Cavs, Indians celebrate super Cleveland party
Cleveland sports fans, who endured more than 50 years of futility, will celebrate in style on Tuesday with an NBA title, a return to baseball’s World Series and a truckload of ice cream.
For some, the partying has already started ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers raising their NBA championship banner before the league season opener against the New York Knicks and the Cleveland Indians playing host to the Chicago Cubs across the street in Major League Baseball’s best-of-seven playoff final opener.
“It’s a special day for our fans, for Cleveland, for northeast Ohio to be able to enjoy,” Cavaliers star LeBron James said.
Not since the 1964 NFL Cleveland Browns has the city known such sporting success, and many of the failures in between were epic. It’s a city once ridiculed by some as a “Mistake by the Lake.” It’s Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it caught fire in 1969.
That’s the legacy that helped prompt the Cavaliers’ hashtag “WonForAll.”
“Knowing what our city has been through as far as our sports and everything for the last 50-plus years, our fans deserve it,” James said. “Our fans, no matter what has been going on, the Browns, the Indians, the Cavs, they continue to support us.”
Downtown businesses are already decorated, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame adorned with the C logo used on Indians’ players caps.
There will be a rap concert, giant television screens and even ice cream thanks to an offhand comment James made when asked how the party could get any better.
“It’s going to be great,” James said. “We get to host the World Series and we get our rings on the same night at the same time. If we had a retractable roof it would be probably the loudest we ever heard, so it’s pretty special.”