When I was a kid, I used to buy my baseball cards at a store called Don’s Beverage. Don was a cranky but mostly patient sort with the kids in the neighborhood who’d redeem Coke bottles for 3 cents each in order to buy another pack of cards. Don used to have a sign over the candy section that read “Everything half off, tomorrow.” When you’re a grade schooler it takes you a few days to catch on to the ruse. Tomorrow never came.
That’s pretty much how I feel about the Indians at this point. It’s taken awhile to catch on, of course, but I attribute that more to the sophistication of Indians’ general manager Mark Shapiro and my continuing naiveté that the team was about winning for not realizing it until now, but the Indians aren’t about winning, they’re about staying afloat as if that is a goal to be lauded.
The trades of Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez and Ryan Garko and Rafael Betancourt and Mark DeRosa are only important if you think a professional baseball team should be about winning. When it finally does dawn on you that this is an organization that’s building for a tomorrow that never comes, those trades become far more irrelevant. Aside to the Dolans: as a sign of good faith and in recognition of these economic times, I hereby grant to you an unlimited, free and worldwide license to use the phrase “Building For a Tomorrow That Never Comes” as your new mission statement. Feel free to plaster on anything you want. Look for it next week on a t-shirt at an Indians gift shop near you.
Reading and listening to Shapiro’s explanation of his dumping of anything with a viable pulse made me seem positively prescient the other day when I predicted, nearly word for word, what he’d say, particularly about the Lee trade. Frankly, it’s not that I’m all that great at predictions; Shapiro is just that predictable.
Just as I wrote he would do Shapiro did claim that the value they received now for Lee is better than they could get next year as if there is any way to challenge him on that point. But, again, all that misses the larger point. In the words of Bill Murray’s Tripper Harrison in the semi-classic movie, Meatballs, it just doesn’t matter. Even if the skies parted, monkeys flew, the heavens rained gold coins, cats started playing with dogs and Bill Livingston began writing something interesting, whether or not the Indians trade an All Star or a Cy Young winner just doesn’t matter because all the best players will still end up with the rich teams in the league.
The Indians’ problem is baseball’s problem. If the league owners can’t see how these yearly salary dumps by teams with no real shot at winning are ruining the game for a large portion of their fan base, then they should be the next to go. Without fundamental economic change that gives every team a realistic chance to actually be competitive each and every year, baseball is a rock heading for its own windshield.
This isn’t to let Shapiro off the hook. He’s gone off his own little deep end, so convinced is he in his own abilities that he can’t even acknowledge the crumbling mess around him. He offers his earnest sounding rationales without any sense of irony or context. If he really made the trades because he doesn’t see the Indians as competitive next year either, then whose fault is that? He put this miserable team together and as far as I can tell is the architect for next year’s as well.
You can go up and down the current roster, last year’s roster or whatever projects to next year’s roster and it is literally riddled with either bad decisions made by Shapiro or risky decisions that just didn’t work out. However styled, there is absolutely nothing approaching certainty that any move Shapiro just made or will make will result in anything more than what passes for this team today.
Shapiro took a chance on offering Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook long-term contracts and those didn’t work out. Their injuries aren’t his fault, certainly, but it underscores the precise point that nothing is nearly as predetermined as Shapiro would like the fans to believe including the ridiculous notion that this team is being built to compete 3-5 years out. Why wasn’t the team being built 3-5 years ago for this season? Because, say it with me, tomorrow never comes.
There is no reason to think that the decisions Shapiro is making now will translate into that mythical competitive team in 3-5 years. Shapiro’s track record isn’t that good. More to the point, though, there are just too many variables for anyone to successfully juggle. Injuries do happen. Players don’t develop in straight lines. Managers can’t manage.
Beyond all that, what’s galling is how Indians fans are constantly being sold a vision of a baseball team that’s like a start-up enterprise, selling its assets and hence its soul to venture capitalists on the if-come. The problem, though, is that the Indians have been around for 100 or so years and long ago should have escaped the clutches of that mentality.
But Shapiro has once again performed his magic act and, it seems the majority of fans are buying it. That doesn’t mean they’re happy with the trades or the state of the team, but as long as they are debating the merits of the latest round of Class A players acquired, Shapiro has won the battle for their hearts and minds. He knows that’s an argument that can’t be resolved but that does work to distract from the truth of the ugliness that’s enveloped this franchise and is working to undermine its very foundation.
Given the state of the Indians, the only other person that may be smiling at this point is Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner. As much of a mess that he’s made of his team, the Browns look positively well run in comparison to the Indians. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a sentence I thought I’d never write.
**
Speaking of the Browns, the fact that they have every one of their draft choices under contract before training camp really starts in earnest is a refreshing change from the previous regime. For reasons large and small, former general manager Phil Savage and cap master/lead negotiator Tripp McCraken never could master that most basic of tasks.
In life there are people that can get things done and there are people that watch others get things done. Under Savage, the Browns and their front office clearly fell in the latter category. It was always one thing or the other. The Browns couldn’t sign this draft pick or that because they were waiting for other draft choices on other teams to sign. Browns fans knew the drill and all it ended up resulting in is a team that was never fully prepared to enter into the season.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some semi-dark clouds rolling into the blue skies over Berea at the moment. Kick returner Josh Cribbs vows to not train but not play unless some serious inroads are made on a contract renegotiation. Kicker Phil Dawson isn’t happy with his contract situation and either are a few others. But at least they are all under contract. That in and of itself is a major upgrade.
**
Speaking of those semi-dark clouds, there also is the little issue of another season of As the Braylon Turns. Faithful reader Al Cook wrote me and asked about the ramifications of the Browns placing receiver Braylon Edwards on the reserved/non-football injury list. The short answer is, not much, but that’s just part of the story.
