Little mistakes, big problems: World Series, Game 2
October 27, 2016Is Danny Salazar fully back?
October 27, 2016Happy Tue….er, I mean, Thursday, WFNY!
While We’re Waiting looks a lot different from this side of the week. Thank you to Kyle Welch for filling in for me on Tuesday. Now to repay his efforts, I am unofficially joining #TeamThursday for a day.
I’m sure many of you were really wondering where I was on Tuesday, right? Right? Anyone? Oh, there you are. All two of you, I bet you thought I probably drove up to Cleveland from Columbus to go be a part of one of the biggest nights in Cleveland sports history.
A couple months ago, a friend of mine messaged me asking if I wanted to go to the Cavaliers banner-raising game. Turns out he had a connection that got him tickets to the game. So of course I was in! I could not wait to be in Quicken Loans Arena and celebrate the players getting their rings and to watch that banner rise up from the floor to the rafters. Then, last week, we found out the Indians were going to the World Series and would be hosting Game 1 on Tuesday! I couldn’t believe it. I was going to be there for such an incredible once-in-a-lifetime night. I was ecstatic!
Then on Saturday, I began to notice some discomfort in my throat. I worried it might be a cold, but I was hoping it was just a dry throat from the dry fall air or even maybe some allergies. By Sunday, I felt pretty off. But I was still hoping it would just be a cold. Annoying, sure, but nothing to keep me from going to Cleveland on Tuesday. Monday morning, however, I woke up drenched in sweat despite being irreversibly cold. My body ached, I had no appetite, and my throat felt like I was swallowing glass shards. Something was definitely wrong.
A trip to the doctor revealed that I had strep throat. I hoped and prayed that the antibiotics would kick in fast enough that I could still make it to Cleveland on Tuesday. But when I woke up Tuesday morning, I still had a slight fever and I was just too tired and lightheaded to drive to Cleveland. I had to watch the festivities from afar, lying on my couch flipping channels as best I could between baseball and basketball.
I’ll admit, I was pretty devastated about not being able to go to that Cavs game. I wanted to experience the atmosphere of two Championship worlds colliding in the city where my favorite sports teams that I have spent my entire life rooting for play their games. I wanted to know that I was there when that banner which will forever hang in the rafters of whatever building the Cleveland Cavaliers play in was raised.
But such is life. And as disappointed as I may be in missing that night, I’ve also quickly realised how lucky we all are anyway. Whether I was there or not, we all got to experience something larger than we ever could have expected. We’re living at a time where the Cavaliers and Indians are both Championship caliber teams. Sports in Cleveland are fun right now! Who even cares about the Browns? They’re doing their rebuilding thing, but we don’t have to depend on the Browns to bring us sports happiness. We can lean on the Indians and Cavaliers and celebrate this time.
Win or lose this World Series, I am immeasurably proud of this Indians team. Watching them overcome devastating loss to the front end of their starting rotation, this team was written off. Quite literally. Yet here they are, tied 1-1 in the World Series with a great team like the Cubs. This is easily the most fun Indians team to root for since the powerhouse 90s teams. I’m not sure I’ll ever love a team more than I loved the lineup of Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Robbie Alomar, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, David Justice, Travis Fryman, Wil Cordero, and Sandy Alomar Jr, but this team is right up there.
And how could I ever love a team more than the Cavaliers, the team that ended Cleveland’s 52 year Championship drought? That Cavs team wasn’t always the most fun to root for. The drama between LeBron and Kevin Love, firing David Blatt mid-season, the drama with LeBron unfollowing the Cavaliers on Twitter1, the Tristan Thompson holdout, the hyper-critical microscope forever focused on Kyrie Irving and his passing. All of it was a lot of noise and distraction.
But by the end of the season, the players were looser than ever, Lil Kev had become a thing, and suddenly the team was fun. And they were playing phenomenal basketball. They steamrolled the Eastern Conference and then went toe to toe with the greatest regular season team in NBA history and pulled off one of the biggest upsets in sports history by coming back from a 3-1 deficit. What could possibly ever top that?
I know I’ve sort of touched on this before, but I think it’s a worthy topic to keep returning to. We are in such a great time for Cleveland sports and I don’t want any of this to end. And I sure as hell don’t want to take any of this for granted. Yes, the Indians lost to the Cubs Wednesday night. And it was a frustrating loss with a lot of self-inflicted mistakes. But nobody needs to freak out about this. First of all, this series is still very winnable. Second of all, even if they do lose the series, while it will definitely hurt, it won’t take anything away from what this team accomplished.
