This is the power. This is the mystery. I am on the telephone with a friend from Cleveland.
Four years ago, on the day LeBron James took his talents to South Beach, this is what that friend said to me: “I didn’t know sports could ever make you feel this way.”
“You’re from Cleveland,” I said. “Isn’t part of the deal that sports breaks your heart?”
“This isn’t heartbreaking,” my friend said. “It’s beyond that. There is literally a dull ache in my stomach. That’s not supposed to happen with something you’re supposed to love so much.”
That was then.
This is now:
“I never knew sports could make you feel so bad, but I have to admit, I never knew they could make you feel this good, either,” he said. “After all, I’m 47. I’ve never actually seen one of my teams win a championship. This is about as close as it gets. And it’s as sweet as everyone has ever told me it could be.”
This is the power. This is the mystery. James was just the one who tapped into it this time, and Cleveland was the beneficiary.
The overwhelming majority of Cavaliers fans weren’t moved to burn their jerseys four years ago, but there were plenty of them who were at Quicken Loans Arena on Dec. 2, 2010, James’ first game back with Miami after bailing on the Cavs.
They brought signs that night (“Merry Quit-ness!” “The Lyin’ King,” “Queen James”) and they brought plenty of anger to The Q, and they watched James drop 38 points in only 30 minutes as the Heat shellacked the home team 118-90, and then they had to listen to James say this on TV immediately afterward: “I just want to continue the greatness of myself here in Miami.”
“I remember that night,” my friend said Friday. “And I’ve never been closer to giving up sports. I endured all these awful endings with the Browns and the Indians and the Cavs. And I was never more physically sick than that night because it really made me question all the hours I’d wasted caring about this guy who clearly and cheerily didn’t give a [expletive] about me.”
Of course, it was hard to hear him clearly on the phone because he had taken off from work and was sitting on a stool at the Winking Lizard Pub, and it sounded like most of the city was with him, a civic holiday in Cuyahoga County that might last through the summer.
No longer was James returning the service of boos with verbal lashings worthy of a pro wrestling villain.
Certainly that had to make the Clevelanders happy as they crushed another pint of Great Lakes. But this is what made them happier:
And that was enough to allow amnesia to set in because…well, because of course it did. This is the power. This is the mystery.
You are a sports fan and so you are forever fighting the same war Michael Corleone found himself fighting at the end of the “Godfather” trilogy: Every time you think you’re out, they drag you back in. Often twice as deep.
Sports works you over so often, leaves you up and down and over and out, and you know this one thing: you’ll be back.
Mets fans are this city’s center of dissatisfaction at the moment, and with good reason. There have been six seasons of lousy baseball coming on the heels of three seasons of soul-crushing disappointments.
It seems they are forever writing checks for the ball that drizzled through Buckner’s legs (which is more than what they will say for the penny-pinching owners) and they have mostly stayed away from Citi Field, and there are some ominous threats that this time, it’s for good.
Except as one of the 788,905 who actually paid to watch the 1979 team, when Shea Stadium was emptier than study hall every night, I can assure you of this: when the Mets win again, they will draw again.
By 1987 the Mets had somehow discovered 2.2 million more fans. It wasn’t due to a baby boom.
They had been dragged back, by the power, by the mystery, by the same thing that filled Cleveland on Friday, because there is never a version of hope quite as powerful as the hope supplied by sports.
If LeBron James ever questions if he did the right thing, he should stop wondering.
For those tortured fans, he absolutely did.