My mother always used to tell me 1). that hate was a very strong word and not to use it without a very good reason, and 2). always tell the truth (which always was followed by a lecture about how I was a terrible actress, so I should choose my profession wisely and NOT choose one that requires me to act or lie or deceive in any way. I’m a lawyer, get your jokes out of the way now). So taking those two pieces of advice to heart, let me be frank: I hate the Baltimore Ravens. I have so many reasons to hate them, that it requires me to create a multi-part blog post devoted to this horrendous franchise, disgrace to humanity. So without further ado, let me begin with a story:
Once upon a time, there was a football team owned by a very greedy man. The football team was located in a city called Cleveland, full of happy, hard-working, god-fearing people. The people of the city loved their team with all their heart, but unknown to them, the greedy man was robbing money from all the other teams in the city in order to keep it for himself. One day, those other teams decided that enough was enough and took their money back. Once the greedy man knew what was going on, he decided that he was going to find another city to wallet-rape and he moved the team east, to a land called Baltimore.
Let me tell you, children, about this new city. This new city was full of sad people. These people were sad because their own football team left them over a decade earlier because the city was too poor. But when the greedy man moved the team to Baltimore, the people got happier and richer. Meanwhile, the people in Cleveland were allowed to make a new team from scratch with the same name and the same logo a few years later. It would be, to this day, a far inferior product than the one that took years for them to create that was stolen from them. Every year, the people of Cleveland, their faces pressed up against the window during playoffs, mourned the loss of their team. And a hatred brewing inside them for the greedy man and the people of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore couldn’t be less concerned about this sadness or this hatred. After all, they were finally winning. And a few years after the move, the new Baltimore team won the Superbowl. I believe that the new Cleveland team only won 3 games that same year. And year after year, matchup after matchup, the new Baltimore team was far superior to the new Cleveland team. They even had a fancy new outfit with flashy purple accents, while the new Cleveland team was stuck with its old, outdated late seventies color-themed outfits.
As the years passed, the hatred grew inside the people of Cleveland, making them ugly and bitter—so ugly and bitter that many many years later, they will liken a basketball player, who chose to take his talents elsewhere to the once greedy man that deprived their city of sports achievement. They would burn photos and banners in the street of the basketball player, banishing his image from the city, much like they did many years earlier to the greedy man. The city of Cleveland will never forget or forgive the loss of their franchise to Baltimore. Even though they were allowed to keep their name and their crappy logo, they lost their players and contracts and the very heart of their team. No new team would ever truly replace the emptiness that remained inside the people of Cleveland. The only thing that filled it was the all-consuming hate for their former team. (Though they still hated the team from Pittsburgh too).
No, I’m not from Cleveland. I have no real affiliation with the city. As a matter of fact, I’m from Maryland. But I have my reasons for my rant. And this is where the story begins, of why I hate the Baltimore Ravens. Stay tuned.
Chicks Like Sports Too 