Red Right 88

In Cleveland, hope dies last

Archive for the category “Cleveland Indians”

17 Aug 2010
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What Makes a Good Owner?

Here in Cleveland, we want to classify the owners of the local sports teams with neat little labels.

The Dolans are “cheap.”

Randy Lerner “doesn’t care.”

Dan Gilbert is “a winner.”

Those are easy tags for the hoople heads to latch on to, and there’s something to be said for that. But are the labels accurate?

If winning championships is the only criteria, then every Cleveland owner since 1964 has failed. But is that fair? George Steinbrenner was hailed as a great owner by Yankee apologists because he was willing to do “whatever it took” to win. That overlooks the fact that in 2009 the Yankees had $441 million in revenue – $173 million more than the second-place team! Having that much of an advantage makes it a lot easier to do “whatever it takes.”

If you look deeper into the numbers, however, you find something interesting: in 2009 the Yankees spent 54 percent of their revenue on player salaries ($240 million on $441 million in revenue), while the Indians spent 53.5 percent of their revenue on salaries ($91 million on $170 million in revenue).

It appears that the Dolans may not be unwilling to spend to make the Indians a winner, but rather they are unable to spend to compete under the current system.

So does that make them cheap or bad owners? I don’t think so. It’s more that they, like other mid-market owners in Major League Baseball, are caught in a cycle that makes it next to impossible to compete.

What about Randy Lerner?

The Browns have been a mess since they returned in 1999 and Lerner has been the one constant. That’s certainly a huge negative against Lerner. Many wrongly believe because Lerner is in England on Saturday watching Aston Villa play, rather than sitting behind a desk in Berea, he’s indifferent about the Browns.

If we were still in the 1930s, when a trans-Atlantic crossing took weeks on a ship, that may be true. But when you can make a flight from London to Cleveland in 7-8 hours, there’s no reason Lerner can’t have a presence at both team’s games.

Many fans want Lerner to be more “hands on” to prove he is “passionate” about the Browns. Because he lets people do the job that they are hired for, without constantly interfering, he’s labeled as being apathetic about the team. But if you look around the NFL, hands-on owners are not what you necessarily want.

Consider Dan Snyder of the Redskins, for example. Snyder has been overly involved with the team since buying them in 1999. Since then, the Redskins have been to the playoffs only three times. The team has had six different head coaches, has spent a disproportionate amount of money on expensive free agents and has traded away draft picks to acquire stars, many of whom have fizzled in Washington. He’s also sued season-ticket holders who’ve lost their jobs.

How about Al Davis? He’s as hands-on as they come. Or Jerry Jones, who’s led the Cowboys to one more playoff win than the Browns since 1999? Are those the type of owner Browns fans want Lerner to be?

It seems extremely unlikely that Lerner doesn’t care about the Browns. The problem is more that he’s made some mistakes in his hiring.

That brings us to Gilbert, an owner who’s benefited the most from a perfect storm of circumstances.

Gilbert has spent money and that was made easier by the presence of LeBron James, having the smallest roster size of the three major sports and the ability to pad the bottom line with all the extra playoff games the Cavs have been in since he bought the team.

But that has to be balanced with the fact that he let LeBron essentially run the team, which as we’re learning this summer, wasn’t the best idea. That “all-in” mentality cost the team a GM and a coach this off-season and it still wasn’t enough to keep James in town.

It would appear that Gilbert is as much an opportunistic owner as a winning owner.

So what does this all mean? Just as there’s no one way to define what a “good” coach is, there’s no one true blueprint for finding the best owner. As fans, all we can ask is for our owners to spend money to try and keep the team competitive, hire the best people they can find for the job and stay out of the way.

And remember that perception isn’t reality.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians, Dan Gilbert, Dolans, hoople heads, Randy Lerner
06 Aug 2010

That Didn’t Take Long

It only took a few weeks, but the injury bug finally caught Cleveland catcher Carlos Santana, who is scheduled to have knee surgery today at the Cleveland Clinic.

“Carlos is expected to make a full recovery by the beginning of the 2011 championship season,” head trainer Lonnie Soloff said in published reports.

Let’s overlook the championship season phrasing for a minute and focus on the recovery time, which Soloff put at four to six months, which puts Santana up against the start of spring training. If he’s not ready for the start of spring training, that probably means he won’t be ready for the start of the regular season.

