Commentary: Injuries haunt history of Cleveland sports

What is it about Cleveland and professional sports injuries? Do pro athletes in other cities get maimed, mauled and mutilated as often and as seriously as do pro athletes in Cleveland? What is it with all these athletic injury gods and Cleveland? When and why is it always (it seems) Cleveland's athletes who get carried off the field, carted off the field or ambulanced off the field? Is it any wonder that Cleveland teams almost never win any championships? Here is my theory: It's because all of Cleveland's best professional athletes can hardly walk, because they are constantly on their way to the emergency room. I have no concrete proof of this, of course, but I also don't have any proof to refute it. We need only to rewind to earlier this week, when Cavs point guard Darius Garland had to leave a game with Philadelphia because of a foot injury. Garland's injury is apparently exactly the same injury he had earlier this season, and dating back to last season. In both cases he injured his toe. This wouldn't be such a big deal if Garland wasn't an all-star-caliber point guard on a playoff-caliber team trying to reach the playoffs. Instead, Garland had to leave the Cavs' game in Philadelphia on Wednesday because he has a bad big toe, not the one he hurt last year, but the one he hurt (again!) on Wednesday. Sheeesh! Just when Garland's earlier toe injury seemed to be calming down, now his other toe is calming up. Cleveland professional athletes are no strangers when it comes to trying to work around one of their latest injuries. Granted, two big toe injuries in two years seems to be cruel and unusual punishment. Where is Uncle Hulka when you need him? But as we all know, this is Cleveland sports, where anything goes ... and goes ... and goes. Especially bad things. It's a legacy fraught with heart-breaking tragedy, the kind of tragedy that never fails to visit fan bases with the wallop that it does in Cleveland. Cleveland athletes getting injured — or worse — is nothing new in these parts, starting with the worst example of all: Indians shortstop Ray Chapman getting hit in the head, and killed, by a pitch thrown by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays in 1920. In 1948, Indians pitcher Don Black collapsed at home plate with a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1957, the great Herb Score got hit in the eye by a line drive hit off the bat of Yankees shortstop Gil McDougald, an injury that all but ended Score's career before it got started. In this corner of the Cleveland sports canon there are numerous examples of what-might-have been, but wasn't. For example, Michael Jordan breaking the Cavs players' and fans' hearts with that unforgettable game-winning impossible basket in a playoff series the Cavs seemed destined to win. There was the drive — Oops! I mean THE DRIVE (see John Elway) that, to this day, still, might be the most deflating sports moment in Cleveland sports history. Or, at the very least: the second most deflating moment in Cleveland sports history, behind only the Indians' 1997 Game 7 World Series loss to the Florida Marlins in extra innings. You want painful? Watch the tape from that excruciating Game 7 ... on second thought: don't. These are the kinds of things you sign up for when you become a sports fan, regardless of where you live, or the name of the team. Most, if not all of the above were moments that, when viewed as part of the fabric of Cleveland sports history, were electrifying to witness, but excruciating to endure. Maybe that is how the sports fans in The Land should approach the dark side of Cleveland sports, those moments when expected exhilaration gives way to heart-breaking heartache (think: Aroldis Chapman vs. Rajai Davis in the World Series). Certainly it seems fair to say that given all the heartache Cleveland fans have experienced through the years, Darius Garland having consecutive sore big toes is not exactly the caliber of Game 7 of the 1997 World Series-worthy. But that doesn't mean that Cavs fans can't whine about it. Let's face it, and this goes for fan bases from coast to coast: if you can't whine about something that doesn't go your way, what is the point of being a hardcore sports fan? Especially a Cleveland sports fan, Darius Garland's toes, notwithstanding. Heck, this is why we love sports in the first place: you either have fun getting what you want, or you have fun not getting what you want. Either way, you are a winner! Because if the athletes aren't going to deliver, it's up to the fan base to pick up the slack. Nothing against Darius Garland, of course. Contact Jim Ingraham at (440) 329-7135 or jingraham4@gmail.com.