The non-football injury list isn’t like the injured reserve list. It serves as a parking area from which players can essentially be activated at any time. But because the injury is not related to football, the player doesn’t get paid. Thus, technically, Edwards is in an unpaid status, except for the fact that his contract really hasn’t called for any paychecks at the moment. Players get a stipend during training camp but their pay is pro-rated over the season. Placing Edwards on the non-football injury list was merely a way to tweak him, which at least this administration is willing to do.
Consider last season when Edwards hurt his ankle goofing off with Donte Stallworth after practice. A good case could have been made that the injury wasn’t football related because it wasn’t. Former head coach Romeo Crennel could have used it to smack Edwards back into reality by, too, placing him on the reserved/non-football injury list and would have gotten away with it long enough to make an impression on Edwards. He didn’t. It wouldn’t have made any difference financially but it would have at least told Edwards that the team was tired of his crap and perhaps that would have snapped him back into reality. As it was, Edwards had an Indians-like season instead.
But the rest of the story is that camp has now started and Edwards isn’t participating and no one knows exactly why. Fans sometime scoff at the media’s bitching about Mangini and his near abject refusal to say anything substantive about any aspect of the team’s operations, including what flavor Gatorade is in the cooler, but the mystery surrounding Edwards only underscores why Mangini, and hence Lerner, owe a larger duty to the fans.
Given the untested nature of the receiving corps, Edwards is being counted on, for among other things, leadership. Why exactly is a good question, but one I’ll defer for now. Instead just focus on the fact that Edwards is injured and fans don’t even know when he did it let alone how or what body part is involved. Mangini may see this as giving him a competitive advantage but it is at the expense of a fan base the team needs to bring closer not push away. Given Edwards’ supposedly minor ankle problem last year, these actually are meaningful questions that Mangini should answer but won’t.
This isn’t about making the jobs of Tony Grossi or Marla Ridenour any easier. It’s about rebuilding the basic trust that’s been lost over the years. Sadly, on that score, the Browns are now closer than the Indians. When does Cavs season start?
**
Given all that’s taken place with the Indians lately, this week’s question to ponder is simple: How did it feel the very moment when you realized that Cleveland no longer had a major league baseball franchise?
Showing posts with label Victor Martinez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victor Martinez. Show all posts
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Monday, June 16, 2008
Another Lesson from the Local Media
If the average Cleveland Indians fan was surprised by the team’s announcement last week that catcher Victor Martinez was being shelved for the next two months because of elbow surgery, apparently it paled in comparison to the shock felt by the local reporters covering the team on a daily basis.
Crank-in-residence Sheldon Ocker of the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday really upbraided Indians’ management for all the mystery surrounding both the Martinez and Travis Hafner injuries. Ouch. Jim Ingraham of the Lake County News-Herald and Lorain Morning Journal matched Ocker indignant word-for-indignant word. Double ouch. Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer couldn’t personally muster the energy to register his protest formally, but once someone wakes him up I’m sure he’ll get right on it.
Sure, as Ingraham said, the Indians look bad. Guess what? The reporters covering the team look worse. Lost in the convenient rage by the local press is their complete lack of appreciation for irony. Doing what reporters often do best, pointing fingers elsewhere, these three should really be asking themselves why they were scooped on this story by the Indians’ public relations office. They supposedly cover the team on a daily basis, spending more hours with the team during the season then they do their own families. Yet not one of them was even aware that Martinez had a chronically sore elbow until Martinez left the game or if they were never mentioned it.
The complacency of most of the local media covering the town’s various pro sports teams is hardly breaking news. But then again, either were the injuries to Martinez and Hafner, playing out as they did over the course of months, not days let alone hours.
This episode really provides a nice backdrop to a column I wrote last week and the feedback it received about how the Indians management, utilizing their local media enablers, were busy weaving a new story line into the collective conscious that injuries alone were the real reason this team was performing well below the misguided preseason expectations. Injuries are playing a role certainly but the far bigger culprit is general manager Mark Shapiro’s increasingly disastrous decision to essentially stand pat this last off season.
A reader, agreeing with the points made and wondering why Hoynes, for example, wasn’t willing to come out publicly and say that that this team wasn’t wearing clothes, sent the column to Hoynes for a response. Hoynes, expressing far more anger at the reader then he could muster at Shapiro, suggested first that I got the idea to write the column from the Plain Dealer and, by the way, it must be nice sitting in the safe confines of an ivory tower and pontificating while he and his ilk slug it out each day, going down to the locker room, talking to the players and writing on a deadline. Who knew Hoynes had such contempt for Bill Livingston and Bud Shaw?
The surprise though came at the end of the email. Essentially Hoynes said you can’t use injuries as an excuse but you can’t ignore them either. In other words, he really didn’t disagree.
I’m not suggesting that anything that happens in the world of sports, particularly pro sports, is worth the wrongheaded emphasis we place on it as a society. But so long as we’re going to cover sports, there’s nothing wrong with taking it seriously. In the bubble that Hoynes, Ocker and the rest occupy the only ones apparently capable of taking it seriously and reporting on it with requisite insight are the beat reporters that “go down to the locker room.” Without them, we’d miss manager Eric Wedge saying after another loss, “we’ve just got to keep playing hard.”
