The local baseball team, the Indians also known as Tribes, won the last year’s American League Championship Series (ALCS). During my stay, they set an even more impressive record by winning 22 games in a row breaking the previous record of 13 from 1951!!! As a matter of fact my Global Supply Chain Team and I witnessed the very last game of this amazing streak at the Progressive Field Stadium! The passion for baseball doesn’t stop at work. By wearing fan apparel at special game days and watching games in the lunch break, we created a strong sense of belonging at work.
The second sport - CLE is known for - is basketball. The Cavaliers or just Cavs are extremely popular and successful. In 2016 they won the NBA’s championship and got second this year, whereby the league’s champion is determined by a best-of-seven game series called the Finals. Here again, I was lucky as the timing couldn’t be better. The very first weekend after arriving in CLE the Cavs played against the Golden States Warriors in their third Finals’ game. Spontaneously, I decided to watch the game at a sports bar downtown and I didn’t regret it. Out of their total four games this game was the only one they won wherefore I experienced the whole city going nuts that night!
The last and most popular sport on this list is clearly American Football. Even though the Cleveland Browns are far from dominating the league, the football fans are passionate about every game. As there are only 16 regular season games, every one of them is a blast involving big tailgating parties in the parking slots of the FirstEnergy Stadium prior to the games. I couldn’t miss out to see what this is all about so I went to one of the games with some friends from work, sport and college. It was a great experience even though the Browns played terrible against the Cincinnati Bengals losing 31-7.
Watching sports and practicing sports are two different things. As I was never exposed to the former, I am even more confident with the latter. Soon after my arrival in the city of sports I eventually ended up doing what I intended to do in the US. CrossFit – the sport of fitness was always my passion! Up to 6 days a week I push myself beyond my comfort zone and made some pretty good friends by doing so. At CrossFit CLE we compete with and against each other in constantly varied (each day totally different “WODs”), high-intensity (Heart rate beyond 170 bpm) workouts involving tons of functional movements (e.g. Snatch, Clean, Muscle-Up).
In this spirit – Game On!
By Dennis Kaller, Global Player