It's that time of year again. The dread of winter is gone, the birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, everything is becoming green again, and Tom Hamilton is famously calling the home run ball. Now I have a sneaking suspicion that a number of you will stop reading here due to the fact that this is a post about baseball. But I implore you, stick with it because it isn't a typical baseball piece.
Baseball and I throughout my young life have had sort of a bipolar relationship. When I was a kid, it was a thrill to be able to go into my backyard or a local park and mash balls in every direction. There's just something about a kid and his dad chucking a few or a group of neighborhood kids getting together to play the game. As I grew a little older, I cared less about playing and took an interest in the Baltimore Orioles and Cal Ripken Jr. I didn't watch many games and I didn't always care whether they won or lost, as long as Ripken did well.
When 2001 rolled around, I took a great interest in professional sports. It started with Nascar and Jeff Gordon. My first race was the Daytona 500, which was Dale Earnhardt's last. My first Super Bowl was XXXVI. Kurt Warner and The Greatest Show on Turf vs. back up and unknown at the time Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. I didn't realize it then but I was witnessing history. I jumped aboard the L.A. Lakers bandwagon with Kobe and Shaq in tow. I was given an Yzerman jersey and the red wings became my hockey team. As my love of professional sports was blooming, I set baseball on a back burner. Sure I still sort of cared about the Orioles, but not enough to follow them or the game of baseball. I was all about the fast cars, the crashes, the hard hits, the touchdowns, the rainbow threes, the slam dunks, the hockey brawls, and the once in a lifetime goals. Baseball was just too slow for me and I was more prone to throwing a pigskin then cowhide. Slowly, but surely, things would happen that changed my mind.
Summer of 2004. I had moved from Southern Pennsylvania a year ago to Cleveland, Ohio and was attending a giant youth conference put on by the churches in the great lakes area. There were around 1000 people in attendance and for one of the activities, they took us all to an Indians game. Maybe it was the warm weather, the roar of the crowd, the ballpark hot dogs, the anticipation of what was to come next that enthralled me. Even though the game wasn't fast enough, there was still something overwhelmingly wonderful about being at Jacob's Field. However, I still did not follow baseball.
Three years later, a little bit of magic happened. The lowly Cleveland Indians began winning. Not only were they winning, but they were winning with authority. I went to three games that year and each one was more exciting then the last. The third one I attended that year was a memorable one. The Indians were playing their dreaded rival Detroit. The stadium was packed with Indians and Tigers fans alike and the atmosphere was alive. The Indians were down most of the game, but then they scored three runs to tie it in the 8th. The heated battle went into 11 innings. Then, with one out in the 11th, Casey Blake took the plate. At this moment, the story of Mighty Casey came to mind. But this story had a different ending. Blake crushed a mammoth homer for a walk off win. The stadium exploded. The Indians made the playoffs and defeated the hated Yankees in spectacular fashion. They almost put away the Red Sox with a 3-1 series lead, but ultimately fell short and just missed the World Series. That season I became an Indians fan.
If you talk to me about baseball today, you'd be surprised at how much I could tell you. If you are a baseball fan, you get it. If you're not and are confused as to why one would be so adamant about this sport, it's simple. For the love of the game. Take the Chicago Cubs for example. They are baseball's first team. They have one of the oldest ball parks loaded with rich history and untarnished by a corporate sponsorship taking naming rights. They last won a world series in 1908, the longest drought in any sport. Unlike most other cities, Chicago isn't championship starved. The Bears won in 1985, the bulls won six championships in the 90s, the White Sox won in 2005, and the Black Hawks have won the Stanley Cup three times since 2009. Until last year, the Cubs were bad for a long time. But Cubs fans, win or lose, showed up in droves, even before they became good again. And I will say this. If the Cubs win the World Series, the city of Chicago (including White Sox fans) will go insane like you've never seen before. They will be the team Chicagoans talk about for years to come. The three stanley cups? A mere afterthought. The 90s Bulls (with the exception of Jordan) a brief dinner tale. The 85 Bears? Replayed ESPN documentaries. The Cubs will be the team talked about for years to come.
Okay, so I just gave the Cubs a lot of love. But what about my beloved Indians? I believe they have a shot. But that all rides on their offense. Even if they lose, there's a saying in baseball that any given day at the ballpark, you may see something you've never seen before. What is it to me? It's listening to Tom Hamilton announce a game as if it was the greatest game on earth. It's watching Cliff Lee, C.C. Sabathia, and Corey Kluber win the Cy Young. It's the history of the 90s Indians. It's watching a 40 year old former juicer turned beloved player who any other sport would've written off long ago smash a 2 run, walk-off, game winning blast to keep a streak alive to enter the playoffs. It's calling off work to go to a potential rained out game where hits were hard to find and in extra innings the Indians go down by two and are down to their last strike on their last out with a washed up pro 0-4 on the day crush a walk-off grand slam right to your section. It's the bench clearing brawls that say if you mess with our man, the whole team is coming after you. It's the unwritten rules, the statistics, the jargon. It's welcoming back an Indians legend and roaring with the crowd every time he gets a hit. It's a slugfest where the Indians trail by one, your section tries to get the wave going but fails miserably until the man leading the charge tells us to believe and try one more time and as we do it succeeds and as it's going around, the Indians clobber a two run double to take the lead and put the game away for good. It's going to eight games and not witnessing a single loss and seeing four walk-off wins. It's spending three hours with people you care about laughing, joking, and sharing something in common for that short period of time. It's for the love of the Indians and the love of the game.
Happy Opening Day and as always GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO TRIBE!
