471
by J.R.
Excerpt: The Whore of Akron
A displaced Clevelander honors his hometown by stalking the man who spurned us
by Scott Raab
When I began work on The Whore of Akron in June 2009, it wasn't going to be called that. The book I set out to write would've had a title like Bearing Witness, and it would've told the story of the Cavs' first NBA crown — and the city's first championship since the Browns won it all in 1964.
Not that I was assuming any such happy ending — as a native Clevelander, I'm incapable of optimism — but what the hell: We had the league's best player and an owner who would happily spend whatever it took to win it all. The Q was packed to the rafters every game, the town was the center of the basketball universe, and ... fuck it. It's not as if you don't know the rest of that story.
The Whore of Akron isn't just that story. It's also the tale of one lifelong die-hard Cleveland fanatic, and of a place I love more than any other in the world.
COINS ON A COLD GRAVE
My favorite story of Cleveland fanhood is about an old friend of mine named Joey, the 1997 World Series, and a shortstop who played for the Indians nearly a century ago, Ray Chapman. Chapman was a fine ballplayer and a sweetheart of a guy, much loved by his teammates; he batted second on one of the greatest Tribe teams of all, the 1920 Cleveland Indians.
Those Indians won the World Series — 1920 and 1948: that's the complete list in 110 years — but Ray Chapman wasn't with them. He was hit by a pitch in a game at Yankee Stadium on August 16, 1920, and died early the next morning.
They brought his body back to Cleveland and buried it in Lake View Cemetery, one of the world's greatest boneyards. I shit you not: Lake View holds more than 100,000 former people, sits on 285 gorgeous acres, and is the resting place of James Garfield; Eliot Ness; John D. Rockefeller; Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a major American city; and the ashes of the finest writer Cleveland has ever produced, Harvey Pekar. It always was one of my favorite places to get high and — far, far less often — laid.
Ray Chapman's grave is hard to find. The granite monument that marks it — paid for back in the day by donations from fans — simply bears his full name, Raymond Johnson Chapman, along with the years of his birth and his death, 1891-1920. Joey had never visited, but he figured it couldn't hurt to pay homage in the fall of '97 before the Tribe took the field down in Florida to play the deciding game against the Marlins.
He found the grave in an old section of Lake View, near the Euclid Avenue gate, spotted it standing by itself amid a row of unraised markers. As he walked toward it, he saw something else: the top of Chapman's headstone was covered end to end with the coins of the Cleveland fans who'd already made the same Game 7 pilgrimage.
The story ends, naturally, with Jose fucking Mesa blowing his third save of the Series in the ninth inning. It ends with the Tribe losing, 3-2, in the eleventh, on an unearned run after an error by Tony "Feh" Fernandez on a routine ground ball to second base. It ended for me in the rocking chair in North Jersey — with my wife Lisa trying to console me. I told her the same thing I always tell her in those moments: I'm good. I'm used to this shit from a long way back. I'll wake up tomorrow morning with you next to me, a job I love, cash in my wallet, and money in the bank. You want to feel sorry for somebody? Feel for those poor fucks in Cleveland who were ready to head downtown and revel for the first time in their lives in the only joy strong and wide enough to bridge — to transcend — 50 years of collective civic misery.
***
Ray Chapman was twenty-nine when he died. He was a jug-eared kid from Beaver Dam, Kentucky, who still kept his United Mine Workers card in his wallet after eight seasons in the majors. In The Pitch That Killed, one of the greatest baseball books ever written, Mike Sowell notes that when Chapman's salary was bumped up to $3,500, Ray bought himself silk shirts and handmade suits. Pro baseball was a business then, too, far uglier in crucial ways than today: The year before Chapman died, the Black Sox had thrown the World Series. But for a poor boy born into a hardscrabble, hand-to-mouth existence, making a living by playing the game had to feel like nothing short of a miracle.
LeBron James was born into blight on the west side of Akron, and the fact that the world of professional sports had been transformed into a carnival of global scope by the time he came along hardly negates the astonishing nature of his flight to riches and glory. It happens to poor boys in other sports and from other tribes; once upon a time, Jews dominated pro boxing and basketball in America.
