Cleveland (long!)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

CLEVELAND

     Cleveland jokes are beginning again.  The football Cleveland Browns are
0-3, and Jay Leno is warming up.
     The Cleveland Browns are not really the real Cleveland Browns.  The
Baltimore Colts became the Indianapolis Colts.  The Cleveland Browns then
became the Baltimore Ravens.  The current Browns are an expansion team with
the old name.
    The St. Louis Cardinals became the Arizona Cardinals.  The Los Angeles
Rams became the St. Louis Rams.  The Oakland Raiders became the Los Angeles
Raiders and then the Oakland Raiders again.  Which all means that the city of
Los Angeles has no football team.  Take that, Jay Leno!  Stop with the
Cleveland jokes, will ya?
    The biggest Cleveland joke is the city's derisive nickname, "The Mistake
on the Lake."  The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang H-O
came out in 1997, and it's not in there.  Peter Tamony never recorded the
phrase.
     This is from Paul DIckson's NEW DICKSON BASEBALL DICTIONARY (1999), pg.
327:

_mistake by the lake_  A nickname for the immense Cleveland Stadium (formerly
known as Municipal Stadium), the home field of the Cleveland Indians (1932-33
and 1947-93).  Its capacity reached 78,811 in 1953 and the center-field
distance from home plate ranged from 400 feet (1970) to 470 feet (1932).  The
term also has been applied to the city of Cleveland, Ohio, and to the
perennially inept Cleveland Indians of the 1960s throught the 1980s.

     This is from the old DICKSON BASEBALL DICTIONARY (1989), pg. 262:

_mistake by the lake_  Cleveland, Ohio, nickname that has sometimes been
applied to the perennially striving Cleveland Indians.

     No citations are given.
     Plenty of other books and sources (besides the RHHDAS and Tamony) do NOT
have the phrase:

THE AMERICAN THESAURUS OF SLANG (1942)--Pg. 46 has "Cleve, Forest City,
_Cleveland, Ohio_."
Shankle's AMERICAN NICKNAMES (1955)--not under Cleveland (only "Forest City"
is given) or Cleveland Indians.
Wentworth & Flexner's DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG (1960).
Kane & Alexander's NICKNAMES OF CITIES AND STATES OF THE U.S.
(1965)--Cleveland is The Capital City of a Great Trade Empire, The Forest
City, The Overgrown Country Town, and The Queen of Lake Erie.
Flexner's I HEAR AMERICA TALKING (1976).
Sharp's HANDBOOK OF GEOGRAPHICAL NICKNAMES (1980).
Flexner's LISTENING TO AMERICA (1982).
Abate & Urdang's IDIOMS AND PHRASES INDEX (1983).
Urdang's NAMES & NICKNAMES OF PLACES & THINGS (1987).
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN QUOTATIONS (1997)--only one
quotation is given under "Cities-Cleveland."

    The Periodicals Contents Index database doesn't have it.
    The earliest Nexis hits aren't very early:

31 January 1977, NEWSWEEK, pg. 40, "They call it dreary Erie, the mistake by
the lake."  (About Erie, PA--not Cleveland.)
19 August 1983, WASHINGTON POST, pg. D1, "in the homely Mistake by the Lake."
27 June 1985, LOS ANGELES TIMES, part 3, pg. 7, col. 1, "baseball's Siberia,
the Mistake by the Lake, Cleveland."
27 October 1985, WASHINGTON POST, pg. L8, "They used to call the stadium here
'The Mistake on the Lake.'"

    Nexis gets the New York Times and the Washington Post from the 1970s.
Cleveland had its economic crisis in the late 1970s.  No hits in the 1970s?
    I checked the 1977-1979 New York Times index anyway, and the Reader's
Guide.
    A good example of where "Mistake on the Lake" should be--but isn't--is
the New York Times, 25 December 1978, pg. 10, cols. 1-4:

_A Reporter's Notebook: Humorists in Cleveland Cash In on Default_
    CLEVELAND, Dec. 23--The city is grinning and bearing it.
    Its fiscal default on Dec. 15 and the continuing warfare among city
leaders over how to avert possible bankruptcy have spread what once were
local jokes--calling Cleveland "The Biggest Hole Above Ground," for
example--from Maine to California.

