Cleveland finally gets championship monkey off its back
What’s going on in Cleveland?
You probably know by now the Cavaliers recently became the first major pro team from the town known as the “Mistake on the Lake” (though it shares the Lake Erie shoreline with Buffalo) to win a championship since 1964.
Would winning an NBA Championship and a World Series in the same year be enough to put a claim in for the title of City of Champions?
The Indians came into the weekend on a 14-game winning streak, the longest in Major League Baseball since 2013.
Cleveland sports fans must be wondering how to act.
The Cavs and the Indians reduced the coverage of and interest in whatever stupidity Johnny Manziel is up to now.
He was suspended for four weeks even though nobody, including him, is sure if he’s still in the NFL.
He’s not. In another major win for “The Mistake,” he was released by the Browns in March.
Sorry Penguins fans, you can’t rub Cleveland fans’ noses in that Stanley Cup win. At least twice as many people saw their basketball team win a championship.
And nobody in Cleveland cares about the Pirates’ one-and-dones the last two years. While the Pirates were struggling to get to .500 and falling 13½ games behind in the National League Central, the Indians were leading the American League Central by seven games. They could be on their way to actually playing in a playoff series, not a one-game playoff.
It’s been a tough 52 years for Cleveland fans. It was made much tougher by the annoying teams playing in the city 125 miles to the southeast on the Ohio/Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Pittsburgh fans got the Immaculate Reception. Cleveland fans got The Fumble. You know things are bad when your team is known for The Fumble.
That’s what Ernest Byner’s fumble in the 1987 AFC Championship game will always be. Go ahead. Google it.
The Fumble will come up at the top of the page with a Wikipedia reference: “In American football, The Fumble refers to a play in the 1987 AFC Championship game between the Browns and Broncos on Jan. 17, 1988 at Mile High Stadium. With 1:12 left in the game, Browns running back Earnest Byner fumbled on the Broncos 1-yard line while trying to score a touchdown to pull within one point. The Broncos went on to win 38-33 after taking an intentional safety.”
Imagine your football team being known for the most famous fumble – just about the worst thing that can happen to a football team – in football history.
And The Fumble came almost exactly one year after The Drive.
Google The Drive and you’ll get this at the top of the page, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Drive refers to an offensive series in the fourth quarter of the AFC Championship Game played on Jan.11, 1987 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium between the Denver Broncos and Cleveland Browns. Broncos quarterback John Elway, in a span of 5 minutes and 2 seconds, led his team 98 yards in 15 plays to tie the game with 37 seconds left in regulation. Denver won the game in overtime with a field goal, 23-20.”
I was on the sideline at old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland that day. I walked up the field with the Broncos. I’ll never forget the dog biscuits exploding off of their helmets as they lined up in the end zone at the opposite end from the official Dawg Pound.
I was hit in the leg by a pretty good-sized dog biscuit myself and the field was full of pieces of dog biscuit. Elway’s drive ended with a touchdown pass right in front of the Dawg Pound. That crowd of 83,000-plus – the loudest football crowd I’ve ever experienced – created the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.
That’s how close Cleveland fans got to experiencing back-to-back Super Bowls. They missed by being on the wrong side of two of the most famous plays in football history.
But there’s no room to laugh for fans of Pittsburgh’s teams right now.
That all changes in two months, though.
Unless, of course, the Indians are in the process of winning the World Series in October.
John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.