So I really want to rant about Lebron. Not because I care (okay, maybe I care a little), but because the country seems to be in a state of chaos and disorder because some guy picks another team. It’s just sports, people. Sigh, my spot on the great Throne of Rant has been stolen, however, and I can’t rant as I intended. All it took was six simple words to render my energy on the subject diluted and confused.
I was all ready to go at work the day after The Decision. Someone picked up the front page and I was off.
“Don’t even tell me about him. I don’t care.”
I had revved my engine and was ready to take off like a drag racer on a full-scale rant. Red light, yellow light…
“You know, Crudy [Crudy=me—don’t ask],” said the one person who was supposed to be on my side—the side that says starving people are more important than sports, “people put their faith in things.”
Huh? I have never had a rant so wisely interrupted. How frustrating.
You see, I would love to say that Lebron James doesn’t matter—not anymore than any other human being, that is. And what does his Decision have to do with world hunger, or living life to the fullest, or justice for the oppressed? I would love to say that sports don’t matter, but I can’t. Because it seems that that—you know, “faith”—is there lurking both behind and within the beer-spilling, and money-spending, and fools-of-themselves-making. Besides we are talking about Cleveland, here. As a kid, I thought a “consecutive sellout” was something that happened at every baseball game ever—at least it seemed to happen at every Indians’ game my dad took me to.
Sports are more than just sports—especially in Cleveland. If sports were just sports, then Rudy wouldn’t be such a great movie. But what leaves one non-football buff after another in tears by the end of it? Why does anyone care that he gets to play in the end? Faith does. It’s because the movie isn’t about sports; it’s about Rudy. It’s because Cleveland sports are not about Cleveland sports; they’re about us. Sports embody a microcosm of life. Athletes are born, they rise, they fall, they rise higher, they win or lose, and of course they do die.
And as we watch them die, we imagine their legacy and place ourselves in their position. Perhaps we go as far as to ask what our own legacy will be in respect to the one placed before us. Or maybe we stand around the coffin of an athlete's retirement and say “sucks to be you.” Yeah, that’s probably what most people do, but work with me here; I’m trying to be sanctimonious. We place our dreams of victory in their dreams of victory as we watch them chase it within their short-story of a career. As kids, it was probably these athletes that taught us how to chase our own dreams.
So we chase them at every stage of life. I’m in my early 20’s—the stage of life when you usually figure out that most of what our culture tries to sell us isn’t romantic or fulfilling as promised. Life becomes about having enough money to get through college and about doing something—for goodness sake something—with our new-found rat-raced lives. These are years when some of us will lose sight of our childhood dreams in the intensity and pressures of the heat of the day. As we watch Lebron make or break his dream, we dream with him—whether we want to or not. And maybe no one else is thinking about this, but as I watch Lebron’s motivations steer him, I think about my own motivations in life and how those will steer me. I think about how today’s decision (which does not include and ESPN special report) will affect my legacy and my contribution to life here on Earth. The Decision reminds us all about the importance of legacy in the midst of living paycheck to paycheck.
Yet the million-dollar question remains. Why, oh why Cleveland, have you patiently held on for so long? You would think that Clevelanders would never want to hear about football, or baseball, and now basketball ever again. You would think that we would just give up and try to be the first city to make soccer cool because we seriously have nothing else to put our hope in. But oh no, if you build it, they will come—a new stadium for a losing football team, that is. Oh Cleveland, what makes you believe?
Maybe it has to do with the months of gray in between October and May. Maybe it’s the unemployment rate. Maybe it’s the fact that when mom says, “Okay kids, were going to the beach,” we get there only to find harsh, gritty sand and murky, bitter water. But we swim anyways because it’s hot out and lake is there. So we swim in the Lake Erie of sports—because the heat of life is on and the water is there. So, at least for the playoffs, life seems a little cooler.
I can’t pretend that I don’t get into the playoffs—no matter the sport. I usually couldn’t care less about sports until my antennae catch a whiff of that electric buzz floating around the sidewalk. The stimulation is seducing. And instead of the work-week being one more cycle among many, it is broken into stretches of however many days until the next game. Instead of hanging on the next paycheck, life hangs on the series standings as hope lingers thick like the stubborn humidity. And life is somehow cooler.
I imagine that even if we do win, life will still be there to greet us—just the same—on Monday morning. But we will be there to greet it somehow refreshed, and invigorated, and ready in the face of its stresses and disappointments. We will have a high wave to ride for at least a little while, and we will let it hold back the heat of life’s stressful summer sun. We’ve put our faith in the story-line that someday we will win, too.
Lebron, don’t take it personal that we all hate you. Can’t wait to see you at the first Heat/Cavs game in Cleveland—it would be wise to bring a helmet and some pads. European futbal fan etiquette just may make its ugly way over here to the States.
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