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Thursday, September 27, 2007

Cleveland V Buffalo

So there we were, in Cleveland. We took a cab to a swanky place where they cook fresh, local, organic stuff into dishes with words like "reduction sauce", because we wanted to have a drink. We got the same cab home.

Like Buffalo, people don't take a lot of cabs. It's not a wave down a cab city. On the weekend. In fact, there's nothing really happening. We had a real hard time finding a place to have lunch on Saturday afternoon. In Cleveland's defense, we didn't go to the 'flats'. Apparently, that's rocking.

But here's the bigger point. Both cities have some hard-luck sports stories. Buffalonians know wide right and no-goal. Buffalo has OJ.

Cleveland though, has some moments of it's own. the aforementioned cabbie filled us in:

Their football team, the Cleveland Browns packed up and left.
Their Hockey team folded.
The only time the Indians win is in the movie Major League (in other words, it's funny that they are from Cleveland)

Cleveland has three iconic sports moments against them in three different sports:
The Shot: Michael Jordon's last second buzzer-beater -- widely considered to be his coming-out party as a superstar.
The Catch: A young Willi Mays makes a basket catch versus the Indians (who won a league record that year) in the playoffs
The Drive: John Elway engineers a game-winning drive of 98 yards versus the Browns.

Cleveland has had so many heartaches, in all sports, that ESPN has a top ten:

Weird stuff:
A starter on Cleveland's football team, when they got it back, was injured when a ref hit him in the eye with a flag. His career was over.
Our cabbie told us that Cleveland pitchers switched wives in the 70's, but at this point he was just piling on. One of the pitchers did at one point pitch for the Indians, but both were on the Yankees when they switched Wives (or in their words, Lives).

So there you go. Cleveland Fans have a case.

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