Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

It’s been a week since LeBron’s hour-long free-agent extravaganza on ESPN, but the lasting impression of that evening was that, really, have you ever seen a bigger loser in your life than Cleveland?

Cleveland — its residents begging, pleading, fretting and fawning to keep LeBron in town with the Cavaliers — lived up to its reputation as the nation’s best city to be from, not in or at.

So, this is all you got, huh, Cleveland? A basketball player? Yeah, he’s a good one, but he was in town for seven years and your total number of championships was ... ?

It’s been a tough half-century for the city by Lake Erie, famously known as the Mistake by the Lake. The original Browns moved to Baltimore 15 years ago and the replacements have been largely dismal. Not a Super Bowl in sight.

The Indians flirted with respectability for a few years and even reached the World Series, where they lost to Atlanta. But that was 15 years ago, now they’re mired again at the bottom of the AL Central.

Even the Cleveland-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can’t get it right. It inducted Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, but where’s KISS?

About half of the city’s population has fled elsewhere (even without $125 million free agent contracts).

It’s been 46 years since a Cleveland team, the old Browns, won a championship. Jim Brown was in the backfield. Can you imagine how long his free agent TV show would have been? Unlike LeBron, Brown was the best ever and he won championships.

About the only way it can get worse is if the Cuyahoga River lights up again as it did in 1969, when a Federal Water Pollution Administration official said: “The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.”

Does it sound like he was talking about LeBron and his posse?

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The most frustrating sports to watch on TV? Hands down, soccer and hockey.

Soccer lulls you to sleep; after the 38th botched attack, or when the 14th player falls to the turf in agony after tripping over himself, your attention inevitably turns to something else.

And, at that very instant: GOOOOOOOOOAAAAL!

Hockey, especially NHL playoff hockey, is non-stop frenetic action, but do you ever actually see a goal scored? Amidst a swirl of activity, suddenly a red light goes on and the goalie disgustedly kicks the puck from the goal.

What happened?

It takes four replays and a magnifying glass, even in HD, to see who scored, from where, and how.

In fact, the NHL has an official, based in Toronto, who reviews every goal instantaneously via closed circuit cameras to make sure that it is legit.

I’ll say this for golf: it’s tedious, but at least you can see the ball drop into the cup without slo-mo and an overhead camera.

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Several members of the USSSA Pride National Professional Fastpitch softball team, based in Kissimmee, played for Team USA and won the World Softball Championship for the seventh consecutive time earlier this month at Caracas, Venezuela.

The USA blanked Japan, 4-0, to win the title.

Pride players Natasha Watley, Caitlin Lowe, Jessica Mendoza, Alissa Haber, Andrea Duran, Lauren Lappin and pitcher Cat Osterman collected gold medals for the U.S. All but Osterman joined the Pride two days after the championship game for a NPF series against the Akron Racers.

Osterman, currently the best softball pitcher in the world, is sidelined with a sore arm.

Since the International Olympics Committee dropped softball from the Summer Games for 2012, the World Championships now are the sport’s premier international competition.

The Pride are battling the Racers for first place in the four-team NPF standings in a five-game series that began Wednesday at Akron.

The Pride returns to Florida next Thursday for a series against the Tennessee Diamonds at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports.

The Pride will hold a series of clinics for youth players July 24-29. For information on locations and times, visit usssaprideclinics.com.