Commitment is sitting on the edge of your couch at 10:30 p.m. hoping the Cavaliers somehow won't drop their 25th game in a row. Insanity is doing it again two nights later, this time praying they won't tie the worst losing streak in all of professional sports.
Like always, there are scoring runs and surges of solid defense, but the effort always crests and then crashes. Heads are shaken, long faces abound, and we all get another reminder of how cruel the NBA basement can be.
"It's like Groundhog Day every day," Antawn Jamison tells reporters following the Cavs' 25th straight loss. It feels that way on this side of the TV, too. But it was like that long before July's sucker punch. We were just too distracted to notice.
Remember, the Indians lost 93 games in 2010 and 97 games the year before. The last time the franchise had two consecutive seasons with more than 90 losses was 1914 and 1915. Down the street, the Browns have posted losing seasons 10 of the past 12 years and have yet to look like the team we all remember.
Statistics are the refuge of the frustrated fan. The cold hard rows of numbers stacked atop one another are like an unsolvable math problem. We try to make sense of them anyway, tracking losses and staying up too late looking for a shred of promise.
Call it karma, call it a curse, call it life, but it's been a rough time. Not only are our teams struggling, but for different reasons we've also said goodbye to some of the greatest names to have ever played for them: Bob Feller, Jim Brown, LeBron James.
Maybe our longing for better times is our own fault. It's been said that we are too psychological mired in the past. Now, as losses pile up like 2-week-old snow, maybe it's time to start looking forward.
I'd think this was possible, too, if Mike Hargrove's recent return to the Indians organization as a consultant hadn't reminded us all of Jacobs Field's heyday.
Tell me, how many Tribe losses do you think it'll take before there's a rallying cry for Grover to leave the front office, suit up and take Manny Acta's seat in the dugout?
