What We Do In Life Matters

SPECIAL NOTE: I wrote this in September 2012. Since that time, LeBron James returned to his home area to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers. The team won a championship in 2016, but more importantly, BY FAR, LeBron James learned from his mistake when he left town and he doubled down on his efforts to help this community, especially to help the children of this community. As I wrote back when I did this article in 2012, James continued to help the kids of this area when he played in Miami. LeBron James has money and fame, and he is often touted as the "greatest basketball player on the planet," but he has proven himself to be a far greater human being than a basketball player. This note added September 25, 2018


If you follow things here regularly, you know I recently did two articles with the theme, "Life Has Consequences." This article really ties in with that theme too, but not by design. As most of you are aware, Art Modell, the former owner of the Cleveland Browns, died this week at age 87. Modell came to Cleveland in 1961 when he purchased the Browns, a team which had won numerous national championships prior to his arrival. After Modell purchased the Browns, they won one national championship, in 1964. Regardless of the lack of championships, the franchise was one of America's best known and loved, regularly drawing crowds to fill, or nearly fill, the 80,000 seats of old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, even in years when the team struggled on the field. Modell became a solid part of the community and one of the top owners in the NFL. I'm not necessarily writing this to praise him or to condemn him to hell, as both sentiments have been expressed in so many comments by others since his death a few days ago. Nor will this be a recounting of Modell's life or of his complex business dealings here in Cleveland. No, I just want to point out a few things about how a much respected man made a choice in a moment of both hurt feelings and financial desperation that haunted him for the rest of his life, and now even in death. The powerful can have a huge impact on the lives of the many, even when it's only about football, just a game that has become big business, or perhaps more appropriately, BIG business. To be quite honest, the powerful love the accolades and the money it brings them, but some, perhaps too many in this day and age of excess, forget that such power also brings responsibility.

For those unaware, Art Modell made a decision in the fall of 1995 to move the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore for the next season. The initial process was done secretly and quickly. When the move became public, it devastated the huge fan base of devoted Browns fans, not only in Cleveland, but across the country. The reaction in Cleveland was one of outrage, and that is putting it mildly. Interestingly the town had been riding a bit of a high, as the Cleveland Indians had just appeared in a World Series for the first time in over 40 years, losing however, in six games, but they made it to the Series, and the team looked to be a continuing contender. At work, a guy (a contractor) was talking with a lady about the World Series, and she told him that she really wasn't much of a baseball fan, but she noted "how serious the players looked." Now, old Randy, once a diehard baseball fan, disgusted by how money had taken over all professional sports, couldn't help himself, and he cynically interjected, "Sure they're serious. They're wondering how they're going to spend all of that money. It's all about money now, it's not a game." The guy was just furious with me, but I wasn't mad, because I saw myself in him, until I parted ways with professional sports just a few years before. About a week later, Modell announced that the Browns were moving and a few days later, I saw the "angry guy" again. This time, he said, "You were right." I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but then he mentioned the above incident and then Modell's announcement, and he said, "It IS all about money." Nothing like reality to smack you upside the head and dispel your idealism. When you're growing up, you gradually come to realize there's no Santa Claus, but the reality of the Browns leaving Cleveland came in one gigantic smack, with no preparation.

Dick Feagler was a long time columnist in the local newspapers, mainly the Cleveland Press, which ceased operations in 1982, and the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, where he retired as a columnist about three years ago. He was also a reporter and commentator on local television news. He's had a discussion program on Cleveland PBS station WVIZ for many years, a show I very much enjoy. Friday evening, September 7, part of the show was about Modell's death and legacy. A Cleveland businessman and friend of Modell's was one of the participants. His name is unimportant, but he was obviously in Modell's corner (on the personal side), although he admitted Modell should have negotiated more before making any decision to leave Cleveland. The pro and con arguments about Modell are never ending, but one thing he said caught my attention. He mentioned that the reaction in Cleveland of intense hatred for Modell shocked him, which prompted Feagler, in an effort to say how devoted the fans were, to interject something to the effect, "Have you ever seen those fans in the "Dog Pound?"* The man went on to tell how Modell could never attend a game here again after his announcement for fear for his very life. Such decisions have consequences; enduring consequences.

