Are you there, God? It's me, Cleveland

So the Cavs just handed the San Antonio Spurs only their 20th home loss in the last three-plus seasons. The Browns fired jinx Maurice Carthon and won a game. The Indians, uh, they had lunch with Luis Gonzalez!

Maybe things are looking up for Cleveland sports. Maybe God has stopped hating our teams. Or maybe God never really hated our teams at all. Turns out a fisherman off the coast of New Jersey recently hauled in an interesting catch. He found a bag full of letters intended for God, some dating back to 1973, that had been put into a shopping bag and dumped into the ocean.

Let's see. We haven't won any sports championships since 1964. Since 1973, all these prayers to God have gone unanswered. A nine-year drought, no big deal. We can understand that. Happens all the time, even to the Yankees. But 40-plus years is Moses-wandering-in-the-desert territory. That's when you start looking at otherworldly causes. Could some prayers from Cleveland sports fans have been floating in that bag?

What if some kid in Maple Heights asked God to help the Browns beat the Broncos and make the Super Bowl back in the '80s? What if someone in Bedford thought a request to God would help the Indians beat the Marlins in the 1997 World Series and make her grandfather happy? What if some anonymous soul in North Ridgeville thought that a letter to God would help Butch Davis lead the Browns to a Super Bowl?

And what if the letters from Denver, from Florida, from Pittsburgh, from Baltimore -- what if all those letters got through and didn't wind up in a shopping bag in the Atlantic Ocean??

It's bad enough to think that God hates your sports teams. It's even worse to find out that your arguments haven't even had a chance to sway Him. If our letters ended up in that bag in the ocean, it's like a lawyer being banned from the Supreme Court. Not only has the decision been rendered, but we don't even get a chance to argue in our favor. Not only would we have no hope, but we would have no hope of having hope.

At least they found the letters just as the NBA season started. Let's hope God gets the delivery in time to save Lebron's patellar tendons.