What Hoynes’ email really reveals is that he like many others in his line of work these days has taken on a bunker mentality when it comes to their internet competitors. Rather than embrace the diversity of voices or accept the challenge they present, reporters like Hoynes have increasingly taken on the tone of the aging ex-wife pushed out for a younger version. In the process, the loss of relevancy they fear is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s a fair point to make by whoever makes it that Shapiro and Wedge cheated fans by not being more forthcoming earlier in the season. Indeed, it’s equally fair for anyone with a keyboard and access to an audience to second-guess the thought process that led to Shapiro and Wedge thinking that it was a good idea to initially play two obviously injured players and then keep them in the lineup while their failures and the losses continued to pile up like sandbags fending off flood waters. The problem is that it would have been far more useful for those with the supposedly inside access, like Hoynes, Ocker or any of the rest of them, to be on the front end of the story, not the back.
If the secret to insight is in the locker room, then why, again, did Hoynes, Ocker and the rest completely miss the Martinez and Hafner stories? They missed it because, gosh, Shapiro decided to be deceptive with the fan base. That doesn’t get Shapiro off the hook but a little after-the-fact indignation doesn’t mean the local reporters that were sleeping all along shouldn’t likewise hang with him.
Incapable of self-reflection, the local press has long since taken on the clubby persona of a jaded insider. Indeed, what Hoynes is essentially saying is that he and his brethren pull punches and play it safe in order to maintain access that they don’t really utilize in the first place. Shapiro and others like him know it and play into it, doling out access to them just infrequently enough to make it seem special. The reality is that Shapiro didn’t volunteer the information about Martinez sooner because he knew he could get away with it. He has a complacent pack of reporters covering this team, a pack whose interest doesn’t extend much beyond the relative merits of whether or not the chicken picata on the pre-game buffet is a bit too spicy. If Shapiro takes a little flak afterward for not being completely truthful, so be it. It isn’t going to change the coverage of his team going forward.
The lesson here is that access is overrated and insight underrated. A valid point isn’t any less so because it was made by someone on this site and not by one of the drones sitting in the press box. If you’re still relying on the local media to hold the team and its management accountable, then you’ll surely be disappointed and ill-informed. Then again you’re probably not reading this anyway. And, for the record, I couldn’t have gotten the idea for my column from reading the Plain Dealer. That would have meant that someone like Hoynes would have had to have written it in the first place and we all know by now that didn’t happen.
Crank-in-residence Sheldon Ocker of the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday really upbraided Indians’ management for all the mystery surrounding both the Martinez and Travis Hafner injuries. Ouch. Jim Ingraham of the Lake County News-Herald and Lorain Morning Journal matched Ocker indignant word-for-indignant word. Double ouch. Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer couldn’t personally muster the energy to register his protest formally, but once someone wakes him up I’m sure he’ll get right on it.
Sure, as Ingraham said, the Indians look bad. Guess what? The reporters covering the team look worse. Lost in the convenient rage by the local press is their complete lack of appreciation for irony. Doing what reporters often do best, pointing fingers elsewhere, these three should really be asking themselves why they were scooped on this story by the Indians’ public relations office. They supposedly cover the team on a daily basis, spending more hours with the team during the season then they do their own families. Yet not one of them was even aware that Martinez had a chronically sore elbow until Martinez left the game or if they were never mentioned it.
The complacency of most of the local media covering the town’s various pro sports teams is hardly breaking news. But then again, either were the injuries to Martinez and Hafner, playing out as they did over the course of months, not days let alone hours.
This episode really provides a nice backdrop to a column I wrote last week and the feedback it received about how the Indians management, utilizing their local media enablers, were busy weaving a new story line into the collective conscious that injuries alone were the real reason this team was performing well below the misguided preseason expectations. Injuries are playing a role certainly but the far bigger culprit is general manager Mark Shapiro’s increasingly disastrous decision to essentially stand pat this last off season.
A reader, agreeing with the points made and wondering why Hoynes, for example, wasn’t willing to come out publicly and say that that this team wasn’t wearing clothes, sent the column to Hoynes for a response. Hoynes, expressing far more anger at the reader then he could muster at Shapiro, suggested first that I got the idea to write the column from the Plain Dealer and, by the way, it must be nice sitting in the safe confines of an ivory tower and pontificating while he and his ilk slug it out each day, going down to the locker room, talking to the players and writing on a deadline. Who knew Hoynes had such contempt for Bill Livingston and Bud Shaw?
The surprise though came at the end of the email. Essentially Hoynes said you can’t use injuries as an excuse but you can’t ignore them either. In other words, he really didn’t disagree.
I’m not suggesting that anything that happens in the world of sports, particularly pro sports, is worth the wrongheaded emphasis we place on it as a society. But so long as we’re going to cover sports, there’s nothing wrong with taking it seriously. In the bubble that Hoynes, Ocker and the rest occupy the only ones apparently capable of taking it seriously and reporting on it with requisite insight are the beat reporters that “go down to the locker room.” Without them, we’d miss manager Eric Wedge saying after another loss, “we’ve just got to keep playing hard.”
What Hoynes’ email really reveals is that he like many others in his line of work these days has taken on a bunker mentality when it comes to their internet competitors. Rather than embrace the diversity of voices or accept the challenge they present, reporters like Hoynes have increasingly taken on the tone of the aging ex-wife pushed out for a younger version. In the process, the loss of relevancy they fear is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s a fair point to make by whoever makes it that Shapiro and Wedge cheated fans by not being more forthcoming earlier in the season. Indeed, it’s equally fair for anyone with a keyboard and access to an audience to second-guess the thought process that led to Shapiro and Wedge thinking that it was a good idea to initially play two obviously injured players and then keep them in the lineup while their failures and the losses continued to pile up like sandbags fending off flood waters. The problem is that it would have been far more useful for those with the supposedly inside access, like Hoynes, Ocker or any of the rest of them, to be on the front end of the story, not the back.
