A rust belt, small market team glorified..really.

A column by Roy Johnson from the website MLB about the white hot nine from the rust belt by the Cuyahoga river. Pinch me I'm surely asleep or maybe I died. All you folks who root for a small market team take a look.

A most improbable event.

A most improbable event will be occurring in Kansas city. The Cleveland Indians and the Kansas city Royals will be meeting for the first time this year in what is being called by some THE CLASH OF THE TITANS. Cleveland owning the best win/loss record in the American league will face off against Kansas city, only one loss behind them. Improbable? Unlikely? Impossible? Yes, it's true it is improbable, unlikely, and impossible, yet it is happening. These are two teams who are having a great time while trying not to wake up to reality. Speaking as only one wahoo watcher and I am sure for the Kansas fans who wonder if they are indeed in the land of oz. Whatever, these moments of what New Yorkers and Bostoners must enjoy annually has gone off course and landed smack in the middle of the clash of the titans. Reality and reason will certainly return and we in the rust belt and the fields of wheat will return to normal while those moneyed, big market teams on the east and west coasts will go about business as usual, but not for a little while yet, the clash of the titans is about to commence. Yahoo.

Cleveland Indians magic number is down to 155

Only a cleveland Indian fan will appreciate the post from this blog. Well maybe a Kansas city fan from the same central division of the american league could. Take a look and smile as you enjoy.

Tribe baseball fantasies

Joy abounds in northern Ohio. The Cleveland Indians have started the baseball season with a 4-2 record. They have finished a series against the Boston Red Sox winning 3 out of 3 to sweep the series.

Hazel and I ate out tonight and the topic of conversation among most of the old crowd joining in bowls of Goulash were How about those Indians. Now Boston of course will correct their course and start smashing one team after another probably on their way to the post season, and maybe even the world series. They are that good, but for the Indians this is big big big. Boston has not started out this bad since the 1945 season. Don't despair bosox nation, they will be where they are expected to be by May.

But for Cleveland fans we have had nothing to cheer about or even fool ourselves that things will be better for a long time now. We are all relishing this baseball version of a mirage, what we think is there is not, but I don't care. For now I love it.
Maybe tomorrow the bottom will fall out of our spring madness, but for now it's great fun. Go Tribe.

Spring training and baseballs best 100

Baseball spring training is only about a week away. Hope will spring eternal amongst we small market fans while you fans of teams with money to throw around smirk and nod knowing it will take a small miracle for one of us to end up on top in October. Well maybe this will be the year. To tone up our baseball knowledge in the meantime here is the Sporting News list of the 100 best players ever.

Spring training in One and half months.

One and half months from now spring training will open in Arizona and Florida. That's only 45 days from now. Whew, spring is in the air.

The rich get richer and some don't

As you can plainly see by the looks of that uniform, a whole lot of money wasn't spent on the world champion Cleveland Indians. Not much has changed in ninety years. There was an awful lot of money made by the owners until free agency came about. Even now there is not a lot of money spent on product in some franchises. Picture courtesy of JIGGSY.



Smoky Joe Wood, Cleveland Indians professional baseball player wearing a Worlds Champions uniform, 1920. Wood was an outfielder and sometime pitcher for the Indians when they won the World Series in 1920. Bain News Service, publisher. LOC original medium: glass negative.

Ya Gotta Love Em

Ya gotta love em. The Indians managed to stay even with the Angels through nine. Top of the tenth the Angels do not score. Bottom of the tenth the Indians get a double and he is moved over to third on a fielders choice. One more out makes it two out man on third, up come Duncan who in recent games has come away a hero with a couple home runs which now causes a few ripples of expectation to go through the small assembly of folks remaining in the stands.

After a few pitches Duncan makes contact with the ball and it bounces undramatically toward shortstop; the crowd deflates. The shortstop charges the bouncing ball, picks it up and my Lord, he drops it.

Duncan speeds to first and the man on third dashes in from third and scores. The Indians win, they win, they win.

Duncan knowing that tonight he was one lucky so and so heads for the dugout, but the Indians young and hungry for victories grab him and start beating on him and jumping on him and each other. You gotta love it, they are all so young and so full of hope and desire to win. I loved it. So what they're close to ninety losses, it's baseball in Cleveland. Our team is full of kids who want so much to win that maybe if we believe with them anything might happen.

Forget about Scrooge Mcbaseballowner counting his money and figuring who else he can give away. Enjoy the kids giving their all and sometimes like last night coming away looking like pennant chasers. Another day, another dream who knows.

HOW TO SNAG A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

There is nothing more exciting to a young boy than going to a major league ballgame. I can attest to that from my own life and to my eldest son who I think loves the game more than I do. Going to the game is the epitome for a fan, seeing the beautiful stadiums and the beautiful green outfields (if it's real grass) or even if it's not and the ballplayers who stand ten feet tall in a boys eyes. As a boy ages the ballplayers size shrinks closer to a human beings size, but always remains a little larger than life to us fans. Catching a ball while at a game is almost one of the biggest thrills there is. Meeting a hall of fame type player being the highest I think. My son became almost sick, literally, in anticipation of a game we went to in Detroit, and in fact we landed a ball at that game. I believe he still might have that ball at the age of forty something. This CBS interview with a big time fan is quite good about the psyche of a big time baseball grabber and what he does to get one.

