it. I walked back to the library. As the Weather Channel guy says in the accompanying video, there was a poignancy to the eclipse's slow demise. Of course, if there was a solar eclipse every day of the week, or even once a week, there'd be no poignancy or wonder or awe or unease, and certainly nothing of a spiritual nature. It's the rarity, the out-of-the-ordinariness, the uniqueness of the event that warrants out attention.

 

Post-eclipse weather forecast. Also rare, out-of-the-ordinary, and unique--if you live in the Mojave Desert.