If the secret to insight is in the locker room, then why, again, did Hoynes, Ocker and the rest completely miss the Martinez and Hafner stories? They missed it because, gosh, Shapiro decided to be deceptive with the fan base. That doesn’t get Shapiro off the hook but a little after-the-fact indignation doesn’t mean the local reporters that were sleeping all along shouldn’t likewise hang with him.
Incapable of self-reflection, the local press has long since taken on the clubby persona of a jaded insider. Indeed, what Hoynes is essentially saying is that he and his brethren pull punches and play it safe in order to maintain access that they don’t really utilize in the first place. Shapiro and others like him know it and play into it, doling out access to them just infrequently enough to make it seem special. The reality is that Shapiro didn’t volunteer the information about Martinez sooner because he knew he could get away with it. He has a complacent pack of reporters covering this team, a pack whose interest doesn’t extend much beyond the relative merits of whether or not the chicken picata on the pre-game buffet is a bit too spicy. If Shapiro takes a little flak afterward for not being completely truthful, so be it. It isn’t going to change the coverage of his team going forward.
The lesson here is that access is overrated and insight underrated. A valid point isn’t any less so because it was made by someone on this site and not by one of the drones sitting in the press box. If you’re still relying on the local media to hold the team and its management accountable, then you’ll surely be disappointed and ill-informed. Then again you’re probably not reading this anyway. And, for the record, I couldn’t have gotten the idea for my column from reading the Plain Dealer. That would have meant that someone like Hoynes would have had to have written it in the first place and we all know by now that didn’t happen.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Heart
Baseball, as Indians manager Eric Wedge likes to remind us, is a very difficult game. It’s why he tends to resist the opportunity to upbraid his players, at least publicly, when they fail to perform. Indeed it’s why Wedge steadfastly stood by his team during this middle of the season when they otherwise looked like they were on vacation, at least from hitting.
The tendency, of course, is to dismiss Wedge’s assessment of the game as an excuse to cover for the mistakes that get made. If that’s true, that’s fine. Part of a manager’s job is to have the backs of his players during the lean times. But Wedge issues that reminder as often as necessary predominately for one reason: it’s true.
Of all the professional sports, baseball seems to be the easiest to play to the causal fan. Unlike football, there are few if any instances of all nine players ever having to move in concert at one time to accomplish a singular goal. Unlike basketball or hockey, most of the time the players seem to be just standing around waiting for something to happen. Americans, in general, like their entertainment like they like their people—direct and with as little subtlety as possible. In that respect baseball will always suffer in comparison. You have a round bat, a round ball and you have to hit it square.
But every once in awhile, a baseball game comes along that is so transcendental that it makes every other sport look lame by comparison. Saturday night’s game ALCS game between the Indians and the Red Sox was just that game. It set the table for Monday night’s victory and for all that will follow as the Indians continue their march toward the World Series.
Unfortunately, those who know that game only by its final score will never appreciate its beauty, drama and suspense. They’ll also never fully appreciate why this Cleveland Indians team deserves a special place in their hearts and minds.
By now, of course, everyone knows the story line. After about five hours of play, the Indians broke a 6-6 tie, scoring seven runs in the 11th inning and completely letting out whatever air remained in Boston’s Fenway Park. While this was dramatic enough, it pales well in comparison to all that took place before it.
This Cleveland-Boston series features all manner of intrigue all of which was on display this past Saturday. The starting pitchers, so feared because of their reputations, were not able to contain the bats of their opposition. There was hand-wringing, of course, every other inning or so when David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez came to the plate. Not only couldn’t they be stopped, they couldn’t be contained. And who knew how important a seemingly innocent ground out in the top of the 6th inning that scored Jhonny Peralta would be?
But once Peralta scored, the game was locked into an endless loop of near misses and as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, it was hard to imagine it would ever end. The fact that it did end and in such grand style for the Indians had nothing to do with luck, karma or any other such cosmic phenomena. It came down to heart.
Start, for example, with the very first inning. After the beat down of the night before, the easiest thing for the Indians to have done, knowing they were facing Curt Schilling, was lay down. Not intentionally, to be sure, but it would have had the same effect. Instead, Grady Sizemore, who took the collar the night before, started it off with a hustle double and came home on Victor Martinez’s double. It sent a message to the Red Sox that what happened on Friday night stayed on Friday night.
Boston, of course, is nobody’s weak sister. With Fausto Carmona struggling with his control, the three runs the Red Sox scored in the bottom of the third was no more of a surprise than how they scored them, mostly at the hands of Ortiz and Ramirez.
Ramirez, the displaced Clevelander by way of Washington Hts. in New York City, is quite a study. He is a testament to all that can be accomplished with a spotless mind. He could stand in the middle of a hurricane and eat a sandwich. Completely unfazed by the circumstances or enormity of any situation, all he does is hit, with his bat, your bat or a waffle bat. And if he’s not hitting, he’s still scaring the bejeezus out of opposing pitchers anyway. Whereas Alex Rodriguez has a sensitivity meter with a hair trigger, Ramirez suffers no such burdens. It’s why Ramirez will always perform whatever the setting and why Rodriguez will always struggle particularly when the stage gets bigger.
The third inning should have and could have buried the Indians, particularly with Schilling on the mound. But Schilling was not able to perform one of the most important tasks a pitcher faces: shut down the opposing team after your guys have just put a crooked number on the scoreboard. Following singles by Martinez and Ryan Garko, Peralta hammered a 3-run home run to temporarily give the Indians the lead, 4-3.
Though Carmona did struggle, his ability to hold Boston in the bottom of the fourth inning after the Indians had just taken the lead was bigger than most even recall at this point. It didn’t work out so well in the fifth for Carmona, but getting out of the fourth was critical.
