Brian J. Link

I’m a legitimate Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Indians fan. I was born, in 1981, to a father and family entrenched with the Cleveland sports scene even though none of them had ever lived closer than two hours away from the west side.

I’m just old enough to remember The Shot. I’ll never forgive or forget what Jose Mesa did in 1997. For over two decades, I have powered my enthusiasm on a handful of small events thanks to the bleak history of success for both of my favorite franchises.

I have a framed photo of me, wearing a poorly fitting Indians hat, outside the Tribe dugout with Cory Snyder at the old Municipal Stadium after I won a contest at the gate.

I distinctly remember watching Mark Price win the Three-Point Shootout (In your face, Craig Hodges.) with my cousins in my grandparent’s apartment building in 1993.

So it almost goes without saying that my all-time favorite Cleveland athletes are Mark Price and Cory Snyder. There are other players that have come and gone that I still have a place in my sad little sports heart for: Brad Daugherty, Joe Carter, Larry Nance, Charles Nagy, Hot Rod Williams… Of course, there’s one obvious name left off that list.

I grew up despising with the white hotness of a thousand suns players like Jordan, Pippen, anyone who ever wore a Detroit Tigers uniform, Jordan some more and of course, one name I can’t leave off of this list because on July 8th, 2010 he went on national television and made myself, my family and my friends feel dumb for supporting professional athletes.

I sat down yesterday to start reading Scott Raab’s The Whore of Akron and I finished it, cover-to-cover, in one sitting. I think my speed in finishing the book had more to do with its length than the subject matter. Too much of the book is like the opening of this post. It’s about Raab’s connection to the heartbreak of Cleveland sports.

The book offers bits of brief insight into what was happening behind the scenes during LeBron’s last year with the Cavs and first in Miami. There are interesting tidbits from interviews Raab conducted with Dan Gilbert, Dwyane Wade and some of the staff within the Cavaliers organization. These parts were my favorite in the book and I wish there had been more of them.

LeBron’s last season in Cleveland and first in Miami had so many book worthy moments that are quickly glossed over or ignored completely by Raab. A lot of this, I’m sure, has to do with his very limited access to league and team personnel during his time writing the book. To compensate for his lack of material, he resorts to page after page about his messed up childhood or even more messed up adulthood. It’s a tough sell to write a book about LeBron James called The Whore of Akron and then talk about yourself for the majority of its pages.

If you’re a fan of any of the Cleveland teams then Raab’s story is probably very similar to your own. You’ve experienced many of the same heartbreaks and emotions he has. For an outsider, maybe it’s interesting to read about how much the Browns win in 1964 meant to him or how much LeBron wearing a Yankees hat to a playoff game bothered him. But if you are on the inside, with years and years of being a Cleveland fan under your belt, and reading this book to learn more about LeBron and the reasons he did what he did you’re going to come out feeling no better than you did going in.

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