Here’s the best part from Sheldon Ocker’s story in the Beacon:

”This [injury] is rare in baseball, and it could have been much worse,” Soloff said in the article. ”But any time a catcher has surgery on his knee, it’s considered serious.”

Of course it is. Cleveland’s sports teams just can’t have normal injuries; they have to be rare injuries.

So begins another day in Cleveland sports paradise.

Posted in Carlos Santana, Cleveland Indians, freak injuries | Leave a comment
19 Jul 2010

Cleveland Sports On Demand Wishlist

Last week, during the mid-summer dead period of sports – World Cup over, baseball on its All-Star break, no basketball, football not yet here – I started to dream of an on demand channel that featured Cleveland sports games through the decades.

No sporting events happening? Just order up a complete game from the past, sit back and enjoy. And if I had every Browns, Indians and Cavs game at my fingertips, which would be my go-to selections? Most of my top choices are older games, either ones that happened before I was born or I was too young to remember.

For the Browns, you’d have to start with the championship games, not just the NFL titles, but the AAFC ones as well. Other must-have games include:

  • A Jim Brown game vs. Sam Huff and the New York Giants
  • The 1972 Monday Night game vs. San Diego that the Browns won on a late Mike Phipps to Frank Pitts TD pass
  • The Browns defeat of Dallas in 1979 on Monday Night Football
  • The 1976 game vs. Pittsburgh when David Mays came off the bench to lead the Browns to the win
  • Brian Sipe’s last game as a Brown, a 30-17 win over Pittsburgh at the Stadium
  • The double OT win vs. the Jets in the 1986 playoffs
  • The 1986 win in Three Rivers Stadium

For the Cavs:

  • Any of the four playoff wins vs. Washington in the Miracle of Richfield season
  • The blowout of Boston in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals that same season
  • The Cavs Game 3 win vs. Boston in the 1985 playoffs
  • The Game 4 OT win vs. Chicago in the 1989 playoffs
  • The OT win in Boston Garden in the 1992 playoffs
  • The Game 2 win against Chicago in the Eastern Conference Finals in 1992
  • The team’s first ever victory, a 105-103 win over Portland

For the Indians:

  • A Luis Tiant game from the 1968 season, when he won 21 games with a 1.60 ERA
  • A Sam McDowell game from the 1970 season, when he won 20 games
  • An early 1970s game when the Indians had Chris Chambliss and Graig Nettles
  • A Gaylord Perry game from his Cy Young season of 1972
  • The 1975 home opener when Frank Robinson homered
  • Dennis Eckersley’s no-hitter in 1977
  • The home opener in 1980, when Super Joe Charboneau became a legend
  • Game 5 of the ALCS in 1995 when Paul Assenmacher struck out Ken Griffey
  • Sandy Alomar’s homerun off of Mariano Rivera in the 1997 playoffs

That’s a good start for a list. I’m sure, given enough time, I could come up with several games I’ve overlooked.

I don’t know if something like this will ever become available as it’s unlikely that film exists of some of these games.

But I’m old enough to remember when we only had five channels to watch on the TV and televising a home game for the Indians and Cavs was not even a consideration, while the Browns could only sell out their home game vs. Pittsburgh. Plus you got one college football game on Saturday.

Now we have games in HD, virtually every game is televised, NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass and MLB Extra Innings, so anything is possible.

We may be on to something here.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians, TV sports, wishlist | Leave a comment
15 Jul 2010

Reading is Fundamental – Baseball Edition

With the end of the All-Star break, the Tribe is ready to embark on the second-half of what could feel like a never-ending season. With that in mind, it’s time for some more book recommendations.