Like a boxer temporarily staggered, the Red Sox were able to regain the lead in the fifth, thanks in no small measure again to Ramirez. But by the time Franklin Gutierrez’s chop grounder allowed Peralta to tie the score in the top of the sixth, it was obvious to all that this was a team that wouldn’t die. No matter where the Red Sox pounded the wooden stake, either they were missing the heart or, more likely, the heart of this team was just too big to be stilled.
If the Red Sox had any doubts about that at all, they were silenced in the bottom of the 10th. With Ortiz, Ramirez and Mike Lowell coming to the plate and reliever Tom Mastny on the mound, there were few fans in either city that gave the game much of a chance to make it to the 11th inning. Even when Ortiz grounded out to Peralta, that still seemed the most likely outcome.
But all Mastny did was retire Ramirez and Lowell on harmless fly balls to right field. That momentum shift turned into the onslaught by the Indians in the top of the 11th and is what, ultimately, tied this series at one game apiece.
Every game is ultimately the sum of its separate parts and often the mini-dramas that brought about that final result get lost in the mix. And even if they do in this case, there is a major takeaway not to be missed. This team has heart and it has it in spades. The strength, character and will, all sports synonyms for heart, that it takes to prevail in such circumstances is widely talked about it but rarely witnessed. But when it’s there, it’s awesome in its power.
It directly led to Monday night’s victory, not by momentum but by shear force of will. It propelled Jake Westbrook to reach down to find something that had been missing for most of the season. It pushed Kenny Lofton’s hit over the right field wall. It’s the reason Rafael Betancourt was able to squeeze still another magic inning out of his tired arm. It’s why the Indians will win this series.
It’s one thing not to be favored in a series or being forced to play in an unfriendly environment. It happens to every team. Simply overcoming those odds is not, in and of itself, much of a deal. But overcoming adversity whatever the circumstances and with limited experience in dealing it is a much different issue. Not only did the Indians not let Friday’s demoralizing loss carry over to Saturday’s game, neither did they let the gut punches within the two games derail them from the mission at hand.
The Indians have had more talented teams in their existence that have accomplished much less. By winning on Saturday and again on Monday this team already has gone beyond expectations that were reasonable to make in the first place. The only thing that’s left is to finish the job. Don’t bet against them.
The tendency, of course, is to dismiss Wedge’s assessment of the game as an excuse to cover for the mistakes that get made. If that’s true, that’s fine. Part of a manager’s job is to have the backs of his players during the lean times. But Wedge issues that reminder as often as necessary predominately for one reason: it’s true.
Of all the professional sports, baseball seems to be the easiest to play to the causal fan. Unlike football, there are few if any instances of all nine players ever having to move in concert at one time to accomplish a singular goal. Unlike basketball or hockey, most of the time the players seem to be just standing around waiting for something to happen. Americans, in general, like their entertainment like they like their people—direct and with as little subtlety as possible. In that respect baseball will always suffer in comparison. You have a round bat, a round ball and you have to hit it square.
But every once in awhile, a baseball game comes along that is so transcendental that it makes every other sport look lame by comparison. Saturday night’s game ALCS game between the Indians and the Red Sox was just that game. It set the table for Monday night’s victory and for all that will follow as the Indians continue their march toward the World Series.
Unfortunately, those who know that game only by its final score will never appreciate its beauty, drama and suspense. They’ll also never fully appreciate why this Cleveland Indians team deserves a special place in their hearts and minds.
By now, of course, everyone knows the story line. After about five hours of play, the Indians broke a 6-6 tie, scoring seven runs in the 11th inning and completely letting out whatever air remained in Boston’s Fenway Park. While this was dramatic enough, it pales well in comparison to all that took place before it.
This Cleveland-Boston series features all manner of intrigue all of which was on display this past Saturday. The starting pitchers, so feared because of their reputations, were not able to contain the bats of their opposition. There was hand-wringing, of course, every other inning or so when David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez came to the plate. Not only couldn’t they be stopped, they couldn’t be contained. And who knew how important a seemingly innocent ground out in the top of the 6th inning that scored Jhonny Peralta would be?
But once Peralta scored, the game was locked into an endless loop of near misses and as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, it was hard to imagine it would ever end. The fact that it did end and in such grand style for the Indians had nothing to do with luck, karma or any other such cosmic phenomena. It came down to heart.
Start, for example, with the very first inning. After the beat down of the night before, the easiest thing for the Indians to have done, knowing they were facing Curt Schilling, was lay down. Not intentionally, to be sure, but it would have had the same effect. Instead, Grady Sizemore, who took the collar the night before, started it off with a hustle double and came home on Victor Martinez’s double. It sent a message to the Red Sox that what happened on Friday night stayed on Friday night.
Boston, of course, is nobody’s weak sister. With Fausto Carmona struggling with his control, the three runs the Red Sox scored in the bottom of the third was no more of a surprise than how they scored them, mostly at the hands of Ortiz and Ramirez.
Ramirez, the displaced Clevelander by way of Washington Hts. in New York City, is quite a study. He is a testament to all that can be accomplished with a spotless mind. He could stand in the middle of a hurricane and eat a sandwich. Completely unfazed by the circumstances or enormity of any situation, all he does is hit, with his bat, your bat or a waffle bat. And if he’s not hitting, he’s still scaring the bejeezus out of opposing pitchers anyway. Whereas Alex Rodriguez has a sensitivity meter with a hair trigger, Ramirez suffers no such burdens. It’s why Ramirez will always perform whatever the setting and why Rodriguez will always struggle particularly when the stage gets bigger.
The third inning should have and could have buried the Indians, particularly with Schilling on the mound. But Schilling was not able to perform one of the most important tasks a pitcher faces: shut down the opposing team after your guys have just put a crooked number on the scoreboard. Following singles by Martinez and Ryan Garko, Peralta hammered a 3-run home run to temporarily give the Indians the lead, 4-3.