James did not choose to be born in Akron, and did not choose to play for the Cavs when he entered the NBA: The team tanked shamefully during the season to improve its draft position, chose him, and that was that. It never was clear that LeBron wanted to play for Cleveland in the first place, and he made plain — in word and deed — his desire to maximize his future options when his rookie contract expired and he chose to sign a three-year deal rather than four, or five, or six.
Looking back ... fuck. Fuck. Listen: I don't want to return to Ray Chapman's era. I believe in free will, free lunch, and free agency. I believe I can offer no more than an educated guess at what's in my long-fingered wife's heart, or my sweet young son's — or, frankly, my dog's. Too many days even now, pushing toward 60, I remain a stranger to myself.
What then can I read upon the stone heart of LeBron? What can I learn from the odyssey of a black kid, sprung from the loins of a teen mama, fatherless save for the seed of himself, who was a rock star at the age of 15, with girls lining up to lay naked with him just so that years later they could boast to their boyfriends that they had boffed King James?
That he's an asshole? I knew he was an asshole years before he became a free agent. The whining and ref-baiting; the tough-guy scowling and bicep flexing belied in every instance his failure to step up for a cheap-shotted teammate; his ludicrous sideline dancing in the fourth quarter of Cavs' routs: He is a hideously poor sportsman and more adept each season at acting every inch the prima donna bitch.
But despite all of that — and the Yankees cap at Jacobs Field, and the refusal to commit to a longer contract that would've relieved some of the win-now pressure on the front office, and the disillusioning up-close view of an entire organization warped to fit his whims — despite it all, he is still my asshole.
Our asshole.
I never loved Lake Erie any less when it stank of piscine death. I didn't have Chief Wahoo tattoed on my left arm in tribute to Albert Belle's integrity and Manny's mental hygiene. And I didn't have to like the Whore of Akron just to love him. His game, great as it was, was only part of our intoxication. Because he was one of us, a landsman, son of the same soil, a member of the tribe.
None of this makes LeBron's final performance against the Celtics in the 2010 playoffs — not only his play, but also his comportment — easier to explain or excuse. Quite the opposite: For fans whose bond to the spirit of Cleveland sports is a legacy dating back a century, bequeathed by a father and grandfather, it was a betrayal most profound. It was stupid and selfish enough to call attention to his elbow; had he not shot a free throw left-handed in the Bulls game, nobody outside of the team itself would have known about what was a minor injury. It was beyond stupidity and selfishness to tell the fans that they had been spoiled by his excellence. It wasn't only Clevelanders who watched LeBron James choke and quit. He brought disgrace and dishonor upon the city, and that went far past the game: It went straight to the heart and soul — his heart, his soul.
And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet. The same fans famished by decades of defeat, still so full of hope and hunger that they paid homage by the hundreds at the grave of a ballplayer few of their fathers had been alive to see play: Who among us hopes LeBron will walk away from the Cleveland Cavaliers?
***
When I left Cleveland in 1984 — I'd finished, at the age of thirty-one, a B.A. at Cleveland State University, the Harvard of Euclid Avenue, and got into the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop — I always figured I'd be back. I'd spent a year or so in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, three years in Austin in the late '70s, and always I came back to Cleveland to live. When my first wife got into medical school in Iowa after I finished my two years at the Workshop, and then into the University of Pennsylvania for her residency, I still thought of Cleveland as home, still came back for the Tribe's last series at the Stadium, for Opening Day at Jacobs Field, and for Cavs playoff games, and to watch the Indians in the World Series. Before my son, God love him, ever set foot in Yankee or Shea stadium, I took him to Cleveland to watch his first major-league baseball games.
My first feature for GQ — assigned in 1991 by the editor who's still my boss today — was the story of Kevin Mackey, the Cleveland State basketball coach who had a wife and children in Shaker Heights and a double life as an inner-city crackhead. Over and over I wrote about Cleveland and Clevelanders, and I'd go back to the city, find a room in a downtown hotel with a view of the lake, and sleep like a baby in the womb. Nobody in the city knew who I was, knew or gave a shit what I was writing or what I had written, and that was fine by me. The places I wanted most in all the world to see — the ruins of League Park, where Speaker, Ruth, and Chapman played; the art museum lagoon, where I once had pledged my love to a girl by throwing my first handgun into the muck; the softball field behind my junior high school, where I had jacked a drive to right-center field that cleared the tall fence and landed on the tennis courts beyond — all were there.
