Coach Frost
Recently, I have found myself spending a disproportionate amount of time reading about/watching sports. In an effort to diversify my personal portfolio (and get my mind away from the Browns’ kick-in-the-balls loss on Sunday) I decided to read some poetry, specifically Robert Frost. I’ve read some of his work before and enjoyed it. Additionally, I assumed that there was little to no chance that his 19th century New England poems would mention the benefits of the shotgun formation versus a five step drop. And yet I found myself relating a piece of Frost’s poetry directly to fanhood (especially Cleveland fanhood). In “The Black Cottage” he wrote these lines:
“… why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.”
Isn’t that perfect for Northeast Ohio? Isn’t that why we keep going back to that Factory of Sadness on the Lakefront? We do not abandon a belief (that the Browns may accidentally win on Sunday) despite the fact that it has not been regularly true since the Reagan Administration. We hang on because deep down we just KNOW that soon it will turn around. Eventually it will be our turn. Two trades, a draft pick, a couple free agents… We rationalize it all day, that maybe we are closer than we think.
My favorite part of the excerpt is the word “cling” because it creates the correct mental image: A weathered fan wearing a faded Tim Couch jersey while hanging precipitously from a vertical rock face. So many of us are at the brink of letting go, burning our jerseys, and giving that whole hockey thing a genuine try. But we don’t because we are from Cleveland, and we believe that even though we are down now those good old days “will turn true again.”
Listen to Coach Frost, Cleveland; keep the faith.
Notes
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