Though Carmona did struggle, his ability to hold Boston in the bottom of the fourth inning after the Indians had just taken the lead was bigger than most even recall at this point. It didn’t work out so well in the fifth for Carmona, but getting out of the fourth was critical.
Like a boxer temporarily staggered, the Red Sox were able to regain the lead in the fifth, thanks in no small measure again to Ramirez. But by the time Franklin Gutierrez’s chop grounder allowed Peralta to tie the score in the top of the sixth, it was obvious to all that this was a team that wouldn’t die. No matter where the Red Sox pounded the wooden stake, either they were missing the heart or, more likely, the heart of this team was just too big to be stilled.
If the Red Sox had any doubts about that at all, they were silenced in the bottom of the 10th. With Ortiz, Ramirez and Mike Lowell coming to the plate and reliever Tom Mastny on the mound, there were few fans in either city that gave the game much of a chance to make it to the 11th inning. Even when Ortiz grounded out to Peralta, that still seemed the most likely outcome.
But all Mastny did was retire Ramirez and Lowell on harmless fly balls to right field. That momentum shift turned into the onslaught by the Indians in the top of the 11th and is what, ultimately, tied this series at one game apiece.
Every game is ultimately the sum of its separate parts and often the mini-dramas that brought about that final result get lost in the mix. And even if they do in this case, there is a major takeaway not to be missed. This team has heart and it has it in spades. The strength, character and will, all sports synonyms for heart, that it takes to prevail in such circumstances is widely talked about it but rarely witnessed. But when it’s there, it’s awesome in its power.
It directly led to Monday night’s victory, not by momentum but by shear force of will. It propelled Jake Westbrook to reach down to find something that had been missing for most of the season. It pushed Kenny Lofton’s hit over the right field wall. It’s the reason Rafael Betancourt was able to squeeze still another magic inning out of his tired arm. It’s why the Indians will win this series.
It’s one thing not to be favored in a series or being forced to play in an unfriendly environment. It happens to every team. Simply overcoming those odds is not, in and of itself, much of a deal. But overcoming adversity whatever the circumstances and with limited experience in dealing it is a much different issue. Not only did the Indians not let Friday’s demoralizing loss carry over to Saturday’s game, neither did they let the gut punches within the two games derail them from the mission at hand.
The Indians have had more talented teams in their existence that have accomplished much less. By winning on Saturday and again on Monday this team already has gone beyond expectations that were reasonable to make in the first place. The only thing that’s left is to finish the job. Don’t bet against them.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
A Mystery Wrapped in a Riddle
As mysteries go, it’s hardly the most compelling. But with major league baseball at the halfway point, it’s a question worth both asking and answering: why are the first-place Cleveland Indians one of the best kept secrets in Cleveland?
Over the weekend, the Indians finally surpassed one million fans for the season, the last division leader to do so. There was a time, of course, when the Indians front office handed out key chains in gratitude for having a million fans for the entire season and there were many seasons in which the Indians didn’t come close to drawing a million fans at all, so everything is relative. But the thought then was that if the team is ever a winner, the fans will show.
That was certainly true in the ‘90s. Now, not so much. The team is a winning and the fans aren’t showing, at least as much as a first place team deserves. And it’s not as if they aren’t a good home team. As of July 3rd, they have, at 31-12, the best home record in the entire major leagues. And it’s not as if they lack for promotions. The Indians front office runs so many fan promotions to this point the only things left are a cow-milking contest and bring your dog to the park night.
There are all sorts of theories as to why the Indians aren’t drawing. Some have suggested that the bad taste of last year’s disaster, particularly given the promise of the previous season, is mostly responsible. There’s probably something to that.
There is no question that generally many fans feel let down by the Dolans. The team has one of the lowest payrolls in the league still and despite owner Larry Dolan’s often-quoted promise to spend when the team was competitive it’s a promise that still remains mostly unfulfilled. The fans felt betrayed by the decision not to spend going into last season when the Indians seemed on the precipice of greatness and felt further betrayed when the Indians dumped salary last year. Those feelings were hardly assuaged by the lackluster free agents signed going into this season.
But whatever the ramifications of such fan mistreatment, the point remains that right now the Indians are 50-31 and only one team, the Angels, have a better record, and only then by one-half game.
Another popular theory is that the yearly roster turnover has created a team without an identity, making it more difficult for fans to embrace. There’s probably something to that theory as well.
Given the way the Dolans choose to fund this team, every off-season involves a fairly healthy amount of turnover. GM Mark Shapiro spends nearly every moment of his life with a cell phone glued to his ear for a reason. There are always 5-7 roster spots that he needs to fill. And it’s not as if those roster spots are being filled by identifiable, marquee-type players. Jason Michaels? David Dellucci? Joe Borowski? If anyone has their baseball cards, it’s by accident.
But on the other hand, the Indians have their share of stars. C.C. Sabathia, Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore. These are guys that could and would start for any team in either league. They’re all young with incredibly promising careers.
Which leads to a corollary of the “lack of identity” theory: even if they have identifiable players, the Indians won’t re-sign them when their contracts come due, thus investing the time now is mostly time and money poorly wasted.
There is something to this, too. Despite the Indians record, one of the most popular topics among fans is whether or not the Indians will re-sign Sabathia and Hafner. Though neither is a free agent at the end of this season, there is an abject fear, rightfully obtained, that the Dolans will not spend to sign either player. It’s difficult to know exactly how much this fear plays in the overall calculus of fan disinterest, but it would be foolish for either the Dolans or Shapiro to ignore it completely.