There are plenty of great (or very good) sports books out there for Cleveland fans, specifically, and sports fans in general. These baseball books are worth checking out; most should be familiar to Cleveland fans, some may not be. Some may no longer be in print, but if you can find a copy it will be well worth your time*:

  • Endless Summers: The Fall and Rise of the Cleveland Indians by Jack Torry. This book “takes the reader into the executive suites, lakeshore apartments and political backrooms where the men with money and clout made the decisions that transformed the Indians from World Series contenders in 1954 to pathetic losers for four decades.”
  • Our Tribe by Terry Pluto. “By reliving the stories of Lou Sockalexis, Bob Feller, Larry Doby, Rocky Colavito, Bill Veeck, Lou Boudreau, Omar Vizquel, Manny Ramirez and countless others, Terry Pluto relives the stories of his childhood and of his father’s childhood when the Indians were the only thing that mattered.”
  • The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump by Terry Pluto. “With the sharp-edged wit and keen eye for detail that have made him Cleveland’s favorite sportswriter, Terry Pluto looks at the strange goings-on of the thirty-plus years following the Indians trade of Rocky Colavito. Pluto draws insightful portraits of the men who’ve made the Indians what they were, for better or worse.”
  • Now I Can Die in Peace by Bill Simmons. OK, I know, it’s about the Red Sox but stick with me here. In his columns, with additional footnotes, Simmons captures the joy of finally seeing his favorite baseball team win a World Series. It’s an easy read and a primer for Cleveland fans on what it will be like when one of our teams finally wins.
  • Ball Four by Jim Bouton. Tame by today’s standards, but this book, one of the first baseball books I ever read, helped “shatter the myth of baseball players as heroes when it was published in 1970. Besides changing the public image of athletes, this book played a role in the economic revolution in professional sports. In 1975, it was accepted as legal evidence against the owners at the arbitration hearing which led to free agency in baseball. It also stands as a time capsule of life in the ’60s.”
  • Dealing: The Cleveland Indians’ New Ballgame by Terry Pluto. “Go behind closed doors in the Cleveland Indians front office as Pluto analyzes the team’s controversial moves to scrap a roster of popular stars and rebuild a new kind of contender following the 2000 season. Faced with an aging team, a mounting payroll and a shrinking budget, owners Larry and Paul Dolan and general manager Mark Shapiro worked to rebuild the team, closing out the 2005 season just one game shy of a playoff birth.” That was only five years ago; it feels like 50.
  • Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero by David Maraniss. “The Roberto Clemente that Maraniss evokes was an idiosyncratic character who, unlike so many modern athletes, insisted that his responsibilities extended beyond the baseball field. In his final years, his motto was that if you have a chance to help others and fail to do so, you are wasting your time on this earth.” This is an example of the new wave of sports biographies that take an honest look at athletes; not hatchet jobs, but just stories that show the true person, in both their triumphs and failures.

If you do decide to check one of these out, you won’t be disappointed. And remember to shop at your local bookstore. If you don’t have one in your area and are in the Hudson area, it’s worth a stop at The Learned Owl.

*Summaries are all taken from the individual book jackets.

Posted in baseball, books, Cleveland Indians, reading, summer | Leave a comment
13 Jul 2010

How will we remember the LeBron Era?

With each passing day, the anguish over LeBron James’ decision to go to Miami slowly fades away. But how will the LeBron Era be remembered by Cleveland fans? And how will it compare to other post-1964 eras of Cleveland sports?

Before LeBron, the Cavs were just … there. After firing Lenny Wilkens and prior to drafting James, the team went through a succession of boring, dull coaches – Randy Wittman and Keith Smart anyone? – and even worse players (Trajan Langdon, Ricky Davis, etc.), playing in a downtown arena they didn’t need in front of mostly family and friends.

With LeBron, the Cavs were back on the NBA map with sellouts and national TV games. The team won two division titles, made it past the first round five consecutive years, was the top seed in the East two years in a row, went to two Eastern Conference finals and one NBA final, and had the best five-year record in franchise history.

Along the way their games became events; one of the best feelings was looking at the upcoming schedule on a Sunday morning and, seeing back-to-back games on Tuesday/Wednesday and another game on Friday, knowing the week was set. Watching this team – especially the past two years – has been so much fun.

I know some will argue that the Daugherty/Price/Nance Cavs of the late-’80s/early ’90s were better, but they never accomplished what LeBron’s Cavs did, not by a long shot. No division titles, one conference final, first-round playoff losses.

Not all of that was their fault, as injuries and Michael Jordan conspired against the team. It still hurts, almost 20 years later, to think about what might have been with that team.

