Hey, @kingjames. Who would you take with the number one pick in this year’s draft? Asking for a friend.
— Cleveland Frowns (@ClevelandFrowns) May 22, 2013
Here’s a good read from Did the Tribe Win Last Night? on the baseball team’s schedule over the next month.
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So said Brent Larkin in the Plain Dealer two weeks ago, arguing that Cleveland officials shouldn’t grant Dan Gilbert a requested walkway from a parking garage to the so-called temporary casino at Tower City, until Gilbert comes forward with tangible plans for the “permanent” state-of-the-art casino that voters were promised in what Larkin calls the “deceptive sales pitch” of 2009.
On top of his criticism of Gilbert’s failure to make any apparent progress on the “Phase 2″ casino development, Larkin notes that, “the really big con — the one designed to hoodwink voters throughout Ohio into voting for the 2009 casino ballot issue — involved projections made during the campaign of taxes the four casinos would generate.” Specifically, he cites the Ohio Department of Taxation analysis, created with input from the gaming industry, that projected up to $643 million in taxes generated by the four casinos. Current projections hold that just under $310 million will actually come in, supporting Larkin’s conclusion that the 2009 numbers were “pure fiction.”
None of which accounts for estimates that the Cleveland casino alone drains hundreds of millions annually from Northeast Ohioans’ pockets, including a significant part from those who can least afford to lose (Recovery Resources of Cleveland reports 2.5 times more addiction cases this year over 2011 numbers).
And there’s a case to be made that the walkway shouldn’t be built at all, no matter what happens with “Phase 2.”
In any event, Gilbert’s “success” in Cleveland has him well on his way to becoming an international gaming mogul, with business now underway in Detroit, Kentucky, Baltimore, and Toronto, as well as “online.”
Meanwhile, his Cleveland Cavaliers are slated to win a top-5 pick in tomorrow night’s NBA draft lottery, to go along with three more first-rounders in a draft that one NBA GM has called, “historically weak.” It will be the third consecutive year that the Cavs have had at least one top-5 pick, and the third consecutive year that experts have complained about a weak draft class. This pattern is expected to break next year, with the Cavs in do-or-die playoff contention mode just in time for a 2014 draft class that’s supposed to be the best in a decade.
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In other news, here’s Steve Doerschuk at the Canton Repository on Jason Campbell’s “early move” in the Browns QB race.
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John Hyduk with a good summary of things in the New York Times:
As a Cleveland sports fan, I hold these truths to be self-evident: no matter how promising the plan or how high the draft pick, someone will screw it up.
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For some, any championship would be like the Rapture. I don’t shop that aisle. Oh, various talking heads will tote metaphorical lunch pails for a while, and the adjective “long-suffering” will be worn transparent. Then we will go back to work.
Read the whole thing and more Hyduk here and here.
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From Dave Zirin at The Nation:
There’s another side of this, however, that could not have escaped RGIII’s precise mind as he considered the concepts of sports and sacrifice: There is no way in heaven or hell Muhammad Ali, who is of African, Native American and Irish ancestry, would have ever accepted being called a Redskin.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Cleveland Indians conscious enough to join 80% of the civilized world in showing support for Jason Collins, silent about wearing Chief Wahoo every day.
In other news, [click to continue…]
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Yes, the Indians have won 9 of their last 10 games, they lead Major League Baseball in home runs, they’re second in OPS, and with a recharged roster and a manager that’s as good as a ballclub could ask for, sit three games above .500 after a slow start, legitimately the hottest team in the game. But that doesn’t mean CBS’s Jon Heyman or anyone should be so mystified about the fact that the club has been the worst draw in the league by far, more than 20% behind the second-worst drawing team in Kansas City.
“What’s the deal with the Indians?,” Heyman asks. “Their inability to bring in crowds is quite perplexing, really.”
Heyman isn’t the only one, of course. Log into your favorite social network, and you’re sure to find expressions from Tribe fans — even ones who don’t live within driving distance of the ballpark — running the gamut from concerned, to “perplexed,” to angry about the club’s attendance numbers.
The icecaps are melting, the social safety net is disappearing, child poverty and infant mortality rates in the world’s “richest” country are climbing, news media has been choked to within an inch of its life by advertisers, and the government has effectively completed its abdication to lobbyists for all the worst things. The only people making any real money at all (aside from the ballplayers) are the ones who are melting the icecaps, and damn it, why won’t the rust belters at ground zero of the home mortgage crisis spend more of theirs on baseball tickets and expensive beer and junk food?
Tribe Town, everybody. Don’t you see how much fun Nick Swisher is having out there? [click to continue…]
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