Dear Mr. Wilbon,
Sick Boy, in the movie Trainspotting, had a theory about successful people. "At one point you've got it, and then you lose it, and it's gone forever."
Mr. Wilbon, I cannot help but assume that Sick Boy's theory tolls for thee.
Any fan of Cleveland sports who is not at least 50 years old has never celebrated a single professional sports championship in his or her life. Which means your typical Cleveland fan has never once felt the reassuring release of cheering for a team that proved to be the best in the world at that point in history.
Our teams' heart-wrenching disappointments are well documented and oft repeated, so I won't bother listing them. To put it analogously, Cleveland fans are like someone on the losing end of an abusive relationship. Our love is unrequited.
Witness "The Decision."
As so many other people have pointed out, Cleveland fans could have gotten over the disappointment of LeBron's decision to leave . . . if it hadn't come packaged in one of the most awkward and awful programs in the history of mass media.
It was like being dumped by your lover by having him or her send you a link to a video online where he or she is having sex with a stranger.
After Mr. James gracelessly muttered the words "talents to South Beach," I turned off the television, and my heart was filled with nuclear winter. It was another needlessly cruel defeat for a city full of people who already know so well the bitter sting of disappointment.
For the next hour, my Cleveland friends and I talked to each other like we were at a funeral.
And then we heard about Dan Gilbert's letter, and we all ran to our computers to read it.
Mr. Wilbon, on PTI I have heard you slam Dan Gilbert many times for writing that letter, and every time you do I am confused about how you could be so dense. How can someone who has followed sports as an analyst and a fan for so long not see how profoundly important that letter was for Cleveland sports fans?
Our previous football-team owner took the team away from us, and then they won the Super Bowl. Our current football-team owner, in the process of his trust-fun, has turned the Browns into yet another laughingstock. Our current baseball-team owners are incrementally making the Indians into the American League's version of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and every sports analyst and commentator on Earth uses Cleveland as a punch line.
How can you not see how Dan Gilbert's letter was the closest thing to a victory Cleveland fans have had in half of a century? Everyone in the world had given up on us, except for one man. Only one person said, "Cleveland fans don't deserve to be treated like this," and you've shouted that man down and told him he should be embarrassed.
I believe I've even heard you link the "R" word to Mr. Gilbert's letter, but I have to think that that's just you projecting your own racism on something that had nothing at all to do with race, because nobody else I know saw any racism in what he wrote. It was about letting the fans know that there was still someone in the city who had a pulse and the drive to bring a championship to our cursed town.
And even if you were to accept my premise that the letter is what the fans needed, you might tell me that on the best of days what Mr. Gilbert wrote was a won battle but a lost war because nobody will want to come play for Cleveland now.
I might remind you that nobody wanted to come play for Cleveland, anyway, so at least we have the letter.
After my friend Johnny read the letter, he wrote to me: "'The Decision' made me feel like my girlfriend just broke up with me; Gilbert's letter made me feel like I just had sex with my ex-girlfriend's younger sister."
There are only two conclusions that I can draw from your reaction to Mr. Gilbert's pink rant. Either you are so embarrassed for having participated in that "Decision" abomination that your ego needs to turn Dan Gilbert into the villain, or . . .
Mr. Wilbon, at one point you had it, but it looks like you've lost it.
Is it gone forever?
Respectfully,
Daniel V. Donatelli
A Cleveland Sports Fan
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