I didn't come to see people. I avoided everyone, including my mother. People wanted things from me. Cleveland gave. It wasn't nostalgia; it was plasma. It was who I was. Here was the diner where I sat over a plate of runny eggs after finally — finally — getting laid. Here was where I brought a tumbler of Jack Daniel's to my Classics in Translation final exam and, when I realized I couldn't write a fucking word in the blue book, bargained with the professor for that semester's C. Here was where I walked into drug stores with forged prescriptions and walked out with a hundred Quaaludes. Here was where I left the shoe store where I worked with the day's deposit and a stolen credit card, headed for the airport, and caught a flight to London. Here was where I walked in on some asshole who'd broken into my place to steal the drugs I was dealing and tore an ear half off his head.
***
The Catch. The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. The Decision.
Coming to a cable channel near you.
July 8, 2010.
That morning, I get a call from cavs.com beat writer Joe Gabriele.
"Don't worry," Joe says. "He's staying."
You know that? Don't fuck with me, Joe.
"I'm just saying. You know how when he gets fouled hard he goes down and acts like he's hurt? This is the same thing — he's got everyone right where he wants them, thinking they know what he's going to do. He's going to fool them all. He's staying."
I don't believe it. I don't even believe that Joe believes it. The reporters closest to James and Maverick Carter, Chris Broussard and Stephen A. Smith, say it's going to be Miami. I believe them. And by now — I've been blogging LeBron's free-agency countdown on esquire.com and Deadspin — I'm too numb to hope, almost past caring. Almost? Never.
When showtime rolls around, I'm in the rocker. Lisa's on the couch. My son is over on Douglas Street, playing group tag — "Manhunt," they call it. I'm well-pleased with the boy. I don't want him sitting here on a summer night, watching this nonsense, don't want him to see the old man sickened and enraged one more time by my love for Cleveland sports.
When I see the footage of LeBron with the little boys and girls, I am both sickened and enraged. Idi Amin: I'm watching LeBron James, the last king of Cleveland, using children as props, as ornaments, as moral deodorant.
You want to stay, whore, stay. You want to go, whore, go. But spare us an hour of ESPN eunuchs lapping your scrotum while you void your bowels and bladder on the only fans who'll ever love you like a member of the tribe.
Or do you need this charade? Is it fun and exciting?
Nice shirt, asshole. Nice neck beard.
South Beach? When did the Heat move to South Beach?
What a grotesque and bloated parody of a man you turned out to be. Nothing but a bum. That's the mot juste: bum.
***
I watch every minute. Every second. I'm sorry it doesn't go on longer. I want to hear this narcissistic asshole refer to himself in the third person a few more times. I want to hear him calling himself a "twenty-five-year-old man" again, too. I want to hear more about the dream he had this morning, and about talking to his mama; hey, if he goes for another hour or two, he might even mention, at least once, Savannah Brinson — his high-school sweetheart and his sons' mother.
I also want another hour of live shots from Cleveland, especially the two squad cars parked, lights flashing, beneath The Banner, bulwarks against the pillaging horde. Someone needs to get on the radio and tell them that the horde left a long time ago, took its talents to the suburbs and beyond, and took with it all the disposable income and every vestige of hope.
"I'm sorry," Lisa says when it finally ends. "That was horrible."
So strange. I know this feeling in my bones — Cleveland lost — but there was no game. And this, this is worse. What the hell are they going to do? Dan Gilbert isn't going to stay in Cleveland if the team starts losing money every year. The Browns are clueless. The Indians have obliterated their entire fanbase. What's the city going to do if it starts losing teams?
"You want a handjob?" she asks.
Eh. I'm really not in the mood. I have to post something about this train wreck tomorrow, and I have to think about what to think before I can write.
"Why don't you just get your butt up on the bed?"
Yes, ma'am. God forbid that I should be the first man in human history to say no to a handjob.
