Don’t give up on them.

Don’t give up on the Cleveland Browns. Please. I’m not asking you to think they’re good. I’m not asking you to believe in Ray Farmer. I’m not asking you to forgive Johnny Manziel or excuse Justin Gilbert or ignore Donte Whitner’s birthdate. I’m not asking you to buy into Josh McCown, even for one year. I’m not asking you to give Dwayne Bowe a break, because that just would be dishonest. I’m not asking you to stop complaining, even if I grow tired of it sometimes. I’m not asking you to think they don’t suck because, to put it crudely and over-simply, they do.

But I am asking you not to give up. Not completely. Not yet. (This applies to the Indians and Cavs too. Those franchises happen to be better and don’t inspire as much rage, hence the Browns opening.)

I’m sitting in my apartment right now, the first place I’ve ever lived that actually includes Cleveland in the address, and I’m looking at my computer through tear-fogged eyes. That last part is the case for a few reasons. It started — in the short term, anyway; I haven’t the time or energy to go all the way back — when I read something that Zach Lowe wrote called “Confessions of a Former Diehard” about the New York Mets.

Zach Lowe is a basketball writer. He writes about basketball for Grantland. That’s his job and what he does. He isn’t a fan or a blogger. He doesn’t have a favorite team, at least nothing close to a clear one. He covers the league objectively, analyzing its trends and doing his best to project a path for its future. He cut his teeth in journalism on law, crime, and government, and it seems that he seeks to approach the NBA with all the predispositions of an honest jury. He isn’t dispassionate toward the game — quite the opposite — but he is toward who wins and who loses.

But here he is Thursday night, publishing something about baseball. Okay, I’ll bite.

I had no idea what to expect. It was weird going to Grantland’s website and seeing his byline under the 2015 MLB PLAYOFFS category. Without doing a deep dive into his archives, I say confidently that this is the first non-basketball thing he’s written since he moved from Sports Illustrated to Grantland around this time three years ago. Other Grantlanders will wade into other waters. NFL writer Bill Barnwell writes about soccer and/or baseball. Katie Baker jumps from NHL to movies to TV. Shea Serrano writes about how many people Kate Winslet murdered in Titanic and when Will Smith stopped being cool. The fences between topics seem low, and that seems like a good thing. But still; Zach Lowe writes about basketball. So it’s weird.

He wrote about growing up a New York Mets fan growing up in Connecticut. His old man grew up in New Hampshire rooting for the Celtics and Red Sox, but suggested that maybe young Zach should pick another baseball team, maybe an NL club. He glommed onto the Mets early, and off he went.

He wrote about trying to follow the Mets while away at college and talking about them with suddenly distant friends. He wrote about staying up way too late to watch a game in extra innings, then waking up the whole house to tell them that Todd Hundley hit a walkoff dinger. He wrote about all of the little things that you notice and savor about the players you watch every day, about how you pick up their tics and they grow more familiar. I’ll shout until the cows come home that sports fandom is an objectively silly thing, but we form relationships with these teams and players. Real, actual relationships. It’s absolutely bizarre, and it’s completely real.

These sports and these teams become sturdy walls we can lean on. They provide comfort, if not always immediately. Lowe wrote about watching the Mets during summers home from college when friends had moved away, times when home somehow feels like a lonely place. Everyone has felt that, no? The circumstances may differ, but the phenomenon is the same. Home can be lonely, from roughly ages 12 to death. People part ways and friendships become less vibrant despite promises that they won’t. Nights out come in.

And in times like those, sports can be a damn powerful thing. I’m certain that I’m projecting things onto my boy Zach here, but I digress. Some excerpts:

It was when I was home from college during the summers of 1996, 1997, and 1998 — peaking with that Astros game — that the Mets began to mean something even deeper to me. Like a lot of college kids, I lost touch with most of my high school friends. I saw them now and then when we were all home, but those get-togethers petered out as we got older. I was home most nights after working my day job as a lifeguard and water polo coach, and I’d set up shop after dinner in the downstairs TV room — alone. The games were too serious to watch with my parents, and I needed access to a computer so I could email my college buddies…

I could have been lonely in those summers, but the Mets became my refuge. I experienced that weird sensation where you get to know the players’ habits so well that you almost feel like you understand them as people…

I spent more time with those Mets during those summers than I did with human beings I actually knew.

Um, yes. Been there, bro. BEEN. THERE. BRO. There was a stretch when I was in high school — maybe some middle school too, my memory of that time is worryingly hazy — during which I now realize that I was depressed. Nothing sexy, no handfuls of pills washed down with gin or hopeful naps behind 18-wheelers, just garden variety depression. Fairly standard stuff, I’m afraid. Parents divorced, sleeping too much, mood sullen, grades in the shitter. Unwelcome life events and adolescence make for a lousy cocktail. My parents were keen to it at the time and wanted to help, but I didn’t want it. It was fine. I was fine.

