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 (Races Racing Edition)

Four-time Olympic gold medal winner Jesse Owens was born on this day in 1913. Now, winning all that precious metal would have been quite an achievement under any circumstance, but it's where and when the track-and-field athlete won all that precious metal that makes it particularly noteworthy:

Above is the official poster of the Games of the XI Olympiad, but as with anything official, it doesn't tell the whole...

...story.

So, what in the world was the International Olympic Committee thinking when it chose that regime to host the games? Well, that wasn't quite what was chosen. Berlin won its bid in 1931, at which time the nation as large wasn't Nazi Germany but what's now referred to as the Weimar Republic, and I guess the IOC assumed it would still be a republic five years later. It probably would have had there not been a worldwide depression that hit the Deutschland particularly hard, creating an opportunity for Hitler and his team of martinets to goosestep up to the plate as the Weimar players were booed out of the game. Once the antidemocratic and anti-Semitic nature of the new regime became apparent to the rest of the world, there was much talk within the IOC and outside as well about taking the games away from the Germans, with some civil libertarians and social justice advocates calling on their governments to boycott the games were they to go ahead as scheduled. Well, the games did go ahead as scheduled, while a boycott did not, and most countries sent their best athletes, including the United States, which sent, among others, Jesse Owens.

Owens earned his first Gold Medal on August 3 in the 100-meter dash:

 

On August 4, a second Gold for the long jump:

Nice to hear "U-S-A! U-S-A!" as sounding like something other than a racist rant. Indeed, anything but.

On August 5, Owens won the 200-meter sprint:

On August 9, Owens won his fourth and final Gold in the relay: 

Track and field is hardly the be-all and the end-all in the Olympics. There were lots of other events, and lots of other winners, but you can't win four medals and not be the guy that everybody is talking about...

...and everybody was talking about Jesse.

It wasn't supposed to be this way--according to the Nazis.

Adolf Hitler had nothing to do with Berlin getting the Olympics, but once they were gotten and he was in charge, he ran with it, regarding the Games as a kind of...

...geopolitical, ethnographic track and field event, a way of promoting Aryan supremacy. Winning medals was merely a prelude to winning wars. 

And Germany did win a lot of medals in that Olympics. 101 medals, the most of any country. The United States was a distant second at 57. But it was which Americans that won those medals that put the lie to Nazi boasts. Jesse Owens obviously was not Aryan. With the exception of Luz Long in the long jump, Owens toughest competitors weren't German athletes, but his fellow African Americans, such as Mack Robinson, Jackie's brother. None of it seemed to matter to Hitler, who instead showered his affections on the German athletes.

 

This led to the decades-long charge that Der Führer had snubbed the rest of the world's athletes, in particular the United States athletes, in particular the United States black athletes, in particular Jesse Owens. That's how much of the American press, particularly the black American press, portrayed it. But not everyone bought into that scenario. Surprisingly, one such dissenter was a black American member of the press himself, Robert Lee Vann, publisher and editor of the Pittsburgh Courier. "Wonder of wonders, I saw Herr Adolf Hitler salute this lad," Vann reported. "I saw Jesse Owens greeted by the Grand Chancellor of this country as a brilliant sun peeped out through the clouds" Owens himself acknowledged some sort of amiable exchange, stating, "Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave...It happened that he had to leave before the victory celebration. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed his box. He waved at me and I waved back." This friendly exchange either wasn't caught on camera, or if it was then ended up on Leni Riefenstahl's cutting room floor. Since it's a story that Owens stuck to through the years, I have to believe it happened. Regardless of whether it was a salute or a wave or a nod or a smile or even a wink, does that make Hitler a nice guy after all? I think not. A friendly wave hardly mitigates genocide! So why did Vann and in particular Owens seem to be shilling for the racist of all racists? I don't think they were. They merely were trying to put the whole thing is perspective. And just what was that perspective?

