Still Waiting for Next Year

As I sit down to write this post, the Red Sox are 3 outs away from winning their third World Series in the last ten years.  I’m assuming that they aren’t going to blow this because they don’t play in Cleveland.  I have to admit, I am a Red Sox fan – they are my second favorite team behind my beloved Cleveland Indians.  Yes, second favorite teams are ridiculous and shouldn’t exist and I’m kind of embarrassed that I root for them.  But, let’s just put it this way - with the bases loaded in the 7^th inning and the Cardinals threatening to score, I just took my dog outside to poop.  I came inside and the inning was over, having no clue what had happened.  To put that in perspective, I don’t leave the room for a play during a Browns game, even if they are getting blown out in the 4^th quarter.  Yes, I like the Red Sox.  No, my night isn’t completely ruined if they lose.  That’s the difference.

As a Cleveland sports fan, I find every championship clinching game in the MLB, NFL, and NBA must watch television.  I cannot remember the last one that I missed.  I take it all in.  From the players’ celebration on the field and in the locker room, to the trophy celebration, to the live shots of the local sports pub, I watch it all.  I find the juxtaposition between these celebrations and my entire life as a sports fan fascinating and also somewhat therapeutic.  I guess I could be ever the optimist and say that I’ve been on the wrong end of watching these celebrations three times in my life and for that, I should be thankful.  But 1995, 1997, and 2007 were monumental disappointments.  To be that close and to lose is worse than never being there at all (just ask any Buffalo Bills fan). 

           

As a side note, I find this to be the perfect spot to mention that the 1997 World Series Game 7 collapse was entirely my fault.  In the middle of the 9^th inning during commercials, my friend Dan and I thought it would be a grand idea to bang his mother’s pots and pans together in his front yard while screaming, “We won the World Series”.  Looking back, I was only in 7^th grade at the time and didn’t know any better.  My Cleveland sports heartache was very minimal at the time, I was living through the glory years of mid 90’s baseball.  I wish I could go back and punch 13 year-old Ryan in the face for being a jerk…and for buying that Deep Blue Something album.  My favorite part of the story, and most ironic, is that Dan’s mother didn’t cook…like ever.  When she was younger, she burned a meal so poorly that she just gave up.  So those pots and pans shouldn’t of been in the house, therefore creating an alternate universe where I wouldn’t of banged them, allowing Jose Mesa to pitch a perfect 9^th inning.  Sorry guys.

Watching these three clinching games a year is a constant reminder at how dismal my sports fandom has been my entire life.  The ineptitude of the Cleveland Browns alone should make me swear off watching sports for good. I mean, if you went to the same restaurant 16 times a year and got really shitty service 11 of those times, you would stop going to that restaurant, right?  Most normal people would.  Not the Cleveland sports fan though.  We keep coming back for more, hoping that this is the time that it pays off.  So the reason why I watch all of these celebrations is that I know it will be my time someday.  I don’t know where I will be, or how old I will be. All I know is that I’ll be crying like a little baby, knowing that all of this rooting will some day pay off.  I hope.

Return of the Blog

Hello, 17 people that read my blog.  It’s been awhile.  The last we left I was writing about running my first 5K and getting ready for summer to begin.  Well since then, summer has come and gone with nary the blog post.  I took trips to Niagara Falls and Catawba Island with Eileen, watched my youngest sister graduate from Kent State, shot even par for the first time in my life, experienced the most exciting end to a baseball season that I can remember only to have the other shoe drop immediately, have had two promotions at work, went through some difficult personal issues and ran another 5K to support one of my best friends’ dad and his fight with pancreatic cancer.  Unfortunately he just recently lost that battle – a great life cut much too short, but one that was certainly lived to the fullest. 

So it was a summer of ups and downs, but one to remember for sure.  So here I sit, rebooting the Losing Touch Blog after a very short hiatus.  It’s not like a long ’07-’13 Justin Timberlake hiatus, but more like the recent hiatus the Cleveland Browns have taken from losing football games.  I named this blog Losing Touch because of my ever-feared thought of becoming irrelevant to the times.  I’ve always tried to keep up on pop culture and current events and have vowed to never grow out of touch.  So writing this blog was one way to help me do that.  I will always be a child at heart; so growing older is not something I’m looking forward to.

But now I have a different reason to write this blog – to help remember what has happened in my life. It’s kind of like a digital time capsule.  Life is too short to start forgetting large chunks of time as you grow older.  It happened to me, I have very faint memories of 2003-2006.  Those were the college years, which most dub the best years of their life.  Well, I don’t remember much from mine and it’s not due to illicit acts.  I just think the brain has to do a memory scrub every so often.  Kindergarten to senior year of high school is fully engrained – but my brain right clicked and deleted most of my college memories.  After college, came an engagement, marriage, and house, which have built new lasting memories that I’ll never forget.

So I’m back on the blog circuit, archiving my memories digitally, ensuring that they will always be available.  It will be pretty cool to read these posts 10 years from now.  Hopefully then I will be reading about that time I finally got to celebrate that Cleveland championship, or how I bought the entire clubhouse a round after hitting a hole-in-one.  Most likely though, I’m just ensuring that people can make fun of me all over again for obsessing over Katy Perry’s song Roar.  There it is.  4 paragraphs into the return of my blog and a Katy Perry mention.  I would of put my money on Taylor Swift to be brought up first…and I would of lost.  Oh man, am I sure I really want to have you read this stuff?