John Updike has died. He wrote the RABBIT series about life in America in the sixties. He also wrote an essay about baseball and Ted Williams. It is thought of by some as the greatest essay on Ted Williams and by some others as the greatest essay every written, period. All baseball fans should have a go at it, especially now with spring training only a week or so away.

Cleveland Indians, Spring Training, Trucks leave Progressive Field for Goodyear, Arizona

This is the time of year when baseball fans really start getting a little itchy to get it all going again. Spring training starts in two weeks and everything is still possible for all the major league teams. Reality won't plug in for a while yet, so between now, and then I'll prepare myself for a long season into October.

It is only January, but it is starting to get very interesting for the team that plays at the Jake, now known as Progressive field. The team that plays at the Jake/Progressive field is one of those burdened with trying to obtain players within a budget that runs about two plus times less than the big guys. The big guys are those who play in stadiums on the coasts, the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, the Dodgers from Los Angeles, and a few more assorted teams that seem to have pockets full of an unending amount of money. My team belongs to that un-illustrious group of teams that come from what is called small market areas. But for what they lack in money to buy whomever they wish, they can make up in fan loyalty. The fans love their team and you have to love the fans for their devotion to the team who runs hot and cold depending, of course you know, how much money they have to spend.

But this year it is shaping up as a good collection of former star players who because of injuries cannot demand big money, so they come to our team for less money and a chance to showcase their talents. Hopefully to do so successfully and again be able to ask for the big bucks.

We also seem to be a team that handles young players well in their learning years, as they progress in their talent until they reach that magic year when their talent becomes marketable and free agency beckons. Then we lose them to those dreaded coast teams and start the whole process over. The young players never sign with us because the money being offered is so great and we cannot compete. We just lost CC Sabathia to the Yankees who gave him 161 million dollars. It's happened many times before with Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez. We expect it, we don't like it, but that's the way it is.

Our General Manager is a crafty dude and gets pretty good value for the amount of money he can spend, and this winter he seems to be amassing a group that if they can grab the gold ring one more time will make a really interesting season for us fans on the north coast.

If course we will need a little help on the medical side of our former big bopper who used to hit baseballs out of the stadium with regularity, but his big body has failed him. This year he says he feels good and the body is being carefully monitored by illustrious doctors preparing him for what could be his last hurrah. A lot of fans are praying for him, and the collection of ex stars that are being accumulated for one last collective shot at the elusive post season play.

In February the map of the USA changes in a lot of peoples minds to this:

Looking out my window this morning I can tell it is cold, very cold. The sun is visiting for just a short while I'm sure, making the snow on the roof tops glisten brightly, and the snow on the ground is showing shadows of the black trees in elongated patterns. Tomorrows weather forecast says our low is going to be in single digits.

But today is the 14th day of February, Valentines Day actually, but also it is the day that pitchers and catchers report to all the major league training camps to start limbering up for a couple weeks before the rest of the team shows up and spring training gets under way in full force. It's the day baseball fans have been waiting for.

Yes, we've had football, college and professional, basketball, college and professional, and for those in more northern climes hockey also. But for dedicated fans there is no sport you can get your teeth into better than baseball. So for the next eight months we will dedicate some time each and every day to the health and well being of our chosen band of well paid brothers. We will rise with their successes and mutter over their failures hoping that when all the eliminating of lesser teams is accomplished that our chosen band will be standing tall and proud on that glorious day in October.

But for baseball fans of my age, who have watched many season, there was that wonderful time when we were part of the great game albeit in a little less grandness.

Millions of boys my age who spent a good deal of time growing up in post WWII America, in newly built housing projects, remember the empty spaces where houses had not yet been built, spaces just exactly the right size to accommodate sandlot baseball. Sandlot baseball, that wonderful game that fielded teams of little boys, big boys, in between sized boys, and the occasional girl who had the grit to get herself a little dirty and a little grass stained. Talent was not required, but a desire to play the game was. Equipment was ragtag, uniforms, of course not. It was going to be a great game if the game ball was still stitched up. Some of us never knew that baseballs were supposed to be white.

Games started whenever we could get together five or so for each team, games ended when one or more parents would open their front doors and yell for the pitcher, or first basemen to come home to supper.

Statistics or game notes were never kept, except in our hearts. They must have been written in the same ink that valentines are made from, because when this time of year, spring training, arrives the memories arrive with that picture in our hearts of those dusty days when our biggest fear was that the ball would unravel before the game was ended. I remember, I smile to myself knowing the ball has not completely unraveled yet.

Baseball Dreaming.

