Red Right 88

In Cleveland, hope dies last

Archive for the category “Leonardo DiCaprio”

24 Jul 2011

Iceberg, dead ahead captain!

Another day, another loss as the HMS Wahoo drifts ever closer to the iceberg that will sink their season.

Somehow, the White Sox scored four earned runs this weekend and were still able to take the abbreviated two-game series from the Tribe. Chicago stinks but the Indians make them look like the best team in baseball.

Friday night, Carlos Carrasco made one bad pitch, Carlos Quentin deposited it for a three-run homer and that was the ball game.

Sunday, Justin Masterson gives up one earned run in seven innings of work, but three Tribe errors helped give the White Sox three unearned runs and take the win.

What must it be like as a starting pitcher for the Tribe knowing, every time you take the mound, if you give up more than one or two runs it’s game over, man?

The only saving grace in all of this is the AL Central is full of mediocrity. Even with Sunday’s loss, the Indians head into the three-game series with the Angels only two games out of first. A good week and they could be back on top of the division.

But with the offense in its current state of distress, it’s hard to see how that can happen. If you can’t win with the kind of pitching the Tribe received this weekend, when will you win?

With the non-waiver trading deadline coming up at the end of the month, fans will be wanting the Indians to make a move to save the season. But who is out there that can save the team? Who will be the Tribe’s Leonardo DiCaprio when they are floating adrift in the North Atlantic?

Someone at The Plain Dealer was obviously paying attention when we wrote earlier this week that the Indians don’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to deadline deals. Today the paper ran an article detailing every trade deadline deal the Indians have made since 1994 and it’s not pretty.

It turns out that sellers come out ahead of the game far more often than buyers in these deals.

And with no real reason to believe that this year will be any different, it may be time to accept that Tribe fans will be rooting for the team they currently have, rather than the one they think they want.

(Photo by The Associated Press)

Posted in Cleveland Indians, Leonardo DiCaprio, sinking ship | Leave a comment
04 May 2010

T.I.C. This is Cleveland

Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price. – Vince Lombardi

Following an ugly loss in Game 2 of their playoff series against Boston, the Cavs have a lot of hard work ahead of them in the days leading up to Friday’s Game 3.

“We did not fight back until late,” coach Mike Brown said after the game in published reports. “We’ve gotta decide if we’re going to take the fight to them and take these games. Nothing is going to be given to us at all. Ain’t a … damn thing going to be given to us at all in this series.”

“I had a lot to say to the guys about our performance,” Brown said Tuesday in published reports. “I thought we need to develop a sense of urgency in this series and throughout our run. I thought why not have last night be a good start to that.”

With the series tied 1-1 and the next two games slated for Boston, the Cavs seem to be in trouble. But history and math tell us otherwise.

Consider:

  • Teams with home-court advantage that win Game 1 are 256-40 overall in the history of the NBA playoffs, an 86.5 winning percentage.
  • The Cavs have never lost a seven-game series when they win Game 1.
  • Teams that win Game 2 on the road after losing Game 1 have only gone on to win the series 28 percent of the time.
  • In 168 best-of-seven quarterfinal series, home-court teams have won 78.6 percent of the time.
  • If you are going to alternate wins in a seven-game series, it’s best to be the team winning the odd-numbered games, as the 1997 Indians so painfully taught us.

However …

In the movie Blood Diamond, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, a Rhodesian diamond smuggler, tries to explain the way things work to a naive American reporter by saying, “T.I.A. This if Africa.”

Well, T.I.C. This is Cleveland. And in Cleveland sports, things rarely go as they should.

Now we sit and wait for Game 3, really the most critical game in a seven-game series. The team that loses Game 3 is either down 3-0 or 2-1 in a series and immediately faces a must-win situation in Game 4.

Hopefully the Cavs are ready to pay the price for success.

11 wins to go.

Posted in Blood Diamond, Cleveland Cavaliers, Leonardo DiCaprio, NBA playoffs, Vince Lombardi | Leave a comment

Post Navigation