The Whore of Akron

I think Raab does a good job of describing what it's like to be a Cleveland sports fan to an outsider. Other than that it was pretty funny in parts, but I lived through most of it and really didn't need to rehash it all.

 

Raab is gold, and the Esquire excerpts have been 24K as well. Once I finish 11/22/63, I plan on partaking ...

rb

 

Thoroughly enjoyed the book. Read it cover to cover in one setting.

 

I've seen much worse whores in Akron than LeBron.

Akron ... the only place I've ever been robbed at gunpoint. Rubber City, bitches!

 

Count yourself lucky. In Toledo you'd have awakened minus a kidney in a motel bathtub filled with ice.

 

No hummer for Raab?

 

Too much butt-hurt.

You loved LeBron. He acted like an asshole and left.

Get over it.

 

Boy, do you get it.

If that book hadn't involved the Giants, no one would have cared.

 

I think that's the point. Raab's and Cleveland's emotional investment and reliance in and on a 26-year old basketball player is kind of the unwritten, implied mistake in the whole thing. Just like it was with a football franchise. Just like it was with its manufacturing industries. I think he understands that with every insult he hurls. It endears me to the book even more.

 

I thought the book was very interesting. Read it in about 48 hours.

That said, I could have used a little less knowledge about Raab's privates.

 

Not that familar with Raab's other work. What is the reason Raab has not moved back?

 

Maybe nobody ever really considered the possibility that even though LeBron grew up in Akron, maybe he wanted to get the fuck out of there his whole life. Maybe he really doesn't like freezing-ass weather. Who knows?

He couldn't do it at the beginning of his career because of the patently illegal draft rules imposed by the NBA and NBAPA upon individuals in neither group (amateur, i.e. high school and college players having no vote in NBAPA decisions) but if he wanted to pursue a professional basketball career he had to abide by those rules.

For most of his time in Cleveland LeBron acted reasonably happy and content to be there (the persistent Yankee cap-wearing aside). He played as hard and as well as anybody could reasonably expect (in fact, better than Jordan over corresponding years of his career).

When he got a chance to leave, he left. He made sure to do it in a little bit more egotistical and asinine manner than was really necessary, but in the end, he just left.

Akron/Cleveland and the fans therein do not own LeBron James' ass. If he wanted to leave, that was his business. End of story.