***
I see a prima facie case that James contrived years ago to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in 2010. They entered the NBA at the same time, became teammates and pals playing for Team USA in 2006, and each signed a three-year contract extension in 2007 that would enable them to become free agents together.
I also give James credit for being savvy enough to keep that option open.
Savvy is as savvy does. I discern the thumbprint of a cabal — not the tinhorn Rubber City Rube posse led by Maverick Carter, but the Creative Arts Agency, whose client list includes James, Bosh, and Wade — yet the fact is, LeBron James at age fifteen betrayed his own Akron community by taking his talents to a predominantly white Catholic high school rather than playing for Buchtel, a public school populated mainly by African Americans. It was a hugely controversial, carefully calculated move, and an early warning that his notion of loyalty was fluid rather than fixed, and utterly self-serving.
Likewise, I can argue that the Miami Heat, in the persons of Pat Riley and Dwyane Wade, are guilty of tampering, of illegal contact with James before he entered free agency, but the fact is, no major move goes down in the NBA's flesh bazaar without back-channel negotiations. That's part and parcel of the meat-peddling milieu enveloping ballers far less blessed than LeBron James as soon as they're old enough to help an AAU shaman build his stable of pimpable talent. At any level, amateur or pro, prizefighting is a less dishonest sport.
I'll take all of the above, and, above all, this: LeBron James is no naif, no victim, nobody's fool but his own. Same with Dan Gilbert, me, and every Cleveland fan above the age of consent who believed that what James said counted more than what he did. For years, James let folks far and wide know that he would be available when he became available. He saw teams strip themselves of talent for two seasons to gain enough payroll space to woo him. He bade them parade to Cleveland in their suits, while he wore shorts and a T-shirt to the meetings where they trotted out their PowerPoint charts and pleaded for his favor. James didn't make them beg; he let them. And no other franchise or city groveled like poor Cleveland and the Cavaliers; none had so much to lose.
In the end, Pat Riley brought what money can't buy — a bag full of his championship rings, in silver, in gold, in platinum — shoved it across the table to LeBron, and said, "Hey, try one on."
***
The Catch. The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. The Decision.
One of these things does not belong. One of these things was an evil man's willful act, and worse. The Whore of Akron knows full well he has stomped on Cleveland's soul.
He doesn't care. To care, he would need a soul of his own — a soul and a sense of good and evil.
Just sports? Fine, so it's not war, or plague, or famine. But evil doesn't get a pass just because it hasn't literally murdered the innocent.
I am ready to give up, to write off the season past as a romp in sports journalism fantasy camp. I've seen enough: enough defeat, enough behind-the-curtain ugliness, enough civic suffering. I can't help the Cavs or Cleveland or myself. So I won't live to see another champion; so I'll die a froth-mouthed fan: So what? Enough.
Then, inside me, something shakes awake. Overnight.
It is not merely Dan Gilbert's letter to Cavs fans, a Comic Sans yowl of betrayal, mingling scorn, curse, and random syntax to near-Wagnerian effect.
It is not merely the Heat's welcome party for the Big 3, an event that resembles nothing so much as Saturday night at the Crazy Horse, with Stormy, Windy, and Princess each riding her own pole.
It is not merely the communal lap dance that follows, with the Whore of Akron telling the Miami mob that winning will be so easy that Pat Riley can suit up and play point guard, that he, King James, has come to deliver championship after championship — not four, not five, not six, not seven — on and on and until his braggartry is washed under by the roar of a sea of sun-baked cretins who fancy themselves fans.
It is all these things, and it is more than all these things; my debt to Cleveland — to all who suffer as I suffer — has come due.
What the hell. I'm taking my talents to South Beach too.
***
Excerpted from The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search for the Soul of LeBron James, on sale November 15 from HarperCollins.
Born in Cleveland, Scott Raab first earned notice outside of law-enforcement circles for his GQ articles in the mid-1990s. A regular with Esquire since 1997, he is best known for celebrity interviews delivered in his trademark off-the-cuff style. A self-described "fat Jew from Cleveland," he has since settled in New Jersey out of necessity, but he keeps his heart in a meat locker at Slyman's deli here in town.
