MIDWEST MISERY By Adam Hirschfeld

Feeling Seattle’s pain.

If you read any sports related websites on the internet, then you have undoubtedly been privy to significant venom regarding the impending move of the Seattle Supersonics. Owner Clay Bennett (not the famed owner of the Super-Sonikahs who celebrates Hannukkah) will, with the blessing of NBA Commissioner David Stern (who has presumably celebrated a Hannukkah or two in his lifetime) move the team to Oklahoma City as soon as he can.

For those of us who always believed bigger markets were the prime locations for professional sports franchises, this is some wake-up call. Maybe someone can buy the Atlanta Hawks and move them to Dickinson, North Dakota. Is this Stern’s payback to Gary Bettman for killing the NHL?

I digress. I’m from Cleveland, so I know a thing or two about losing a sports franchise. If they can take the Browns out of Cleveland, then no team, and I mean NO TEAM, is safe. The Yankees can be moved out Manhattan for sure and maybe even New York if some hedge fund billionaire decides it would be a good idea to pony up the dough. The Celtics could be in Providence faster than you can say “Pahk the cah”. The NFL has shuffled franchises back and forth like the country’s biggest public transportation line. The NHL relocates teams to places where the locals have never seen ice that wasn’t man-made.

If you have the green (the kind with dead presidents on it, not Boston Celtic green), then the owners are more than happy to let you treat one of their franchises like an employee of the Emperor’s Club. It’s good for the owners and the commissioners when franchises are sold for exorbitant amounts of money. Whether it’s good for the fans is about as relevant to them as a gnat on the back of an elephant. Stern’s bosses are very happy, even the ones who may decide to vote against the move. It’s nothing against Seattle per se; it’s simply good business.

New York sportswriter Mike Lupica said it best more than a decade ago: it’s OK to love your teams, just don’t expect them to love you back. Seattle fans just got a good ol’ “Dear John” letter. There will be last ditch efforts to save the team, but those will fail, as did every other last ditch effort to keep any other franchise from moving in the last 20 years.

I hardly ever followed the Sonics, even when they were a legitimate contender in the mid-1990s. The Shawn Kemp that snorted and ate his way out of the league was not the beloved “Reign Man” of the Pacific Northwest (based on how many kids Kemp fathered, I’d argue that apparently, he was raining seamen). I don’t care whether Kevin Durant toils his trade in Seattle, Oklahoma City, or San Paulo, Brazil.

What Seattle fans don’t realize now, and they will not be able to do so until either time passes or the NBA “awards” them an expansion franchise, is that they are better off watching their team go than caving into the demands of a professional sports league or some rich idiot who could build the stadium he wants with his own money but insists on robbing from the poor (read: taxpayers like you and I). Seattle is consistently praised as a wonderful place to live. It has big businesses like Microsoft and Starbucks. I don’t know anyone who lives there that does not love it (granted, I only really know two people who live there, but everyone who has ever visited talks about how nice the Pacific Northwest is).

In my lifetime, two teams were threats to move from Cleveland. The Indians did not, because the city of Cleveland ponied up the dough to construct what are now Quicken Loans Arena and Progressive Field. It isn’t difficult to find reading material out there bemoaning how poorly the economics of those deals worked out for the city. They probably worked out great for Dick Jacobs and Gordon Gund.

The Browns did move, and Michael White decided to base his whole mayoral campaign around his greatness for keeping the team’s color and logo from moving to Baltimore with the Modells. Sure, the NFL ultimately put football back in Cleveland, in a brand new stadium Cleveland paid for.

Oh, and while White was saving football for the city and spending his taxpayers’ dollars on opulent stadia, he couldn’t find it in the coffers to give Progressive Insurance a tax abatement to move its headquarters downtown. The latter might have lured young people to the city and helped revive a sluggish downtown; the former has yet to yield a home playoff game (but apparently, the Browns are now an up-and-comer, based on their five upcoming appearances on national television). One of these decisions is all-too in concert with the lines of the local decision-making that probably will make it so my son has no desire to return home when he graduates from college.

Now, truth be told, if the Indians had ever left or ever do leave, I would have been devastated. The Browns leaving had no impact on my psyche save for whatever feelings I had for the people I knew whose livelihoods depended on their presence.  When Lebron leaves the Cavs in a couple of years, he may as well take the franchise with him as well. Trust me, no one in Cleveland is going to pay NBA prices to watch the group of also-rans struggle without their King.

My point, and maybe I don’t really have one, is that no matter how upset Seattle fans feel about their Sonics leaving, the following are true: (i) a Seahawks Super Bowl or Mariners World Series championship would make everyone feel a whole lot better. Remember, the Browns were gone during the Indians’ heyday, so they were missed a bit less; (ii) an NHL franchise would not make anyone feel better; and (iii) the Sonics are not the last team that will move in my lifetime.

So long, Sonics. Enjoy your new digs.

Questions? Comments? Feedback counts. Adamh164@yahoo.com