Cleveland cursed? Please! Get over yourselves.

The spirits must have better things to do with their time than to rain suffering down on the Mistake by the Lake.

Lots of cities have bad sports teams and consequently, long-suffering fans. However, the fans of all those clubs don’t sell out by blaming curses. Those fans know the logical reason for the failures of their teams include bad players, coaches and owners, not bad-intentioned specters. By blaming a curse, Clevelanders are just doing a bad impression of Boston’s 86-year tragedy.

Suck it up and deal with it: Sucking is sucking. There is nothing cosmic about it.

Southwest Ohioans endured a decade of Mike Brown’s incompetence in running the Bengals, but those fans never sold out and blamed spirits. They knew it was due to the stupidity of one man and dealt with it in a myriad of ways.

Whether they were calling local sports radio shows to complain or hanging signs at the ballpark with clever slogans like, “If it’s orange and black, send it back,” or “If it’s Mike Brown, flush it down,” Cincinnatians were never lacking in ways to cope.

Likewise, in those heady days of 1988, when the Bengals ruled the AFC and Boomer Esiason was the Most Valuable Player of the league, fans of the orange and black never thought of blaming curses for Joe Montana’s last second drive that won Super Bowl XXIII for the 49ers.

While it was painful to watch, the fact remained that a better player simply got the better of the stripes on that day. Esiason’s “I’m Going to Disneyworld” commercial went in the trash and everyone moved on with their sports-loving lives.

Remember that the next time ESPN Classic airs “The Drive,” Browns fans.

As far as baseball, the Indians’ early season struggles are more likely the result of false hopes than any ill wishes from Rocky Colavito.

In Cincinnati, the 2000 Reds were in a situation similar to that of the current edition of the Cleveland baseball club. Hopes were high for that Reds team after it missed the post-season by one game in 1999. With Ken Griffey Jr. added, the team expected to be even better the following season. However, reality proved that the source of success in 1999 had more to do with guys having one-time career years than with young players and journeyman finally improving to the point of stars.

It’s not a curse from a former Tribe slugger that keeps Victor Martinez and Ronnie Belliard from repeating their All-star forms of last year. Maybe this is really all the better they are.

Since that 2000 season, the Reds, long the area’s true source of sports pride, are in one of the worst slumps of the franchise’s history, but is it because of a curse? Hardly.

The reasons are clear why the Reds threaten to put together five consecutive losing seasons for the first time since around the last time the Indians won the World Series (1945 and 1955).

Intelligent people know to blame an owner who refused to spend money until this year. They also know that same owner doomed his team to failure when he hired someone incompetent in baseball matters (general manager Dan O’Brien) to decide how to spend that money.

So once owner Carl Lindner decided to finally loosen the purse strings, O’Brien threw that money away on newcomers David Weathers, Ben Weber and Rich Aurilia, as well as returnees Jason LaRue and D’Angelo Jimenez.

This is the same owner who hired a chief operating officer, John Allen, who runs the club like a business worried about nothing but the bottom line. That mindset is what prevented the team from acquiring Scott Rolen three years ago, then prompted them to sell off what talent they did have, while getting little more than cash in return one year later.

One thing is clear – the sob stories of fans in both parts of the state are certainly legitimate. Don’t sell them short by invoking some unseen menace.

Eat your dog bones and be quiet.

Marcus Hartman is a senior in journalism. Cleveland fans can curse him at [email protected].