     This is from the New York Times, 11 February 1979, pg. E17, section IV,
cols. 4-6 (especially col. 5):

_Enjoyable_
_Cleveland_
By Betty Garrett
     (...)  Fiscal experts, political commentators and comedians who have
always made this city the butt of one line put downs--"the mistake on the
lake"--have hauled out a communal death bed for months, but so far
Clevelanders refuse to lie down on it.

     HARPER'S magazine, May 1979, pg. 106, has the article:  "CLEVELAND
WITHOUT TEARS: Remembering the Mistake on the Lake."  According to the
article, 15,000 people bought a T-shirt with "Default's Not Mine, I Only Live
Here."  I'll have to check out the lyrics to the song "Have Another Laugh on
Cleveland Blues" the next time I hit the Library of Congress.  Pg. 107, col.
1:  "Though the city bills itself as 'The Best Location in the Nation,' even
its residents are more apt to refer to it as 'The Mistake on the Lake.'"
    OCLC's Worldcat shows that someone in Cleveland's Case Western Reserve
Institute wrote a thesis about "Cleveland--from Best Location in the Nation
to Mistake on the Lake."  I'll have to check that out, although I might have
to go to Cleveland.
    Cleveland has a good reputation again and ranks high on the best places
in the U. S. to live.  TIME magazine, "Nothing Rotten about the Big Plum," 15
June 1981, pg. 30, reported that there were T-shirts that said, "NEW YORK'S
THE BIG APPLE, BUT CLEVELAND'S A PLUM."  That never caught on.
     We've discussed "Full Cleveland" here before; my Tamony page hasn't
arrived.  This is from Nexis:

15 May 1982, NEW YORK TIMES, section 1, pg. 7, col. 2:  Full
Cleveland...white tie, belt and shoes and patterned polyester suits.
13 June 1982, WASHINGTON POST, pg. A6:  _Ode to the "Full Cleveland"_ (...)
What's a "full Cleveland"?  Another joke at the expense of that much and
unjustly maligned city.  The "Full Cleveland" is a celebration of bad--no
rotten--taste in clothing: a powder blue double knit leisure suit, bright
blue and yellow flower patterned shirt with cuffs turned back over the jacket
cleeves, white vinyl belt and matching loafers.

     ESQUIRE, 5 December 1978, pg. 25, is a good article on Cleveland's
troubles.  There is no "Mistake on the Lake" or "Full Cleveland," but we're
close on the latter:

     The very last leader Cleveland needed now was this flamboyant young
dilettante masquerading as a puritanical populist hell-bent on redeeming
municipal government.  This city, desperate for serious reform, was still
trying to shake its _Laugh-In_ image--where snow-white socks and loud, silk
bowling shirts are still considered haute couture.
     (...)  (Cleveland Mayor Dennis--ed.) Kucinich chose frumpy Charlie Brown
suits--the kind that might have come from a markdown rack at J. C. Penney,
where his constituents shop--when he could have afforded a traditional, muted
politican pinstripe (not the apparel of _his_ constituents).

    Now, what other cities haven't I done?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
TOP TEN REASONS THIS IS NOT A GOOD WEEK
#8--HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

     This is from The Straight Dope (www.straightdope.com), Sept. 22-28, 1999:

     However, when Popik attempted to notify former Chicagoan but
soon-to-be-New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton of his (Windy City--ed.)
findings, she blew him off with a form letter--and this on an issue she could
have ridden into the Senate.  Come on, Hill, quit worrying about the Puerto
Ricans and pay attention here.  You want to lose the etymologist vote?

    I copied the Cecil Adams "Straight Dope" articles, a few Windy City
articles, the Dickson BASEBALL DICTIONARY "Yankees" entry with my name in it
(Hillary's a big Yankees fan), walked into the "Hillary for Senate" office at
Seventh Avenue & 35th Street, and asked to speak to anyone there for just a
few minutes.
    My request, as before, is to have her write a letter to the Chicago
Tribune to correct its erroneous May 4, 1999 story about the origin of the
"Windy City."  This would cost her almost nothing.
    No one was available to listen.
    Someone came out, but this staff person was "in a meeting."  I gave her
my copies.
    There has been no reply.