Given the slightest chance to dream championship dreams, the fans go a little nuts. And so does their newspaper.

The last three times that has happened - the Indians' near miss in 2007, the Cavaliers going to the NBA finals in 2007 and their playoff run this year - The Plain Dealer has delivered the news with a signature flourish, giving readers the gift of a full-page "wrap" on the front of the newspaper. After each game, the cover of the wrap has featured a big headline, a poster-size action photo and capsules of the stories inside. Turn the page, and you find the "real" Page One, with the usual nameplate and front-page news you're accustomed to.

Most fans appreciate this. But some readers wish we'd keep the sports in the sports pages.

The reaction of the latter group necessarily falls into the "you can't please everyone" category. But last Monday, when the report of Game No. 3 fell on Memorial Day, we got more than the usual number of complaints, many of them angry. "How could you," asked a caller, speaking for many, "choose the Cavaliers over our fallen heroes?"

Anyone who has worked at a newspaper for more than five minutes knows that there are a few sacred days that you just don't mess with: D-Day. Pearl Harbor Day. 9/11. And Memorial Day. Even though these occasions seldom produce much in the way of news, lots of readers take it as a lack of respect and a personal affront if we don't give those days their front-page commemorative due.

Last Monday, editors elected not to break away from the established wrap. But one page in, on the real Page One, Memorial Day coverage dominated, highlighted by a flag across the top and Brian Albrecht's touching story about a vet's search for his World War II buddy.

The decision didn't mean that our editors thought a game was more important than the sacrifices of the soldiers who, as many said, have made our free press possible. It only means that the Basketball game was more newsy. And after all, giving people the news on the first page is what a newspaper does.

All that said, I'm not a big fan of getting locked into a presentation like this.

It's fine when you win, and if the team goes all the way, it's a great thing to be able to post all the front pages across your rec room (not that we'd know). But when the team loses, I've got to throw in with the caller who said Monday's paper "laid a big, fat bummer on my front porch," with the whole page devoted to the Cavs' loss. And also, as one of our editors said, we've done this three times now, and she wondered if we were jinxing the local heroes.

David Kordalski, our assistant managing editor for visuals who came up with the wrap idea, bristled at that. "We did a version of this with the Red Wings when I was in Detroit, and they won Stanley Cups back-to-back," he said. "We sure didn't jinx them."

Of course, Detroit doesn't carry around the heavy load of angst we Clevelanders do when it comes to sports.

Earlier this month, I mentioned a quote that was widely attributed on the Web to the poet W.B. Yeats: "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy."

It turns out that Yeats didn't say that. But if you change "Irish" to "a Clevelander," you've pretty much captured the attitude of sports fans around here.

Maybe Bernie Kosar said it.

Speaking of that quote, the column I wrote about it noted the maddening quality of the Internet that so often results in spreading nonsense - how fabricated or misinterpreted information can spread so quickly that it turns into "fact" that can't be reeled back in.

But my effort to find the source of this quote also revealed the power of the Web. Simply by doing some elementary searches, I went in a few days from interviewing local English professors, to a national expert on Yeats, to the world's foremost authority on the poet.

He is professor Warwick Gould, director of the Institute of English Studies for the University of London and the acknowledged "man" when it comes to all things Yeats.

"This is almost certainly a remark about Yeats," he e-mailed back, telling me that the quote is neither in Yeats' collected works nor his letters.

Ten years ago, it would have taken weeks to track down the professor and get an answer.

The Web is a wonderful thing - as long as you recognize its limitations.

To reach Ted Diadiun: tdiadiun@plaind.com, 216-999-4408