CLEVELAND – Inside Flannery’s saloon, the lunchtime crowd is hopeful, or as hopeful as a chronically abused fan base can be. There are many already wearing their night-time vestments – burgundy T-shirts with “ALL IN!” screaming from the front. It is nine hours before the tip of Game 6 of the NBA Finals.
“I wish it was 10 minutes from now,” Luke Gibbons says, finishing his lead-off Stella of the day. “I don’t know that I can sit still for another 12 hours. I want to know how it ends now.”
It was this way a year ago, of course, and back in 2007, when the Indians led the Red Sox three games to one in the ALCS, and 10 years before that, Jose Mesa sitting three outs away from vanquishing the Florida Marlins in Game 7 of the World Series. It was that way early in 1988, when Earnest Byner fumbled, and a year before that, when John Elway drove 98 yards.
The title of the recent documentary celebrating Cleveland’s eternal faith is “Believeland,” and it is doubtful that there’s ever been a more keenly appropriate nickname given a town.
Red Sox fans used to be morose about things. Cubs fans try to have good humor about the 108 years that have passed since last a championship flag waved on the North Side of Chicago, but there’s always a weary edginess to it, as if the ghosts of Bartman and the black cat and the billy goat are forever waiting to shock them with a taser. Even Buffalo, title-free just one year fewer than Cleveland, has a perpetually dour sense about it, forever waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But Cleveland has always been a fascinating study, because in Cleveland they truly do believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. They truly believe, most of them, that there will be another championship – if not the Cavaliers this year then the Indians in a few years or the Browns if they ever find a quarterback.
“Of course I believe.” Gibbons says. “Because without belief, isn’t this just an incredible waste of time?”
Says his friend, Patrick Lardley: “We’re not all that different than Pittsburgh, and they just won another Stanley Cup. Pittsburgh’s had some hard times with sports. But the payoff has been spectacular.”
It would be nice if Patrick Lardley truly does speak for most Cleveland fans, that there really isn’t more envy, more jealousy, than there ought to be. Pittsburgh, for instance? Since the last time Cleveland enjoyed a championship (take a bow, ’64 Browns), its Rust Belt cousin has won six Super Bowls, two World Series and now four Stanley Cups. Not too shabby for a small market.
To say nothing of the embarrassment of riches accrued by the other market in these Finals, San Francisco/Oakland, which, as of Dec. 27, 1964 – the day of Browns 27, Colts 0 – had exactly zero championships to its name and now has seven Super Bowls (five for the 49ers, two for the Oakland Raiders), seven World Series (four Athletics, three Giants) and two NBA championship (1975 and 2015 for the Warriors) with their sights set on No. 3.
“Here’s what I know,” Gibbons says. “When it happens, whenever it happens, nobody’s going to care about how many we have. It’s only going to feel great knowing we have a champion. That’s all that’ll matter.”
Both Gibbons and Lardley understand that not everyone is as zen as they are about this. There are, in fact, more than a few Cleveland fans who are more than happy to share their theory that the Draymond Green suspension – hailed by optimists as some manna-from-heaven reprieve for the Cavs – is nothing more than another tease in a long history of teases.
Right alongside the Browns taking that late lead before handing the ball over to Elway. And the Indians taking that ninth-inning lead, Game 7, ’97. And Craig Ehlo scoring on a terrific last-second drive … as the warm-up act to Michael Jordan’s forever buzzer-beater in 1989.
“Maybe I’ll feel differently in 12 hours,” Gibbons concedes. “But call me crazy: I don’t think so. I really don’t. I still believe.”