But there’s a clear path to victory for the Indians here. If the Indians can get two more stellar outings from Corey Kluber and Josh Tomlin does to the Cubs what he did to the Jays, the Indians will have a chance. If not, there’s nothing else you can do to win in this series. Playing a team like the Cubs, you probably knew ahead of time you were going to need three wins from Kluber. Without that, you’re facing an ever steeper climb. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel strangely calm about this series. I like where the Indians are at and I still think they have a reasonable chance of winning this series. Go Tribe!
- I mean, seriously, how did the Cavaliers win a Championship and look like the closest basketball team ever in the same season in which they fired their coach and their biggest superstar played very public passive aggressive mindgames with the franchise? The 2016 Cavaliers will forever be the weirdest and greatest Cleveland sports team of my life. [↩]
21 Comments
My Dad transferred to Chicago when I was 18. A couple years later I had a job that would take me to Chicago 3 times a year for trade shows. I spent my 21st birthday in Chicago with a bunch of 20 something sales reps on expense accounts. Most of what I can remember of that night was pretty excellent.
Years before Gateway was a gleam in politicians eyes, I went to Wrigley for the first time. OMG, an actual MLB ballpark in a neighborhood. No lights? Wrigleyville? It was manna from heaven.
Last night I took my 16 year old to his first World Series game. It was my 2nd. A burger, hot dog, 2 cracker jacks and a hot chocolate later, we lost. We played horrible. He didn’t seem to mind that much. And neither did I.
I don’t see the Indians losing 4 straight to anyone, even the Cubs. Which means they’ll be back at the Jake, where I like those chances. Even if they lose the series, I’ll get over it quickly, and their easy dismantling of the Red Sox and Blue Jays should forever be a part of the 2016 Cleveland Victory Montage.
Yep, exactly. I saw that ESPN article that tried saying that “The Drone” might be the newest addition to the misery montage. I don’t think so, ESPN. You can try, but that’s a dead story line. We’re having fun in Cleveland now, baby!
Nice try, Mothership. It’s like they think Bauer’s finger was the reason we lost the ALCS.
Hard for me to blame ESPN when less than a year ago our denizens proudly sold a documentary which attempted to convince the world that we are more long-suffering than any fanbase anywhere. So in May we demand universal sympathy to an undeserved string of decades of bad juju and in October we are filled with holy outrage at the media’s failure to keep weird happenings in healthy perspective … puhleeze. That’s why I hated the neurosis of Believeland. It was so, so … Boston.
great post , JPF !
hi ANDREW … tuff break on your illness , man … maybe there was a reason.
My guess is that it was the streptococcal bacteria.
Believeland was about 20 minutes of Earnest Byner holding back tears and 40 minutes of Scott Raab eating a rueben.
Only watched it once (after Cavs won). I hated it and will never watch it again. It started off strong by building the backstory of Northeast Ohio from an economic perspective. But once it got into the “moments”, it completely glossed over the season’s journey that kept making Clevelanders *believe*. ESPN strayed from those stories and just slapped a pun on the documentary title for some authenticity.
I didn’t see a single Knicks fan downtown on Tuesday. Aren’t they supposed to be the only “Superteam” in the East?
Andrew, your email to me offering the tickets to the Cavs game that you couldn’t attend must have gotten caught in my span filter.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7ba125b3f9fd483885189a291d01ace8ddaee747eb859d721fe9cfb32de9c6e2.gif
Julian Assange is reportedly a huge Cavs fan. He probably took them right out of your inbox.
https://frinkiac.com/gif/S04E13/873188/875907.gif?b64lines=RFVGRiBHQVJERU5TIQogSFVSUkFIIQ==
This. Haven’t seen it, don’t care to.
Really? Is it still tsm@hotmail.com?
Kinda surprising the fans of “basketball mecca” don’t travel better, no?
That streptococcal guy is a real bastard.
I wish we could have gotten the Believeland we were supposed to get. There’s a story be told in there somewhere.
I’ll kind of give them a pass for this one, but I’ll definitely poke fun at it. Why pay the premium to watch someone else raise a banner?
I don’t know why you were messing with him. I stay clear of that dude.