In hindsight, an unfair comparison. But in 1936, Hitler's fiercest critics had no idea just how bad things were going to get. Prewar Germany may have been discriminatory, but it was not yet murderous. And so at the time one could make a reasonable argument that something similar to the Third Reich existed in America below the Mason-Dixon line. And traces could be found above the Mason-Dixon line as well. Upon returning to the United States after the Olympics, Jesse Owen was treated to a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan. Afterwards, there was a reception for him at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Except as a black, even a famous black, he wasn't allowed through the hotel's front doors. Instead, the guest of honor had to go around back and take a freight elevator to his own party! Depending on the jurisdiction, the gold medalist still had to ride in the back of the bus, still had to use a separate drinking fountain. It was those kinds of snubs on his native soil that he put up with for decades to come."Hitler didn't shake my hand, but then neither did President Roosevelt," Owens, a Republican, once said. (At the time the South was a significant source of votes for the Democratic Party. My, how things change!)

 

 

Jesse Owens post-Olympics years had their ups and down. Naturally, some of those downs had to with racism, but not all. Athletics is a time-sensitive occupation, and a pensionless retirement can come early. Owens tried to brace himself against such a future by taking money wherever and whenever he could almost immediately upon winning his medals, at first in the form of endorsements. The U.S. Olympic Committee saw that as crass and revoked his amateur status. That freed Owens up to compete professionally, but against who? Unlike soccer or basketball, there's really not much in the way of professional track and field. Owens ended up racing, and beating, a horse at the South Idaho State Fair. He also raced dogs, trucks, and motorcycles. As time passed and endorsements became fewer, Owens opened up his own drive-thu dry cleaner, which didn't last long. Various other failed business ventures eventually led him to declared bankruptcy. So much for the downs. As for the ups, President Eisenhower appointed him a goodwill ambassador, and he was sent to the developing countries of the world to promote both physical fitness and, as this was during the Cold War, the American cause of freedom. There were corporate speeches, and honors such as the Presidental Medal of Freedom, given to him by Jerry Ford. Not to be outdone, Ford's successor, Jimmy Carter, gave him a Living Legends Award. Owens was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. He didn't live to see it erected, but here in Cleveland, where Owens went to high school, his statue crosses a finish line in a downtown park. Ohio State, where Owens went to college, has a stadium named after him. One thing Owens did live to see was a new generation of U.S. Olympic Committee members who refused to hold his earlier commercialism against him, and even appointed him to its Board of Directors. Owens went to the 1972 Munich Olympics as a guest of the West German government, where he met the ex-boxer Max Schmeling, who had battled Joe Louis in another African American-versus-the-Nazis sporting event (though Schmeling was anything but a Nazi and in fact harbored Jews during World War II.) A pack-a-day smoker, Jesse Owens died of lung cancer in 1980.

 

Whoopie Goldberg got herself embroiled in a bit of controversy not too long ago when she characterized the Holocaust as "white-on-white violence", refusing to regard Judaism as a race. Well, is it? That depends on who's doing the regarding. Some 20 years ago, biologists came to the conclusion that, genetically, there was no other race but a human race and the various groupings that we regard as separate races are not distinct species of hominoids but mere social constructs. Well, for Goldberg and plenty of others who are neither geneticists nor biologists, skin pigmentation has long been the tried-and-true way of constructing those social differences. Except under that definition, Adolf Hitler was oddly colorblind. Race was whatever the Powers That Be said it was, anti-Semitism a government-mandated dye job that became a social, as well as a damn near literal, deconstruction of a whole people.

Mel Brooks once defended the many Nazi jokes found in both the movie and stage versions of The Producers by saying that he hoped such mockery would loosen whatever grip those monsters still held on the public's imagination. That came to my mind as I watched the following interview Jesse Owens did for Canadian television in 1963. By that time it had become obvious that the Third Reich had outdone even the Jim Crow South when it came to man's inhumanity to man, and Owens had adjusted his views accordingly. Actually, most of this interview concerns Owens work with the Illinois Youth Commision. However, right toward the end, the inevitable question about the Nazi Olympics is asked, and Owens comes up with a corker of a response:

 

 

BA-DUM-CHING! And let's make it a world holiday.

Quips and Quotations (Cleveland Sports Edition)

It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

--Luke 15:32, King James Version

(Here's something I wrote a few years back--KJ)