Tonight's the Night

I write four types of blog entries. Cultural criticism, which is my desired career path, and the reason I even have this thing; ranting and raving, which is only applicable when my girlfriend is tired of hearing me complain about white people and Santa Monica (usually both), intellectual sports analysis, which is what I call it, not you; and highly personal, empirical musings on the plight of being a sports fan in Cleveland which are directed towards and usually understood by two people who happen to share a set of grandparents.

Today, you get the latter.

The 49ers won Super Bowl XVI a week before I was born. The NBA season had begun 4 months earlier. So, since the day I was born, 26 NBA seasons have begun, 26 football seasons began, but three were absent of the Browns, and 27 MLB seasons started, but only 25 finished (one will conclude next week, the other was 1994 and….well…I think the Expos won it all). So, 77 Cleveland sports seasons have begun, and 77 sports seasons have ended. Three times, we were one step away. Seven ended two steps away. In a few minutes, season number 78 begins.

Tonight, I have nothing to say except for this: I believe—remember I am as pessimistic and indoctrinated with the pain of the last 27 years to know—that it ends here. Tonight, the Cavs embark on the season that will end this joke. In eight months, amongst spring time, and the heat of a congressional election, while the Tribe will be floundering in June, and training camp will have not yet begun in Berea, we will look back on October 27th and remember a more innocent time when we were STILL the butt of the joke, STILL the answer to the trivia question; a time in which we were a sports montage artists wet dream, when the question about Lebron leaving was more important than erasing the misery, pain, and failures of 45 years (and MOTHER FUCKING COUNTING); and you will think about reading this and thinking I was insane. You will think about the time, 9 8 months ago, when you read crazy Matt Glassman's wild-eyed prediction that seemed to contradict EVERY SINGLE analyst on Earth, and thought to yourself "What an idiot," but then you felt warm because at least someone, with at least some sort of a semblance of sanity, KNEW that this would happen.

Tonight will not be like April 1996, when the addition of Julio Franco was not enough to overcome the eventual World Champion Yankees on opening day following a WS defeat the year before. Tonight will not be like September 2003 when Kelly Holcomb, Willie Green, and Mush Davis made us quickly forget that Pittsburgh game. Tonight will be the start of a NEW story. Tonight will be the first clips on that video we get when we all subscribe to Sports Illustrated in 9 months. Tonight will give us hope, tonight will give us a reason to tune in tomorrow, and tonight will be the start in the greatest sports season in Cleveland since my father was 10 years old.

Tonight we're gonna take no prisoners/tonight we're gonna live a dream/tonight the Wine and Gold delivers/hard workin' town hard workin' team.

Whooooo

Tonight the hardwoods burnin' and the cavs will keep on workin, get behind the wine and gold, with all your might.

Cavs.

Cavs Basketball tonight's the night

Whoooooaoaaa

Cav's basketball tonight's the night.