While each one of these theories likely plays some role in the number of empty seats at Jacobs Field each night, there is also a more obvious reason you don’t hear much about: the 2007 Major League baseball season simply isn’t very interesting.
Consider the American League East. Right now, exactly one team is over .500, the Boston Red Sox. Whatever your feelings may be about the New York Yankees, they are a flagship franchise and when they struggle there is a ripple effect throughout the league. In the AL West, the Angels remain a top-tier team and while Seattle is playing well and Oakland is a few games over .500, none of those teams capture the imagination, at least here in Cleveland. Unlike the Yankees, the quintessential team that fans love to hate, every team in the AL West garners, at best, a shrug.
In the AL Central, the White Sox this year are like the Indians last year, a major disappointment. But other than that, the division is playing out pretty much as expected, meaning that there is no compelling story to capture the imagination.
The National League is every bit as uninteresting. Whereas every division leader in the American League has at least 50 wins, the closest in the National League is Milwaukee with 48. Milwaukee! Most fans couldn’t name more than two players on the Brewers. The National League East, on July 2nd, had the dubious distinction of going 0-5. That pretty much captures what that division is all about. As for the NL West, it is highly competitive, but given its geographical distance and the fact that most of its games start at about the time most people go to bed around here, it remains an afterthought.
Contrast all of this with just last season. At this point last year, the AL East was the strength of the league, with Boston, New York and Toronto all at least 10 games over .500. In the AL Central, the Tigers had re-emerged after a lengthy slumber and were dominating the division, which makes for a very interesting storyline for Cleveland fans given how many times the teams play each other. Moreover, three teams in the division were at least 10 games over .500 with the Tigers having won 56 games by this point. The National League was still a mess, but the Mets were dominating their division and even the Reds were fighting it out for first place in the NL Central.
Moving beyond the league in general and to the Indians in particular, despite their record there is the lingering feeling that this team really isn’t all that interesting or all that good. That may be true if your benchmark is the 1920 Yankees or even the 1995 Indians, but in context to the rest of the league it’s untrue.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this team revolves around how it is that it finds itself with 50 wins already. At times, it seems held together by paper and paste. The defense is average, they aren’t hitting as well as anticipated and the middle relief remains a source of frustration.
But yet they are one of the best teams in the league. It’s this paradox that begs for further analysis not indifference. For example, the starting pitching has been nearly as good as advertised. In fact, with the emergence of Fausto Carmona, in some ways it’s better. That’s a story worth following, in and of itself. If that isn’t good enough, consider that Borowski has 24 saves despite the fact that nearly everyone of them was a struggle and is probably the team’s MVP to this point.
If that still isn’t good enough, look at some of the others. Sabathia is easily having the best season of his career and is well on track for a 20-win season. For anyone watching closely, this is the season that Sabathia has officially gone from a potential number one starter to an actual number one starter. When he takes the mound, good things generally follow.
It would be hard for any player, let alone a catcher, to play any better than Victor Martinez is playing to this point. His offense, always solid anyway, has been spectacular. Defensively, his improvement has been dramatic. Currently, he is ninth in the major leagues (third in the American League) in the percentage of would-be base stealers thrown out. For comparisons sake, consider that Ivan Rodriguez is 14th overall. His selection to the All Star team was every bit the no-brainer that was Sabathia’s selection.
Sizemore may not be a superstar yet, but he continues to play like a superstar in the making. Offensively, only Torii Hunter of the Twins is enjoying a better year than Sizemore among American League center fielders. Defensively, there are few better right now. Casey Blake has been, perhaps, the biggest surprise, particularly defensively. He is playing so well at third base, it will be tough, barring an injury, for Andy Marte to get back to Cleveland before September 1.
But rather than see these positives, too many fans seem to waiting for the other shoe to drop and are doing that waiting anywhere but at Jacobs Field, which is a shame.
It may be that the Dolans, once again, fail the fans by not investing in what it might take come trading deadline. It may very well be that Joe Borowski may wake up and realize that he is Joe Borowski or, maybe even more likely, that Casey Blake wakes up and realizes he is Casey Blake. Travis Hafner may stay in a slump all season. But for right now and for half the season already, that isn’t the reality.
Considering how few winners this town has known in any sport, one would think that whatever its warts, this is current Indians team should be embraced, not ignored.
Over the weekend, the Indians finally surpassed one million fans for the season, the last division leader to do so. There was a time, of course, when the Indians front office handed out key chains in gratitude for having a million fans for the entire season and there were many seasons in which the Indians didn’t come close to drawing a million fans at all, so everything is relative. But the thought then was that if the team is ever a winner, the fans will show.
That was certainly true in the ‘90s. Now, not so much. The team is a winning and the fans aren’t showing, at least as much as a first place team deserves. And it’s not as if they aren’t a good home team. As of July 3rd, they have, at 31-12, the best home record in the entire major leagues. And it’s not as if they lack for promotions. The Indians front office runs so many fan promotions to this point the only things left are a cow-milking contest and bring your dog to the park night.
There are all sorts of theories as to why the Indians aren’t drawing. Some have suggested that the bad taste of last year’s disaster, particularly given the promise of the previous season, is mostly responsible. There’s probably something to that.
There is no question that generally many fans feel let down by the Dolans. The team has one of the lowest payrolls in the league still and despite owner Larry Dolan’s often-quoted promise to spend when the team was competitive it’s a promise that still remains mostly unfulfilled. The fans felt betrayed by the decision not to spend going into last season when the Indians seemed on the precipice of greatness and felt further betrayed when the Indians dumped salary last year. Those feelings were hardly assuaged by the lackluster free agents signed going into this season.
