The Year of The Cleve

Top Ten Cleveland Sports Moments of 2007

December 21st, 2007

By: CRS Staff

While 2007 will mark the 43rd consecutive year in which no Cleveland team won a sports championship, even we can't pretend this year hasn't been better than, well, almost any since Jim Brown carried the Browns to an NFL title in 1964.  Come to think of it, a lot of good things happened in 2007.  We're no longer the nation's poorest city (enjoy the title, Detroit), local restauranteur Michael Symon became the next Iron Chef, heck, NBC's 30 Rock even devoted an entire show to The Cleve, without a single 'Mistake by the Lake' joke.  And, as of this writing, the Browns have a chance to make it 3-for-3 in playoff appearances from our sports teams this year (wait, forget I said that...really, writing this was a horrible idea).  As we say goodbye to 2007 and look ahead to '08, here are the top ten Cleveland sports moments of '07.  Enjoy.

10. Casey At The Bat (Monday, September 17th)

Anyone remember the 2005 collapse?  Trailing the Indians by 4 1/2 games heading into a pivotal three-game series in late September, the Tigers still had hopes of outlasting the Tribe and returning to the postseason to defend their American League Championship.  With many Jacobs Field fans in attendance wearing 'Beat Detroit' t-shirts left over from the Cavs playoffs, the Indians overcame a three-run deficit and tied the game on Jhonny Peralta's second HR of the night in the 8th.  Then in the 11th, Tiger-killer Casey Blake hit his second walk-off HR in four days, propelling the Indians to a sweep that effectively ended the Tigers' season, and left Manager Jim Leyland with only his Marlboro's to look forward to in October.

9. Cavs Get Help (Wednesday, April 18th)

Heading into the final game of the regular season, the young Cavaliers needed help.  Stuck in the 5th seed thanks to giving away too many winnable games earlier in the year, to earn the all-important #2 spot the Cavs needed to beat the Milwaukee Bucks and hope the New Jersey Nets could beat a hot Chicago Bulls team that had waxed them by 31 points just two weeks earlier.  If that didn't happen, a first-round date with the defending NBA champion Miami Heat awaited, with the Pistons lurking in Round 2.  An Eastern Conference Finals appearance seemed about as likely as Marty Schottenheimer coaching in a Super Bowl.  For Cleveland fans, the phrase 'need help from other teams' usually means 'get ready to be disappointed'.  After the Cavs beat the Bucks in time to watch the Nets finish off the Bulls on TV from their locker room, we had to realize that the ball had bounced our way for a change.  After a first-round laugher over the Agent Zero-less Wizards and a gritty second round series win over those same Nets, the Cavs set themselves up to make team history.  We all remember what happened next.

8. Gellin' In Eleven (Saturday, October 13th)

If Red Sox fans started making plans for the World Series right after Game 1 of the ALCS, no one could have blamed them.  After a dominating performance by Josh Beckett made C.C. Sabathia look more like Jason Johnson than a Cy Young winner, it apeared the Indians might get swept right out of the playoffs.  Twice overcoming deficits, the Indians slugged their way towards extra innings and a 6-6 tie in Game 2.  During the top of the 11th, with Indians fans everywhere curling up in the fetal position realizing that a JoeBo relief appearance was probably the best-case scenario to save the season, Tribe bats exploded for 7 runs, turning Borowski's extra innings appearance into garbage time.  Didn't want to see what would've happened had Borowski needed to save a one-run game?  Apparently neither did his teammates.  Looking back, this game was over as soon as Tom Mastny (whose only previous postseason job had been to turn out the lights in the bullpen after each game) came in to pitch a 1-2-3 10th against Big Papi, Manny, & Mike Lowell.

7. The Shootout (Sunday, September 16th)

Fresh off a humiliating season opener that saw the Browns lose 34-7 to the Steelers, then become the first NFL team in history to publicly stone their starting QB (OK, so maybe they just traded Charlie Frye to Seattle for a latte to be named later, but you get my drift), Browns fans were preparing for another long season ahead.  But then a funny thing happened; Derek Anderson turned into Peyton Manning, Braylon Edwards into Randy Moss (the good Randy), and Cleveland Browns Stadium into the OK Corral.  One Philly-Dawg FG short of hanging a double-nickel on the stunned Bengals, the Browns were 52-45 winners in a game that would launch their promising season.

6. The Game With The Midges (Friday, October 5th)

Frankly, any playoff win over the Yankees is list-worthy, but when it is assisted by our swarmy bug friends from Lake Erie, it jumps to a whole new level.  While the image of Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain spraying himself in vain with bug spray will forever be associated with this game (I can only hope The Boss fired the guy who came up with that idea, after all, he might as well have covered Joba in paste), it should also be remembered as the night Fabulous Fausto Carmona silenced the Yankees trillion-dollar lineup.  (Side note: you can tell a true Clevelander from an outsider in the way he/she describes this game - if they refer to this as 'The Gnat Game', they're clearly not from Northeast Ohio; if they call it 'The Game With The Midges', or 'The Game With The Canadian Soldiers', then they're legit.  Now excuse me while I go get a can of pop and see where I left my coat at.)

