The Cavs splash to PD and BJ front pages

THE WEEK HAS given us sports news of Biblical proportions: The woeful LeBron-less Cleveland Cavaliers nailed the top pick in the collegiate draft! We weren't even slightly aware of the importance of this event until the Plain Dealer ecstatically stretched it across large portions of its front pages two days in a row (the Beacon Journal was more reserved, opting for only a single day's Page One tribute that told us HOW THE DRAFT WAS WON, offering us a cutout of a numbered pingpong ball gently held by somebody's hand. There were also photos of promotional T-shirts and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert's 14.year-old son, Nick,who was around to represent the team in the draft. The Plain Dealer merely teased us by inquiring, What Are the Odds? It joyfully called the fateful moment a "stroke of luck". Cool.

As a sports outsider who has survived decades of Cleveland sports despair, I am fully aware that none of what I just said will earn me anything but disgrace from the media and the Cavs' other partisans. All the more so because the the draft occurred as the Cleveland Indians have risen from the ashes to dominate their division this spring.

Alas, with all of the good news, it would be another event of of Biblical proportions that would interfere with the celebrations hereabouts. That, of course, would be the Rapture that a California seer has forecast will occur at 6 p.m. Saturday (Just when I got a new computer and learned how to operate most of it.!) But Harold Camping, the 89-year-old zillionaire who has predicted the end of days, staunchly defends the idea that when the violent end comes, everyone will be divided between the saintly and sinful for their next stop.

I have my doubts. And I really don't think God is so vindictive that He would rain on the Cavaliers and Indians parades. Besides if I am wrong who will still be hanging around to gloat, "Told you so!."

On the other hand, if it doesn't happen as planned, we will still have those gloom-and-doom GOP presidential candidates with their daily warnings about America's dreadful end of days under President Obama. As Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann were saying just the other day..,.