The Point Four-ward: They Are Simply People

Four Points I’m thinking about…

1. Back on an olden day in 1993, I received my first and only official professional jersey. It’s still in a drawer at my childhood home in Mentor. I wore it maybe three times as I didn’t want that new jersey smell to wear off or for the numbers to get all crinkly. Since then I’ve had a few other jerseys, but nothing with a name on the back(excepting my own, of course). I admit I find it a little strange to rock someone else’s identity in such a way. So what player warranted such unique love and affection?

That’s right. The legend, Bernie Kosar. And yes, it was his Dallas Cowboys jersey that I received. Please don’t confuse this with typical childhood front-running. I hated the Cowboys. They were an evil empire on par with the New York Yankees(okay, no one is on par with the Yankees, but you get my drift). The reason I had the blue Kosar jersey was because as much as my mother and I were die-hard Browns fans, we loved Bernie more. Mind you, this was directly after Bill Belichick began his Belichickian career ditching aging stars in the name of pragmatism. Considering the 1994 Browns went 11-5 with Vinny Testaverde at the helm, Belichick wasn’t wrong.

2. It didn’t matter. My preteen self didn’t know anything other than that this curly-haired man was a hero and my mother had a tendency to break out into song anytime she heard his name. We were devastated. Perhaps as an act of defiance or protest against the Browns’ front office, my mother got me that jersey. It wasn’t normal. We were/are Browns fans. Usually a little bit of perceived or, more frequently, real dysfunction couldn’t dissuade us from putting team first. But Bernie Kosar, man! Bernie!

During the last podcast, Nate and EG talked briefly about whether they cheer for the names on the back or the name on the front. Considering that the 2016 Cavaliers were the first and only one of my Cleveland professional teams to ever win a chip during my lifetime, it’s clear that I lean more toward dirty moldy laundry than individual players. Kosar was the lone exception.

In reality, almost everyone does both. It would be rather odd to totally disassociate the human beings playing for your team from the team itself. In the age of free agency, it would be all but impossible to cheer solely for individuals unless one doesn’t mind rooting for twenty different teams. Oh, I won’t even get into how fantasy sports has changed fandom. “I want the Browns to win, but for Tom Brady to throw seven touchdowns against them.” Ugh.

3. What I will say, is that I have started to root for the players more and more in recent years. Maybe it’s a function of age. These guys aren’t gods. They are just young men trying their hardest to maximize their talents and make a living doing so. I enjoy watching their development from teenagers to mature adults. The social media access in recent years has made it more possible to hear from these folks directly. Guys like Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson are just hilarious.

It could be all that; a relatively innocuous maturation that makes me see the guys through a different lens.

Or maybe it’s because these men are part of players’ unions that get continually bashed by rabid fans more concerned about their sports obsession than the treatment of the human beings who provide them joy.

Or that 18 year-olds can do a variety of miserable activities all over the globe in the name of war liberty, but they can’t play in a league for which they are qualified because owners don’t trust their GMs to draft well.

Or that LeBron James, Kevin Durant, or any other person who wants to choose the parameters of his work environment are raked over the coals for being disloyal to a bunch of fans who literally could not care less about their post-career health.

Or! perhaps that team owners like Dan Gilbert get all chummy with a President who has… hmm, how to put this…not been applauded by the majority of the African American community.

4. Look, I still love my Cleveland teams. I certainly am not about to become a fan of some other person’s laundry. But the players are criticized at almost every turn while the owners are considered largely infallible because of their fortunes. It’s only when an owner is abjectly awful that the public begins to side with labor and not with management. Really folks, the vast majority of us have far more in common with the players than we do the owners. Let’s give the players a break.

With that in mind, if Paul George and/or LeBron James want to play for the Lakers in 2018, fine. Have at it, guys. If Melo and Wade want to force buyouts so they can join King James on the Cavaliers in 2017, that would be admittedly cooler. Both things could happen. I’m not going to worry about any player leaving via free agency, forcing a trade, or any other thing that a talented employee could do to maximize his happiness and value. They deserve that respect and agency. They aren’t all saints, but they certainly aren’t demons. I’ll just be excited to see how all the player movement translates to basketball success. I love basketball. The rest is a mildly interesting diversion.