But whatever the ramifications of such fan mistreatment, the point remains that right now the Indians are 50-31 and only one team, the Angels, have a better record, and only then by one-half game.
Another popular theory is that the yearly roster turnover has created a team without an identity, making it more difficult for fans to embrace. There’s probably something to that theory as well.
Given the way the Dolans choose to fund this team, every off-season involves a fairly healthy amount of turnover. GM Mark Shapiro spends nearly every moment of his life with a cell phone glued to his ear for a reason. There are always 5-7 roster spots that he needs to fill. And it’s not as if those roster spots are being filled by identifiable, marquee-type players. Jason Michaels? David Dellucci? Joe Borowski? If anyone has their baseball cards, it’s by accident.
But on the other hand, the Indians have their share of stars. C.C. Sabathia, Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore. These are guys that could and would start for any team in either league. They’re all young with incredibly promising careers.
Which leads to a corollary of the “lack of identity” theory: even if they have identifiable players, the Indians won’t re-sign them when their contracts come due, thus investing the time now is mostly time and money poorly wasted.
There is something to this, too. Despite the Indians record, one of the most popular topics among fans is whether or not the Indians will re-sign Sabathia and Hafner. Though neither is a free agent at the end of this season, there is an abject fear, rightfully obtained, that the Dolans will not spend to sign either player. It’s difficult to know exactly how much this fear plays in the overall calculus of fan disinterest, but it would be foolish for either the Dolans or Shapiro to ignore it completely.
While each one of these theories likely plays some role in the number of empty seats at Jacobs Field each night, there is also a more obvious reason you don’t hear much about: the 2007 Major League baseball season simply isn’t very interesting.
Consider the American League East. Right now, exactly one team is over .500, the Boston Red Sox. Whatever your feelings may be about the New York Yankees, they are a flagship franchise and when they struggle there is a ripple effect throughout the league. In the AL West, the Angels remain a top-tier team and while Seattle is playing well and Oakland is a few games over .500, none of those teams capture the imagination, at least here in Cleveland. Unlike the Yankees, the quintessential team that fans love to hate, every team in the AL West garners, at best, a shrug.
In the AL Central, the White Sox this year are like the Indians last year, a major disappointment. But other than that, the division is playing out pretty much as expected, meaning that there is no compelling story to capture the imagination.
The National League is every bit as uninteresting. Whereas every division leader in the American League has at least 50 wins, the closest in the National League is Milwaukee with 48. Milwaukee! Most fans couldn’t name more than two players on the Brewers. The National League East, on July 2nd, had the dubious distinction of going 0-5. That pretty much captures what that division is all about. As for the NL West, it is highly competitive, but given its geographical distance and the fact that most of its games start at about the time most people go to bed around here, it remains an afterthought.
Contrast all of this with just last season. At this point last year, the AL East was the strength of the league, with Boston, New York and Toronto all at least 10 games over .500. In the AL Central, the Tigers had re-emerged after a lengthy slumber and were dominating the division, which makes for a very interesting storyline for Cleveland fans given how many times the teams play each other. Moreover, three teams in the division were at least 10 games over .500 with the Tigers having won 56 games by this point. The National League was still a mess, but the Mets were dominating their division and even the Reds were fighting it out for first place in the NL Central.
Moving beyond the league in general and to the Indians in particular, despite their record there is the lingering feeling that this team really isn’t all that interesting or all that good. That may be true if your benchmark is the 1920 Yankees or even the 1995 Indians, but in context to the rest of the league it’s untrue.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this team revolves around how it is that it finds itself with 50 wins already. At times, it seems held together by paper and paste. The defense is average, they aren’t hitting as well as anticipated and the middle relief remains a source of frustration.
But yet they are one of the best teams in the league. It’s this paradox that begs for further analysis not indifference. For example, the starting pitching has been nearly as good as advertised. In fact, with the emergence of Fausto Carmona, in some ways it’s better. That’s a story worth following, in and of itself. If that isn’t good enough, consider that Borowski has 24 saves despite the fact that nearly everyone of them was a struggle and is probably the team’s MVP to this point.
If that still isn’t good enough, look at some of the others. Sabathia is easily having the best season of his career and is well on track for a 20-win season. For anyone watching closely, this is the season that Sabathia has officially gone from a potential number one starter to an actual number one starter. When he takes the mound, good things generally follow.
It would be hard for any player, let alone a catcher, to play any better than Victor Martinez is playing to this point. His offense, always solid anyway, has been spectacular. Defensively, his improvement has been dramatic. Currently, he is ninth in the major leagues (third in the American League) in the percentage of would-be base stealers thrown out. For comparisons sake, consider that Ivan Rodriguez is 14th overall. His selection to the All Star team was every bit the no-brainer that was Sabathia’s selection.
Sizemore may not be a superstar yet, but he continues to play like a superstar in the making. Offensively, only Torii Hunter of the Twins is enjoying a better year than Sizemore among American League center fielders. Defensively, there are few better right now. Casey Blake has been, perhaps, the biggest surprise, particularly defensively. He is playing so well at third base, it will be tough, barring an injury, for Andy Marte to get back to Cleveland before September 1.
But rather than see these positives, too many fans seem to waiting for the other shoe to drop and are doing that waiting anywhere but at Jacobs Field, which is a shame.
It may be that the Dolans, once again, fail the fans by not investing in what it might take come trading deadline. It may very well be that Joe Borowski may wake up and realize that he is Joe Borowski or, maybe even more likely, that Casey Blake wakes up and realizes he is Casey Blake. Travis Hafner may stay in a slump all season. But for right now and for half the season already, that isn’t the reality.
Considering how few winners this town has known in any sport, one would think that whatever its warts, this is current Indians team should be embraced, not ignored.
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