Written by: host
10/7/2008 6:17 PM

  I'm 36 years old and in a few months I'll be turning 37.  I've lived in Cleveland since I was 10, except for a short stint where I lived in California during my freshman year of High School.

  Over the years, I haven't paid much attention to Sports.  Yes, I did play Soccer when I was in elementary school, and I have the trophy to prove it.  But Major League Sports never really interested me.

  The fact is, I came from a poor family.  We didn't have money to spend on going to games, buying merchandise, or even getting the newspaper to see the score.  My Dad was on a fixed income from the IRS.  Who he owed a lot of money to.  They only allotted him enough money to provide some very basic stuff.  For instance, they didn't give him money to pay for haircuts.  So he had to cut our hair.  It was a crazy life growing up in a white suburban neighborhood, and realizing you might be the poorest person in the entire city.  I got a job when I was 15 years old, bagging groceries at a Carl's grocery store.  My Dad took my paycheck each week to help pay the bills.  I got $20 in spending money out of it, and he kept the rest. 

  And there are dudes out there, that were in my city, that were really well-to-do.  Their parents had money.  They had money to go on trips, to buy sports equipment, to pay dues, and to provide a level of security that I couldn't have.  I mean, lets say I was able to play football in school.  If it was time to get picked up after-practice.  I'd have to walk home because my Dad was working a second job, and there was nobody else to take me home.  And that's WHEN the car worked.

  I'm not trying to lay down a sob story.  I had a good upbringing in a different way, because I met a lot of cool people who has similar circumstances, and we all got along. 

  But I didn't care for Sports, because I saw it as a way for rich people to play with their money.  Rich kids doing what their Dad's wanted them to do.  And I had no interest in showing up to hang out with a bunch of people who had new clothes, and new cars, and new things.  So I didn't watch Sports.  Period.

  My Dad, however, did enjoy Football.   If you live in Cleveland, you pretty much end up watching the Cleveland Browns because it's a lifestyle here that is hard to avoid.  It's shoved down your throat where-ever you go, and you might as well accept it and embrace it, because you're going to hear about it anyway.

  But he never cared for Baseball, and most other sports weren't turned on.  But my Dad was from Canada.  He wasn't a Canadian citizen, but he lived there for many, many years.  And my brother was born there.  (So that makes him a Canadian Citizen.)  And we would travel there often.  And when we would, we'd go see hockey games.  And I always remembered that they were fun, and oddly not well represented in Cleveland.

  Honestly, I don't know if we had a hockey team at all in the eighties.  I don't remember there being one.  If there was, nobody told me about it.  I knew kids on the street that would play junior level hockey.  And they would go to games and thinks at the Recreation Center.  But there was no hockey games on the TV.

  And now that I've gotten older, I've become interested in hockey, because I don't share the same resentment of the sports institution like I used to.   I've come to learn that at a major league level that players are gifted with talent, and not just a collection of well-to-do kids who have family money to burn.  It's a different game when it comes down to player skill vs player skill.  And I've found that to be interesting enough to hold my attention.   I've also found hockey to be fast enough, and complicated enough to keep me interested in it.

  But how does that relate to Cleveland Sports Radio?  Well, the fact is, that certain sports in Cleveland are under represented.  The Lake Erie Monsters are an AHL hockey team.  The owners of the team have done a great job in promoting the team, but only at a macro level that gets the name of the team out there, but not into the day-to-day discussion like you'll find with other sports.

  And then we have a USL-2 Soccer team, and an Indoor Football team, and nobody EVER says anything about these teams. 

  So over the years of doing the electronic media show, and over ten years now of doing news for the electronic gaming industry.  I thought it'd be a good idea to take my amateur knowledge of hockey, pair it with Larry's professional knowledge of every other sport, and produce a weekly show that ANYONE can engage in.

  So that, unlike your regular talk radio show of experts and hanging up on you before the commercial break.  We want to provide a way for anyone to participate in the show and have commentary, and send us emails, and let us all learn and share knowledge about the teams together. 

  I think Sports has an air of eliteness to it, where-by the news media, and the institutions feel as though they are providing something that only the hardcore can understand and watch.  It's not accessible.  It's not like you can watch a game of NFL football and figure out what the hell is going on.  You have to talk to people and have them teach you, and explain to you the rules of the game.  And when you listen to radio, or watch sports casting, someone will say something complicated, and nobody wants to ask the dumb question about what it is they are actually saying.

  Well, I'm the dumb question asker for you.  I'll ask.  I'll find out what the deal really is, and how to make sense of it for everyone to enjoy the game, and not just the insiders and people who have been fed sports their whole lives.  Sometimes it's hard to tell if those people even ENJOY the games they talk about, because they all sound miserable on the radio.

  Not us.  We enjoy the games.  We talk about it.  We invite you to talk about it.  We invite you to write in and ask questions, and we'll get you the answers in a non-insulting way.  And we won't hang up on you, or belittle your knowledge.

  And if you're an expert, we want you to be part of our audience as well, because you can help answer the questions we don't have answers for.  And you can shed light on things that we don't necessarily know about. 

  The end goal is to make the sporting teams in Cleveland known, accessible, and to grow the community of people who WANT to learn and talk about sports, but not be subject to the eliteness of the people who dominate the current media culture of sports radio.

  I hope that explains it.  I hope you understand my background, and my passion towards giving EVERYONE a chance, and not just the well-to-do.  Because we can all enjoy the games, and not be subject to having a quiz thrown at us because we're "Not a real fan" if we didn't know some obscure fact.  None of that bullcrap here. 

  It's casual.  I hope you like what we do, and you stick around to help our show grow.  We'd appreciate it.

Kevin

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