Probably the closest to LeBron’s Cavs were the Indians of the mid- to late-90s. They captured the town’s fancy with an excitement level and star power equal to the Cavs and had just as much on-field success. Six division titles in seven years, three American League Championship Series and two World Series appearances.

Of course, they also lost to the Florida Marlins and were the only team to lose to Atlanta in a World Series, but they still hold a spot in many fans’ hearts.

The one team that the LeBron Era may never surpass in popularity is the late-’80s Browns. With four division titles in a five-year span and three losses in the AFC Championship Game, those teams still hold a firm grasp on Cleveland fans, many of whom probably still remember the lyrics to Bernie Bernie (“Bernie, Bernie. Oh, yeah! How you can throw! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah”)

As hard as it may be for some to believe, eventually we will be able to separate LeBron’s “decision” from the seven years he was on the court for the Cavs. And we will look back and remember when the Q was rocking and, for a short time, anything seemed possible in Cleveland.

Even a championship.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians, End of an era, LeBron James | Leave a comment
03 Jun 2010

Dude!

With the Indians actually riding a winning streak – OK, it was just one game – and facing Armando Galarraga, who entered the game with a career record of 20-18 and making only his fourth start of the season, there was a real chance the Tribe could get a little momentum going.

So, of course, Galarraga comes out and throws a near perfect game, retiring the first 26 batters before firstbase umpire Jim Joyce makes one of the worst calls possible, somehow missing the fact that Jason Donald was out by at least a step on his ground ball to first baseman Miguel Cabrera.

While it seems hard to believe Galarraga could come up with such a dominating performance, it shouldn’t be that surprising – the Indians entered the game 12th in the league in hitting and fielded a lineup with five players hitting under .260 on the season.

If every game was this interesting, we might actually tune in more often.

Posted in Cleveland Indians, joke | Leave a comment
29 Apr 2010

The Opposite of Love

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. – Historian Arnold Toynbee

The Wall Street Journal New York reported this week that the Indians are the most hated team in Major League Baseball. On a sentimental scale of -5 to 5, the Tribe scored 0.9.

When I first heard this I was outraged. Or at least I thought I should be outraged. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I just don’t care. Like the Indians or dislike them, it doesn’t matter to me. Apathy has set in – the worst thing than can happen to a team’s fan.

I’ve come to the realization over the past few years that I’m really not a baseball fan, just an Indians fan. I don’t consider myself a fair-weather fan, I’ve seen too much bad baseball since the late ’70s to only be interested when the team wins, but my interest does peak when the team is successful – like in 2007 & 2005.

When the team crashed in 2008, interest started to wane. Then, in 2009, by the time the Cavs were eliminated from the playoffs and I checked, the Indians were struggling along and had no chance of being competitive. I found myself drifting away from the team.

And as the team sinks into the abyss of irrelevancy, either because they are unwilling (not likely) or unable (much more probable) to spend enough on payroll to compete, it gets harder and harder to follow the team on a daily basis.

That point was driven home with the cover story in this week’s Sports Illustrated, featuring the Yankees’ Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte. I have no intention of reading the story, I mean c’mon, but the coverline implies that the foursome being together on the same team for most of the past 16 years won’t be repeated again in baseball.

That’s true for any team that’s not the Yankees. One of the biggest misconceptions about the Yankees is that they have an advantage because they can buy any player they want. While that’s certainly true, the real advantage they have is that they know they can retain any player on their roster that they want. They’ve never had to worry about Jeter, Rivera or anyone leaving in free agency. If the team wanted to keep them, they always had the money and, with no salary cap, could spend as much as they want.

Think about how different it would have been for the Indians if they never had to worry about Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, CC Sabathia, Victor Martinez, Cliff Lee, Bartolo Colon, etc., leaving in free agency.

But that’s not reality, so we’re stuck with a team hitting .238 with four regulars hitting below .200 – Jhonny Peralta (.190), Travis Hafner (.190), Grady Sizemore (.192) and Luis Valbuena (.196). And there’s no hope of help from the minors as the front office won’t promote younger players because they don’t want their service time to start and put them closer to free agency and the first train out of town.

As the Tribe finishes another disappointing opening month, fans are left to wonder when the team will come up with a definite, intelligible plan that we can get enthused about.

