By Jake Appleman
It’s a calm, sunny late June day in 2002. I’m finishing a gap year between high school and college and driving with my mom to Kenyon College, a liberal arts school in the middle of Ohio known for its Gothic architecture, prestigious literary magazine and dynastic swimming program to make sure that I want to spend four years there, to double-check my future. Over five hundred miles on the road, I ponder things like, “can Germany knock off Brazil in the World Cup final?” and “would it be possible to never work in retail again?”
The fastest way to drive from New York to northern or central Ohio usually involves taking I-80 West. That’s the northern route. It’s not as pretty as the southern route, which includes views of Pittsburgh, but it’s faster and you get a better sense of the Pennsylvania-Ohio border when you cross over near Youngstown.
Deeper into Ohio, as the highway signs for Akron start appearing, I begin to tell my mom about LeBron James, a rising senior at nearby St. Vincent-St. Mary high school and apparently the greatest young basketball player since…well, there is no fair comparison.
School is out but my mom suggests we pull off the highway, drop by St. V's and check it out.
We could say hi, in a way.
She seems bizarrely serious about doing this, the way a parent gets serious about something when they hear unmistakable passion in their kid’s voice. I get embarrassed and talk her out of it. I might have even blushed.
That fall, I walk on to the basketball team at Kenyon. The 02-03 Kenyon basketball Lords struggle to win much like the 02-03 Cleveland Cavaliers who finish 17-65. On the bright side, I get to know many Ohioans – Clevelanders among them – and we watch LeBron’s high school games on ESPN.
Lo and behold, the Cavs land LeBron and they begin expanding their media availability, which is good because after nagging and writing a ton of NBA-related haiku (don’t ask) I can become a correspondent for my favorite magazine.
I quit the team and get serious about driving 90-120 minutes each way in cars I borrow from other people to cover Cavs games in my own freewheeling style. It’s like a great college art class: cover the NBA basketball game and write what you see, joke about what you hear. Learn by experience.
For my first game the credential doesn’t go through. But the Cavs are playing the Pistons and my friend Chris, who is from Michigan, wants to see the game so we ride up. I meet up with my friend Adam, who sees himself as an Ohioan’s Ohioan – Cleveland forever, endless Buckeye pride, existential fatalism – and take notes from the stands, so I can file a story anyway. The second game is nearly impossible to attend because of a snowstorm, but my then-girlfriend borrows one of her friend’s cars, drives us to the game and sits in the upper deck by herself, which remains one of the coolest things anyone has ever done for me.
More than anything, I found the independence and growth that I sought as a person when I arrived on campus in those long drives up and down I-71, rotating through a few burned CDs, a jolt of excitement apparent whenever downtown Cleveland appears up ahead. The sweetest spot was often on the ride back when words I scribbled in notebooks floated through my mind, reorganized and reconsidered, helping time fly by until I-71 met route 13.
The long nights are fun and the experiences incomparable. The weight of unmet expectations in Cleveland’s struggles resonates with me both as an academic and evolving post-adolescent. I identify with the way my Ohio friends carry their struggle and own it on their own terms.
Sometimes friends join me on the long rides to The Q, buying tickets and beer and gorging on chicken wings on the concourse. This isn’t out of the ordinary. All across northern and central Ohio, college fraternities and organizations plan field trips around seeing LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers play basketball. Forget what the James effect does to the economy of Cleveland; lifelong friendships are forged, in small part, by watching the Cavs play basketball as young adults. We become indoctrinated into the church of LeBron and a form soup of suffering unlike anything else, anywhere.
Through it all, LeBron remains king of the narrative. Entering the home locker room at The Q was wild early in his career, with 17-20 reporters hovering around his locker. Most of the other Cavs were just milling around, free to do whatever, business as usual. I never understood what a celebrity’s fame did to normal people until I got back from one of many journeys – leave campus at 4pm, return by 1AM, stare at my notepad and write until 4AM – only to have the first question out of anybody’s mouth be, “did you talk to LeBron?”
Here are your car keys back. Thank you.
“Did you talk to LeBron?”
Hey, the Cavs made a trade to bolster their lineup for a playoff push.
“Did you talk to LeBron?”
I’m running to the market to get beer. Do you need anything?
“Did you talk to LeBron?”
LeBron James belongs to Ohio in a way that you don’t really understand unless you’ve lived there for a time and even then you’re not all the way there.
***
In late May, I went back to Kenyon for my ten-year reunion. The first afternoon back, I reacquainted myself with a campus that has buildings named after Graham Gund, whose brother Gordon sold his majority stake in the Cavaliers to Dan Gilbert in 2004. That night, I watched the Warriors stave off elimination in Game 5 against the Thunder. The next night, I caught the end of the Cavs’ Eastern Conference clincher from the main on-campus bar. I left a cheeky but celebratory voicemail for my friend Tim whose parents hosted me in Cleveland during the 2006 playoffs.
The next day, the returning alumni posed for class pictures. I wore a navy blue tee shirt, with the words Wild Thing emblazoned across the chest, a reference to the Charlie Sheen character from Major League.
“Hey,” the photographer taking our class picture said. “Rick Vaughn!”
I laughed cathartically. Not everybody understands what it’s like to choke up a little bit while hearing Randy Newman’s “Burn On” in Major League’s opening sequence. It was good to be back in Ohio.
That night, I ducked out of an alumni party to check on the fourth quarter of the Warriors-Thunder game 6. I walked into the lounge area of the dorm I was staying in and was lightly questioned by Kim, a Cavs fan who knew my history as a sportswriter, for missing part of the game. A group of us then watched as Klay Thompson erupted, leading the Warriors back in what seemed like a championship-defining comeback before the Finals had even started. Long lost classmates walked through the dorm from the party, a little confused by the attention that the game commanded, like, you guys know there’s a beer tent outside, right?
Three weeks later, I sat alone on the couch for almost 47 minutes of Game 7 before my mom walked in the room and looked at the television. The score was tied 89-89.
“Looks exciting,” she said.
As LeBron crashed to the ground and writhed around in pain before his series-sealing free throw, I refreshed her on how long it’d been since Cleveland had celebrated a championship in any sport.
“In any sport?” she asked.
“In any sport,” I said.
“Oh my God,” she said.
The Cavs get their rings tonight. Across the street, the Indians will host Game 1 of the World Series. When the Cavs won the championship, some intrepid souls created a Facebook event for the Indians’ World Series parade four months early. Some of my friends RSVP’d immediately.