As the title infers, it could all be a dream, but for great moments it just about fills the bill.

The dreaded Yankees come to town with their pin stripes and 25,000.000 per year man and other assorted 'best that money can buy' ballplayers, assembled together looking like a bunch of swaggering members of the board of directors of the Chase Manhattan Bank on a company picnic.

One game does not a series make, but for this one game, against this foe of all foes, if we went no further it would be the game that lit the fuse on this bunch of young, unrecognized by the media that doesn't think baseball of any consequence is being played anywhere but on the coasts of the United States, and the imagination of all baseball fans and teams who have to make do, and compete against teams like the strutting, smirking, Yankees with teams constructed and nourished within the constrictions of a budget.

But all that aside, the game that played out in front of our eyes was Hollywood to be sure. The game is not two minutes old and the strutting, swaggering gang from the Bowery and one of their purchased hired hands are ahead one to nothing by virtue of the long ball. Ho Hum, another day at the bank, why do we have to spend another two hours of so when we could just as well end it now and go back to the bank and count our money; but no not this night.

This night it is the night of retribution of all the carefully constructed, within a budget teams, that have to operate on the amount of money that the Yankees put aside to pay someone to keep the dust off their statues to themselves and their pin stripped greatness situated out in center field.

For two hours plus the Indians, playing for themselves of course, but also for all the other teams who have had to step aside or more corrected been stepped on and over by the money bloated colossus from New York retaliate and then retaliated again and again until they tallied 12 runs against the Yankees 3. Oh joy, mighty Casey from New York has been beaten, stepped on, and left lying bleeding but not grieved over.

One game does not make a series or a season, but it makes a moment so great that if it all goes badly and those bankers come back to win it all like usual, at least we had one game, one great game, and I'll remember it forever.

After writing the piece about my favorite uncle and thinking about baseball played by kids, I ran across this youtube piece and I loved it. No uniforms, not enough boys or girls to make a proper team, and no talent except in their imaginations. Great, the stuff childhood should be made of.

A FROZEN TED WILLIAMS?


I was thinking the other day about Ted Williams family, a majority, not all, deciding to put Ted's body in a vat and cryonically freezing him, to unthaw sometime in the future. When it is said medical technology will be able to use a magic pellet, and zap he is up and running again. What a bunch of baloney. I guess Ted wanted to be cremated and his ashes tossed into the Pacific. But I guess he also said he didn't really care what they did with him. That was his mistake I would say. When I think of it I just shake my head thnking of the nonsense of it and also what was the son's rationale behind his decision to do that?

Baseball, I Love It.
BY jim kittelberger

Here comes the pitch, he swings, and oh my he hit it high and deep, its outta here, and the Indians win it in the bottom of the ninth. How about that!

If those words don't give you a thrill, then you're not a baseball fan and I can't imagine why you're not. From the time I was a small boy, I have loved this game. H/R/RBI/ERA/BB/K/HR/E/BA/W/L. This is the alphabet of the game. These are the indicators of success or failure for the practitioners of the game. It's money in the bank for those talented ones who have good numbers and a ticket out of town for those that don't. A boy may have a problem with his algebra but he will have no problem with the statistics of baseball.

There is not a boy that does not remember his first time in a major league ballpark. The bigness of it, the first hot dog, the memorabilia, the walk up the ramp and then that first sight of the field that you knew only in your dreams and imagination, the sight that fills your senses. It is so green; so beautiful; the bases and foul lines are so white; the scoreboard so big; the seats so red or green. Then the heart starts pumping, because there on that beautiful field is a person who is so much bigger than real life, someone you have idolized, someone you would like to be, someone who does heroic things, who stirs your soul, is right there in front of you.

These pictures and feelings will remain with you always, as real fifty years from now as if they were yesterday. Baseball is a game that is a great leveler. Bigness does not mean greatness. A small man can be the hero and slay dragons. Skill is the element that raises these men above all others. Can you imagine standing 60 feet from someone and he throws a round, hard object at you at speeds up to 95 mph and you are expected to hit it with a 34 ounce piece of wood, and sometimes that hard object curves or dips before it gets to you. Being able to throw it that fast or being able to hit it. That takes skill that only very few people have.

How can you not love a game where the rules have hardly changed a whit since its inception? It's the law of life in pinstripes. If you have the God given talent, follow the rules and master the game you can be the idol of boys from all over the world. It is order, it is precise, and it is beautiful.

Baseball has become big in the movie business. The Natural, Major League, Field of Dreams, Beat the Drum Slowly, these have all been good moneymakers for Hollywood. What do they have in common? Average guys becoming big guys through baseball, and isn't that every boys dream. If you have the skill, can learn the rules and play within those rules you can achieve your dreams. Not a bad thing to teach kids.

So the next time you're feeling beat and your job is wearing you down, grab a coke and hit your favorite chair, turn on the baseball game and try to remember what it was like the first time you went in that stadium and enjoy.