Posted in Cleveland Indians | Leave a comment
05 Apr 2010
1 Comment

Indian Fever Starts Today

The Wahoo Warriors open their 109th season of baseball this afternoon against the White Sox. Optimism is running, well, tepid is probably the best way to put it.

The consensus puts the Tribe around 75 wins – that’s the over/under in Vegas – with the Beacon Journal’s Sheldon Ocker going high – 82 wins – and Sports Illustrated going low – 66 wins. Everyone else falls into the 75-win range, with the five Plain Dealer writers splitting at two with 75 (Bud Shaw & Bill Livingston), two with 76 (Terry Pluto & Dennis Manoloff) and Paul Hoynes with 77. The New York Times puts the Tribe in fourth place, saying “The Indians should score but will struggle on the mound as they wait for a new wave of talent to mature.”

So what to expect this year? How can the Indians top most expectations? A solid start to the season would help. It’s no secret that the Indians struggled in April & May under Eric Wedge, so a reasonably good start will help things out. If the Tribe can pick up one win they weren’t expecting each month of the season that would add six wins to the 75 and put them at .500. Since most people believe the division can be taken with 88-89 wins, can the Tribe pull out a few more and contend? It’s hard to see that happening, at least this year.

One of the best things that could happen is also one of the worst for the Indians – a deep playoff run by the Cavs. Since everyone will be hyper-focused on the Cavs until June, there will be no pressure on the Tribe early in the season. However, if we all get up the day after the Cavs season ends and find the Indians 10 games under .500 and 12 games out of first, we’ll collectively hit the snooze button until training camp starts for the Browns. Apathy is far, far worse than indifference.

We’ve all been down this road before with a rebuilding team. Sometimes, like in the ’90s, it works. More often for the Tribe it turns out more like the 1970s. The 1996 book Total Indians recalls how fans were optimistic about a young team in 1977 that seemed to be building a core of young players in Buddy Bell, Rick Manning, Charlie Spikes, Duane Kiper, Dennis Eckersley and Jim Kern. That year, the Indians added 20-game winner Wayne Garland via free agency only to see him tear his rotator cuff that spring. Manager Frank Robinson didn’t make it through the season as the team lost 90 games. Two months into the season GM Phil Seghi traded reliever Dave LaRoche for two players and $250,000 to keep the team afloat. The team lost 31 of its first 57 games.

The following year the break-up of the team continued when the Indians traded Eckersley (who ended up in the Hall of Fame) before the season and Bell (six Gold Gloves) after the season for some spare parts.

They summed up the decade by saying “The Indians’ treadmill to nowhere, as usual, was running at full speed.”

Sound familiar to anyone?

Now we’re left to wonder what to make of the coming season. Do we root for Travis Hafner to return to his old self because it will help the team, or because it will increase his trade value? Do we want Grady Sizemore to make the leap to the next level, even though it would mean he would be pricing himself out of Cleveland? That’s the joy of being a Cleveland fan in today’s unbalanced Major League Baseball.

In any event, it will be an interesting season with lots of young players who will hopefully show significant progress during the season.

For a look at what they’re saying in the other Central Division towns, check out:

Chicago Sun-Times

Detroit Free Press

Kansas City Star

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Posted in baseball, Cleveland, Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians, NBA playoffs, opening day, Tribe
29 Mar 2010
2 Comments

Only the Strong Survive

After years of reading sports articles on mainstream media sites as well as other quality sites (like Waiting for Next Year and Cleveland Frowns) and commenting, we’ve decided to expand our horizons and join the community of bloggers.

This site will primarily be about Cleveland’s pro sports teams – Cavs, Browns & Indians – but we will also talk about other sports topics as they arise. We’re not looking to compete with other, more-established sites, but rather provide another opinion on the local sports scene from what we consider to be a typical Cleveland sports fan of a certain generation – that is, one who has never experienced a championship season.

In our lifetime we’ve seen the Tribe play in two World Series, the Cavs in one NBA finals and the Browns, well, the Browns have been a source of more anguish than any one fan should have to endure.

Other fans get more attention for allegedly being “tortured,” but no one knows heartbreak, unfulfilled promise and utter disappointment more than a Cleveland fan.

But that’s life as a Cleveland fan and that’s what we hope to capture for as long as we can sustain this blog.

Cleveland sports fans: Only the Strong Survive.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians

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