The Detroit News: Cleveland Is A Look Into Detroit’s Past

Tom Gage of The Detroit News wrote an opinion column for today’s paper that took a retrospective at how the Detroit sports landscape used to be and how it compares to Cleveland at this time. While focusing primarily on baseball with the Tribe and Tigers squaring off this weekend, it touches on all three teams.

But like the “Twilight Zone” episode in which a commercial jet flies through a time warp, it’s out there somewhere.

And every time you drive to Cleveland this time of year, at least in the last five or so, it’s how it used to be driving the other way.

If you turn the Tigers clock back 10, 15 or 20 years, to the days of wondering if there was any hope for them, you’ve suddenly entered the world of the Indians.

It’s as sad for them now as it was for the Tigers then.

And sadder still for Cleveland as a sports city than it was for Detroit, which always had the Red Wings to lean on when the Lions and Tigers were bad.

As they often were.

So, it appears that the Indians’ freefall into the basement has not gone unnoticed with the neighbors to the north.