When I told my fiancé how excited I was to start reading Scott Raab’s new book, The Whore of Akron, she asked me what LeBron did to deserve a book with such a disparaging title.
I told her about his transcendent talent, the immaturity basketball fans hoped he’d outgrow and how he betrayed a city, a team and an ideology with a cowardly playoff performance followed by a slimy, ego-stroking, stab-in-the-front television special, “The Decision.” How he cared more about the name on the back of the jersey than the one on the front.
What I realize now is that her real question was more along the lines of “Why do you men do this to yourselves?”
Simply put, I don’t know. For many of us fandom is our birthright, handed from our grandfathers to our fathers, our fathers to us. A legacy to be sure, but nothing you could consider a gift, especially if the team plays in a small market.
Being a fan means almost every season ends in disappointment; sometimes in heart wrenching last second losses, other times in weeks of draining, pointless contests that players seem to be going through only perfunctorily.
Occasionally, it seems like we fans care more than they do; shouting at the television, smashing remotes, or writing nasty blog posts, or in Raab’s case, books, about athletes who don’t justify our love for our team with their play on the field or their actions off.
Being a Wisconsin sports fan, I’ve seen a lot of crushing heartache. I still can hardly think about the end of the 2011 Brewers season without feeling the pain from the debilitating NLCS defeat to the hated, (seemingly) steroid-fueled Cardinals or 2008′s route at the hands of the Phillies, when Jeff Suppan imploded while facing the first batter of the game. I still can’t watch the video of Andrew Bogut’s terrible tumble that cost a feisty 2009/10 Bucks squad a chance at multi-year relevance with a first round upset of the Atlanta Hawks (which they almost pulled off anyway) or Glenn Robinson’s 2000/01 Eastern Conference Finals brick, maybe my only chance, the way the NBA is going, to see my team in the Finals. Not to mention all the years where my teams were just plain terrible.
Yet, I’ve also been to the mountaintop twice thanks to the Green Bay Packers. I saw Reggie White’s record-setting three sack Super Bowl performance justifying his choice to play in Green Bay. I saw last years Packers team go on the road and win three straight playoff games, then the Super Bowl behind the arm of Aaron Rodgers and the shoulder of Clay Matthews. The joy and exultation I felt after those Super Bowl wins justify every painful, penalty-riddled loss, every backbreaking 4th-and-26-failure, every NFL record-setting Favre double-or-triple coverage interception.
It is all worth it because of those moments: The tears in my eyes when Matthews threw a championship belt over Rodgers’ shoulder.
The Review(ish) Portion of this Piece
The Whore of Akron is more than a chronicle of a downfall that seemed assured by the self-proclaimed King’s actions and the things he didn’t say. It is a tome that mourns every failure in Cleveland sports history since their last title, claimed by the Browns, in 1964.
LeBron’s promise to bring that title proved fruitless.
If any small market team should have had the opportunity to retain this once-in-a-lifetime talent, it should have been Cleveland. James grew up in Akron, a short 45-minute ride from the once proud city.
Yet, LeBron held that franchise hostage and then did what Cavs fans (and true basketball fans) feared he would do, he fled middle America, his home, and headed for a coast (face it; it was going to be one or the other), specifically South Beach. He took the easy way out. Raab, all of us, we wished for so much more for LeBron and he failed us. We’ll never see him the same way again, he forever tarnished his legacy, trashed his opportunity to be the greatest of all time.
Raab bemoans the entire sad spectacle; from the Cavs’ last two playoff failures with LeBron to the confusing, triumphant feeling of celebrating Miami’s Finals loss last season, rather than a championship of their own. (I remember being absolutely giddy as LeBron passed the ball time after time in the deciding Game 6, his panic strangely familiar, remarkable and tragic, all at once. I felt almost as thrilled as I did when Brett Favre threw the pick that ensured the Vikings wouldn’t make the Super Bowl in 2009/10 season, giving those (not really) reprehensible Vikings fans the full Favre-experience; the massive highs, the crushing lows.)
We feel Raab’s pain, not just from his 60-something year-old back, but from this betrayal; what seemed to be Raab’s generation of Clevelanders’ last great hope for a championship disappearing with a playoff choke job and a frothy, overwrought special on ESPN (which has truly become an ugly, biased monolith lording over the world of sports like a fat, belching bully).
Above all, Raab (a writer for Esquire and GQ) is honest: honest about being fat; honest about being an alcoholic and former drug user; honest about his love for Cleveland, one of America’s most maligned cities, his home; honest about James’ jaw-dropping abilities; and honest about his own envious, terrible hatred of the once great hope of Cleveland. No one is spared Raab’s caustic wit, his cutting words, not even himself. Which is what makes him the perfect narrator for this journey into the soul of the middle American sports fan.
The Whore of Akron is the perfect Christmas gift for the sadistic sports fan. (And, really, is there any other kind?)
So then… (A conclusion of sorts.)
It isn’t easy being a fan of a small market team. Your favorite player skipping town is always an option, a cruel, impure distraction from what the game is supposed to be all about. (I never fully embraced Prince Fielder or Brandon Jennings for fear that they’d bolt the first chance they got… Your move, Prince, I dare you to prove me wrong!)
Sports are supposed to be about teamwork, about fathers and sons and daughters (or even moms, even if it just means explaining the game to them), about winning with grace and losing with dignity. But in world where everyone wants to be LeBron James (who, himself, wants to be Michael Jordan), these real things matter less and less.
Maybe being a fan is a calculated gamble. Most of us don’t win nearly as often as we’d like to in life. But in a league with 30 teams, or 32, eventually whoever we attach our pride to should be able to climb that mountain, which must make it doubly frustrating to be a Cleveland sports fan.
The Cavs have been around 40 years with no titles to show for it. It’s been 46 years since the Browns hoisted that title. Throw in another 46 for the Indians and that is 132 seasons of frustration with nothing to show for it but pain, bruises, and a Siren-like voice at the beginning of every season, whispering softly, sweetly, that this year will be our year.
Last April, a merry band of friends and I traveled to Cleveland to see our favorite rock ‘n roll band, The Hold Steady, in the city that is home to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. When I returned home, I realized, for better or for worse, Milwaukee and Cleveland were one in the same–two sides of the same coin–middle-of-America cities trying to hold onto glory that had long passed us by; finding making reasons to celebrate in the midst of an unforgiving economy and a culture obsessed with all the wrong things. (Kardashians, anyone?!)
When sports loses its innocence once again, always more egregiously than the last time, the world can’t be far behind. This is why LeBron is ‘The Whore of Akron,’ there isn’t anything he wouldn’t sell, including his own soul (and ours to boot).
But yes, we are the same, Cleveland and Milwaukee, save one thing: We have the Packers, we have those flags that will forever fly, marking our time in this state (and our time on this earth) as a time that mattered that will be remembered in the annals of history. A time when the sports gods smiled down on us and let us watch our heroes hoist a trophy that has both nothing and everything to do with each and every one of us who cared.
Yes, I feel bad for Cleveland. I feel so bad that if I could, I’d give them all the Miller Lite in Milwaukee, but I wouldn’t give them one of those flags, no sir, not one.
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