Divine judgment

A new Cleveland sports blog has been launched. The writer, Mike Stein, told me the blog is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but fair warning: if you want to feel good about being a Cleveland sports fan, this is not the place.
If you need therapy from watching too many ESPN Classic programs on "The Drive" and "The Fumble," however, dig in.
The name of the blog is "God Hates Cleveland Sports."
I am all for blogging about Cleveland sports. In a sports world dominated by media markets on the coasts, little ol' Cleveland should make its voice heard whenever possible.
But personally, I am wary of Cleveland fans, as a group, cloaking themselves in their misery too much. I don't want to become like Red Sox fans, who became the pill-popping divas of baseball. They never stopped whining about how afflicted they were, and now that they've won it all, we never stop hearing about how great they are.
It's become now that I can't stand the Red Sox even more than I can't stand the Yankees. That's just wrong. I don't want Cleveland fans to become that insufferable to the nation at large.
Incessant whining and complaining will not change the fortunes of Cleveland sports. You might think that it changed the fortunes of the Red Sox, but it didn't. Money did.
Cleveland is, by nature, a downtrodden city. The failures outnumber the successes in sports, and in life in general. It is among the most impoverished, most overweight and least educated major cities in the country. With that in mind, you'd expect a majority of Clevelanders to not have a terribly sunny outlook on life. That carries over to sports.
I just think negativity is a cyclical thing. The more you expect bad things to happen, the more bad things happen. The more bad things that happen, the more you expect bad things to happen.
I'd rather see events begin that change the disposition of Cleveland as a whole. A citywide Prozac distribution program isn't the answer, either. New jobs and an improved education system will get to the root of the problem. Once Cleveland's collective self-esteem is raised, we will begin to expect good things. And then the good mojo will carry over to sports.