Now, I've seen the man before, I believe different times on Feagler's show, and I want all to know, I don't know him. He might be the salt of the earth, a great guy, charitable and caring, but it was the underlying attitude that got me, fairly or unfairly. What he really seemed to be saying in my opinion was, "Business people can do ANYTHING and you just have to take it. You shouldn't hate us, no matter what." He and the other panelists went on to mention numerous things Modell did for the community, and they're all true. As I noted above, Modell became a solid member of the Cleveland community after he came here in the early 1960s, but then in just a matter of days, he wiped away ANY good he had done by abandoning this community and slinking away with one of its most cherished assets. Yes, a few years later a new Browns' team was formed, but it's never really been the same here.** Much the same astonishment seems to have inflicted LeBron James. He did much to help this community (and still does to some extent), but he too made a terrible self-centered decision which also devastated the community,*** only to be perplexed by the hostility shown to him thereafter. With both Modell and James it's like, "Gee, I just don't understand how people can hate me." And then the comments by supporters and apologists who say, "It's only a game." There's a serious disconnect folks. When the hatred comes, NOW it's only a game. They didn't act like it was "only a game" when they were raking it in and extracting every ounce of emotion from devoted fans.

My favorite book is John Steinbeck's "East of Eden." **** In Chapter 34, Steinbeck boils life down in his shortest chapter of the book. He talks about the death of a man, unnamed, but who is unmistakably John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man of his time. Rockefeller lived much of his life here in Cleveland, and then his death, as indeed he is buried here. Steinbeck talks about how Rockefeller's ruthless desire for wealth left him a hated man,***** even after he later gave huge sums to various causes, "to try to buy back the love he had forfeited." Steinbeck even thinks Rockefeller's good deeds may have outweighed the bad, but still, when Rockefeller died, many an American said, "Thank God that son of a bitch is dead." Like it or not, fairly or unfairly, that same sentiment has undoubtedly crossed many a mind here in Ohio in the last few days.

* For those unaware, the "Dog Pound" is the bleacher area where some of the most "rabid" Browns' fans sit for every Browns' home game; rain, sunshine, snow, blizzards, zero temperatures, freezing rain, 50 mile an hour winds, you just name it. They wear ferocious masks and bark and growl like dogs and my suggestion is, if you choose to sit there, hope and pray they've all had their rabies shots, and be sure to take along a full box of  "Meaty Bone" dog biscuits, just to keep them happy."Rrrrrrruf!"

** A few years ago I was waiting for a pizza at a local pizza shop when a man in a Browns' jersey came in. I took a moment to chat with him about the team and what had happened when Modell left town. He said he was still a devoted fan, but that it just wasn't the same, the real Browns had left town. I've heard it from others, too, although I suspect a truly competitive team would change some of the doom and gloom.

*** LeBron James was the leading player on the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association, until he chose to go to Miami to play with two other superstars in order to win a championship. To further humiliate the community, although I'm sure that wasn't the intention, the whole thing was done on a nationally televised broadcast with the expressed purpose of revealing "the decision," as he termed it. Talk about an ego run amok! At least Modell hid things, perhaps out of some "conscience," but LeBron James rubbed everyone's nose in it, PUBLICLY. 

**** Quotes here are from "The Works of John Steinbeck," Longmeadow Press, 1985. ISBN: 0-681-31923-2

***** Bob Hope, who grew up in Cleveland, often told the story of how, as a kid, he sold newspapers on an East Side corner, and how John D. Rockefeller would pull up in his chauffeur driven car and get a paper from him. Hope said Rockefeller would give him a nickle for the paper, which I believe cost three cents way back then, and he wanted his two cents change. Hope laughed about it, because Rockefeller's wealth was equivalent to tens of billions of dollars when Hope told the story later in his life.   
    
WORD HISTORY:
Dead-This word goes back to Indo European "dheu," which meant "to die," and which produced a participle form "dhautos," which meant "to have died, be dead." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "dauthaz/daudaz," with the same meaning. This produced Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "dead," with the "e" being long, and the "a" short. This later became "ded/deed," before the modern version, generally used as an adjective, but also as a noun, as in, "the dead are buried in the churchyard." Common throughout the other Germanic languages: German has "tot,"^ Low German Saxon has "doot," West Frisian has "dead," Dutch has "dood," Danish has. "død," Swedish has "död," Icelandic has "dauthur," and Norwegian has "død."
 
^ Standard modern German is much based upon Old High German, one of the characteristics of which often, but not always, became a change from a "d" sound to a "t" sound in many instances; thus, "dod" became "tot." The northern Germanic dialects were unaffected by this change and came to be called "Low German," and neither were the dialects that became English affected, as the Angles and many Saxons had already settled in Britain by that time.