I spent a great many nights in the basement. I spent a great many nights by myself. There was a TV down there, and there was a computer down there, and there was a PlayStation down there. I didn’t need much more, except to sneak upstairs to load up on crap sustenance. I would just zone out. Lots of video games in those days. There were a few years when I would get both NCAA Football and Madden because you could actually load your college players into your pro draft. It was the coolest thing in the world. Problem was, NCAA never had real player names because of licensing issues and whatever bullshit explains why players can’t make any money. There would just be guys like QB #10 (i.e. Vince Young) or RB #5 (i.e. Reggie Bush). You could put the players’ real names in, but you’d have to type in every name by yourself, punching in the letters one at a time on a clumsy interface.

I fell in love with Madden‘s franchise mode because that’s the only way the Browns could ever be good

So what I would do is, I would print out page after page after page of college football rosters, dozens of teams, always starting with Ohio State and then working down through the top 25 and the major conferences. I would take those stacks of rosters, and I would go one by one entering the names into the NCAA video game, making sure that details like jersey number, height, weight, and skin tone were all accurate. And I would do that for every single player on the roster. And I would do that for dozens of teams. For the star players, I might edit their attributes to better approximate what I thought of their abilities. In all, I must have entered thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of player names into that video game. If that sounds like the biggest waste of time in the world, then your hearing is just fine.¹

I would play NCAA for a while, and when a season was over I could export a draft class. Then I could import said draft class into Madden and I could draft the players I just played with in the college game to my new team in the pro game. Then I could play with those players. I spent hours of my life for that payoff.

This has turned into a terrible tangent, but there’s a point. I was so into those video games because I was so into the real-life teams. I fell in love with Madden‘s franchise mode because that’s the only way the Browns could ever be good. I imported my own draftees so I could always draft the best players, because that’s the only way the Browns could ever get it right. I could take control of Ohio State in NCAA and turn Tresselball on its head by running trick plays and recruiting crap punters. It was a fantasy just as much as any role-playing game, and it was born out of my love of sport.

I don’t have many clear memories of nights spent in that basement, but one night sticks out. May 22, 2003. The night of the NBA Draft lottery. Need I say any more? The night the ping-pong balls fell Cleveland’s way. The night the Cavs got the No. 1 pick. The night that guaranteed that LeBron James would be a Cleveland Cavalier. I think I jumped up and screamed when NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik — Russ Granik, you beautiful bastard — held up the card indicating that the Grizzlies got the No. 2 pick. One card and one team left: No. 1 and Cleveland Cavaliers. What?

Point is, I was a lonely miserable idiot for a while, and sports pulled me through it. Whether it was watching actual games or re-enacting them as video games — or the occasion where I got my lazy ass off the couch to actually play them — they provided solace. I didn’t have to talk to them. I didn’t have to explain myself to them. They were just there for me, like a good dog. I knew more about sports than I knew about anything. (Certainly, if it isn’t already abundantly clear, than I knew about the fairer sex.)

Reading that Zach Lowe had a similar experience — similar in my head, anyway; just go with me here — was heartening. It was especially heartening because the Mets are in the World Series for the first time since 2000. It was all the more heartening to read Lowe, who I always knew as an analyst rather than fan, rekindling his fandom and discovering anew the singular joy of being a sports fan.

If you read his piece, you know I’m lying. He is happy for the Mets, yes, but it isn’t the same as those summers home from college.

I had spent years envisioning this moment — the Mets ruling the city, blitzing through the playoffs, poised for a long run of dominance. This is the exact thing for which you invest your time and heartache. This is the payoff.

And I’m out.

I’m so far out that I don’t feel right about coming back in. The enjoyment would feel phony. Real fans draw the deepest satisfaction from living and growing with the players: forgiving their failures, watching their growth, rejoicing in small achievements that only the diehards notice during a random game in June, and finally basking in it with them — very much with them — when it all clicks. One of my best friends from college is a Royals fan, and we made grandiose plans 15 years ago to fly back and forth for games if they ever met in the World Series. It was fanciful — dreams for a reality that would never happen. Now that moment is almost here, but the universe in which those two guys made those plans is long gone.

I made a sports fan choice, and I’m living with it. Almost everyone I know over 35 has given up following at least one of their favorite teams. Life intervenes.

Negotiate that choice carefully. If there is one team that means more to you than the others, hold on to some part of it. Because when they become relevant again, when they finally hit big, it freaking hurts to be on the outside.

Can you even imagine not being part of that when it happens to your favorite team, in any sport? There’s a substantial cross-section of reasonable people who wouldn’t really give a damn, but if you’ve read this far, you are not one of those people. If you’ve read this far, you’re a sports fan. It can be a very dumb thing to identify with, but it can be a beautiful thing. Sports are about belief: in the team, in the spectacle, in each other. They’re about togetherness and pride. Perhaps we as a society should look elsewhere for our heroes and fulfillment, but heaps of us don’t. Whatever the reason, we rally around sports. We rejoice in them together, and grow closer for it.

This is why I ask you not to give up on the Cleveland Browns. Or the Indians, for that matter, or the Cavs, or any team that you grew up rooting for. I’m not asking you to ignore blemishes or start a pep rally. Being informed about the team enough to know who you want to get cut is its own form of fandom. It’s better to hate them than to forget about them, for the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Just don’t give up. Because one day, one of those franchises is going to win it all. And you don’t want to be the one on the outside when it happens.

1. A few years later, you could download a fully-named roster in seconds. I’ve never had the heart to calculate how much time I spent doing it myself. Oh my god I’m an idiot. [↩]