Well, dudes. For the first time in 5 years, my article will not go to print in the August / September issue of the Summit County Women's Journal. But! No woman, no cry, right? I'm printing it here.
I know I’ve written about abusive relationships before, right? I mean. Really? Sometimes I feel as though that’s all we talk about with each other, readers. How to love ourselves first. How to identify abusive traits in a partner or friend. How to break free from the bonds of abuse. How to re-learn ourselves once we remove the crisis element from our respective lives. I’m pretty sure we’ve delved into these topics in very great depth and I, for one, am tired of hearing about them sometimes. At least in reference to human on human relationships.
This past summer, however, it has come to my attention that the entire sports-viewing Cleveland area (and I am including Akron in this statement for the purposes of sports-fan-demographics) and, in all fairness, the US of A, has been in an abusive relationship. So what happens when the abuser is a paradigm and the abused is a City?
I’ll bet you think I’m talking about LeBron James, don’t you. Well, I’m not. Good riddance to megalomaniacal rubbish, if you ask me.
What I’m talking about, of course, is Cleveland sports. Some refer to Cleveland as “the mistake on the lake,” while others often reference “the Cleveland curse” when discussing sports. Meaning, of course, that our sports teams either seldom ever win any games or that they win a long string of games only to blow it when our “glory moment” is about to take place. We all know the sob story by heart, don’t we? I’m not talking about this curse, though. The curse that I’m talking about is how the sports paradigm has taken all of us for a bit of a ride – and how we’ve allowed it to. Let me clarify a few things by outlining the facts of the matter at hand.
We condone, either by buying tickets to sporting events or by buying memorabilia or what have you, the outrageous multi-million dollar salaries of sports players – whether or not they do their jobs well. I know it’s been said before, but does this crap fly in ANY OTHER PROFESSION? I mean let’s say you’re a nurse and every patient with whom you come into contact just happens to die because you’re doing a negligent job. Do you suppose that your patients’ families are going to laugh it off and call it “the nurse curse?” Doubtful.
Now, have you noticed over the years that these multi-million dollar salaries seem to be able to buy these guys not only a heaping load of material goods but also things like money, time and freedom that would not be offered to the public? For instance, if a regular guy were to be accused of rape, chances are those around him and society at large would want to keep this guy off the streets in the time between his accusation and his trial, just in case he was a rapist. Not with a sports player. What do we say about a sports player accused of rape? We say that the accuser must be either crazy or greedy and then we start talking about how much we need that guy in order to win. Or let’s say, just as a hypothetical, that some dude is found riding around town a little bit disoriented and in possession of several loaded weapons. Do you think an average guy in this situation would be given extra consideration and understanding? Nope. He’d be pegged as nuts, sent to jail and never heard from again. Not a sports player, though. When it comes to a sports player, we start talking about how these behaviors are symptoms of a legitimate disease (something we should say any time ANYONE is suffering from a mental illness) and then we talk about how much we need that guy in order to win. Are you noticing a pattern here? Why is this winning so important? What does it mean?
Is it some kind of city-to-city peeing contest? Probably. But why, oh, why do we place our sense of worth as a city in the hands of a bunch of overgrown children* with egos the sizes of Texas who are basically paid to – dare I say it? – PLAY A GAME?? Put simply, that would be like giving me a 40 million dollar a year salary and a shoe contract (and little to no accountability for my actions) to play (and only MAYBE win) at, like, hopscotch or four-square.
I’m going to pose an alternate suggestion. Why not shift our focus onto things that are more important? Why not change our definition of winning to mean getting a higher graduation rate out of our schools? Why not change our definition of winning to mean how many hungry human beings we can get together and feed and how many homeless human beings to whom we can offer safe and warm shelter for the night. Every day on my way to work, I used to drive by that ridiculous ad on the side of the Sherwin Williams building and then two minutes later, I would drive past five or six people sleeping on the sidewalk outside of my parking garage. Does that image horrify anyone else? It certainly horrified me. The ad isn’t there anymore, but the people sleeping on the sidewalk still are. We’ve taken down the sign, but what are we doing to find other human beings a place to sleep?
And I know people love to see a struggle, a hunt, a victory. We love to see the polarity between that victory and a perceived defeat. We love the tension, the anticipation, the elation at the end of it. The thrill of being part of something. But why not just become part of each other? Why not make our cities’ reputations ride on the happiness and health of its inhabitants rather than on the outcome of a game played by a generally out-of-touch few? I’m not saying that sports aren’t to be enjoyed. Perish the thought! I AM saying that there is more – so much more – to life. And I see us missing it.
Why not change our definition of winning as a city to mean that we actually have the guts, the drive and the determination to look inward and the courage to actually see what we need to do to improve ourselves? And then just do it.
*I realize that not all professional athletes fall into the “egotistical child” category and that there are several individuals who play for the love of the game rather than for the status and who give back to their communities and behave like reasonable and caring human beings, despite their fame. Allow me to take this sidebar to openly commend them for that!