5. The Snow Bowl (Sunday, December 16th)

The start of the Browns 8-0 win over Buffalo looked eerily similar to a December 19th, 2004 game against the San Diego Chargers, when the Browns were embarassed 21-0 in the snow by a team more accustomed to sunburn than wearing long sleeves.  It was the kind of game that reminded Browns fans then just how far the team had drifted away from the smash-mouth style needed to win big late-season games in the AFC North.  But this is not 2004, and Jamal Lewis is not Lee Suggs, the fragile Browns RB on that cold, snowy day.  Thanks to a stout defense (who knew?), a long snapper-induced safety (somewhere Butch Davis is slowly nodding), and two Phil Dawson FG's, one of them a seeing-eye single that eluded the ground long enough to hit the Dawson Bar (see #4, below), the Browns actually won a big home game in December for a change.

4. The Dawson Bar Game (Sunday, November 18th)

Frankly, any Browns win in Baltimore is list worthy (see #6, above), but when Ray Lewis is forced to come back from the locker room to watch the Browns win a game they appeared to have lost just minutes earlier, well, it again jumps to a whole new level.  In a game that introduced us to the 'Dawson Bar', the Browns officially became the Sons of the Kardiac Kids when they eluded defeat and a celebratory post-game dance from God's Linebacker on a 51-yard FG at the end of regulation.  Not just any FG, mind you, but one that perplexed referees long enough for half the Ravens team to head to the locker room claiming victory.  When Dawson struck again minutes later, The Ravens' playoff hopes officially ended, along with any talk of the Browns being a fluke.

3. Tribe Flips Yankees The Byrd (Monday, October 8th)

After losing Game 3 of the ALDS to the Yankees, you could almost feel the stomachs of fans across Northeast Ohio tightening up.  'Here we go again' was the sentiment felt by many who never expected this young and under-financed team to get very far in the playoffs.  Nervous fans flooded talk radio call lines to question Eric Wedge's decision to start Paul Byrd in Game 4, the Tribe's 2007 version of Eddie Harris (Eddie had the Vasoline-ball while Paul apparently had HGH, but that's a whole other story).  Byrd managed to hold the Yankees hitters mostly at bay, and Borowski managed to get a 'routine' save (only one HR surrendered, not counting Posado's 400-foot foul ball), and the Indians had their first postseason series victory since 1998.  Take a bow, Eric Wedge.

2. LeBron Has A New Sidekick, And His Name Is Boobie (Saturday, June 2nd)

Who can forget 'Boobie For Three!', arguably the phrase of the year in Cleveland sports, and the source of numerous inappropriate pick-up lines in bars across the city.  Certainly not the Detroit Pistons, who were so determined not to be embarassed by Bron Bron in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals that they neglected to guard anyone else on the floor.  Boobie was happy to oblige anxious Cavs fans, as his 31 points sent the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals, LeBron into the arms of a seven-foot Lithuanian, and Cleveland fans (including yours truly) into the Downtown streets to celebrate the first meaningful sports win on Cleveland soil in four decades.  Unsure of what they were supposed to do next, Cavs fans awkwardly high-fived strangers and partied the night away with surprising restraint.  In retrospect, the reason no cars were turned over or burned in the streets of Cleveland afterwards was simply because no one under age 50 had any idea how to celebrate a big home victory.

1. The LeBron Game (Thursday, May 31st)

Ever since those ping pong balls rolled our way in 2003, we kept hearing this would happen someday.  The Chosen One.  King James.  The Next Michael.  We heard it all, and despite LeBron mostly living up to the hype in his first four seasons, we hadn't seen anything like this.  With the winner of Game 5 likely to advance to The Finals, LeBron had one of those games that we Cleveland fans had so often seen happen against one of our teams.  This was John Elway's Drive & Michael Jordan's Shot, a young superstar having his signature game, except this time that young superstar wore a Cleveland jersey instead.  Scoring the Cavs' final 25 points on a shell-shocked Pistons team that seemed to want no part of him (the image of Tayshaun Prince ducking for cover on a ferocious James dunk will forever go down in Cleveland lore), the Pistons realistically lost the series that memorable night in The Palace.  So while LeBron never seemed to recover from his physically-draining Game 5 performance in Detroit during the NBA Finals, we'll always have The LeBron Game, the first memorable playoff game in a long time that we'll remember for positive reasons.