The Browns-Indians dynamic

There is a double standard in Cleveland sports I can't ignore any longer. The past few weeks have laid it out for me.
I'm really starting to get irritated by the favored-child status the Browns have in this town, and the whipping-boy status the Indians have.
Does this exist in other cities? No matter how lousy the Browns are, we still hear fans calling up talk shows, plotting out draft picks, talking about this player and that player and how they are the guys the team needs to build around. This year's golden boy is obviously Charlie Frye.
No matter how good the Indians are, all we hear about is how cheap owner Larry Dolan is, and how the team is doomed to fail because they won't spend any money.
The Indians won 93 games last year, remember? They did it with farm system-grown talent and a payroll that ranked near the bottom of baseball. The Browns, playing in a parity-driven league with a salary cap, have so far have won five of 14.
In a stuggling economy that has forced many to do more with less, the Indians did just that. The Browns are trying to claw out of years of wasteful management. Do fans of cash-strapped Cleveland, Ohio admire their "little guy" baseball team that so embodies who they are? No. Maybe it's too much like looking in a mirror.
Fans come to sports to forget about things like financial constraints and the daily struggle to make ends meet. They want their teams to spend like Daddy Warbucks, and storm through the opposition like Patton taking North Africa. The Indians, however, scrimp and save and are unable to make dream purchases, just like you.
Maybe that breeds contempt.
The Browns, meanwhile, might make fans upset by posting losing records year after year. But seldom do their fans doubt, and never do they entirely lose faith. That perplexes me.
When you get right down to it, the right team left Cleveland in 1995. Fans rasied holy hell to get their Browns back. I don't think the same effort would have been put into keeping the Indians or Cavaliers around.
Even when the Browns make questionable offseason moves, fans seem to take a wait-and-see attitude. The geniuses that run the Browns, after all, might have a larger plan in mind. But don't you dare try to sell Indians fans on Paul Byrd over Kevin Millwood. They just might threaten to boycott the Indians all summer (some have, just like they threatend to boycott the Indians when they traded David Justice, Roberto Alomar and Bartolo Colon, and let Omar Vizquel leave.)
Only with the Indians would retaining a 45-save closer from the year before be viewed as an underachievement. Only with the Indians could the return of Danny Graves be met with a lukewarm reception, after fans pined for him for years, lambasting John Hart for the short-sighted John Smiley trade.
And yet, fans are still divided to this day on whether the Browns should have cut ties with Tim Couch, who is now out of football. Somehow, they think Couch still had a chance to be a Pro Bowler, even after being jerked around by Browns coaches and management for five years.
The Indians do things the right way, even with limited money. General manager Mark Shapiro has surrounded himself with young, talented executives who have replenished a farm system that was withering in 2000 and 2001. The farm system has yielded wins, from 68 in 2003, to 80 in 2004, to 93 last year.
Certainly, the Indians haven't had a great offseason. But let's not forget that all the young guys who helped the team get to 93 wins are still here, and there are still trades that can be made. If anybody is going to figure something out, it will be Shapiro and his crew.
In my mind, the Browns are where most of the skepticism belongs. They are the team with the questionable track record. They are the team with more to prove.
But apparently, I'm in the minority in feeling that way.