A worthy cause to champion

CLEVELAND - You probably don't want to hear it, but if the Red Sox must lose to someone this year, let it be the Indians.

These people deserve it.

Only Cubs fans have waited longer for a championship than the Indians, who last won it all in 1948. These people have waited 43 years for a Cleveland team to be champions in anything. Like, how many people are left around here who actually saw Jim Brown play?

But there are plenty here who lived through the dreary 3 1/2 decades in which their Indians did not play one meaningful game in September, and precious few after May. That's why I used to laugh at the self-pitying Red Sox "woe is me" sorts who could never quite get it into their pretty little heads that it is far, far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

For 34 seasons, from 1960 through 1993, the Indians were relentlessly awful, and if you don't believe me, how else would you describe the circumstance of finishing above fourth once (a third in 1968) during all those years?

Going to Indians games in the '70s and '80s was a surreal experience. Oh, the faithful would bring the mammoth Municipal Stadium alive for Opening Day, when they would pull in 65 or 70 thousand, which would represent a significant percentage of their annual gate. You'd come back on Day 2 and it would be down to the hardy 7,387 or so, and that would set the tone for the season.

The stadium didn't help. People called it The Mistake By The Lake, among other things. It was built way too large (78,000) in 1931, when Cleveland was something like the fourth-largest city in the land and brimming with pride. Cleveland was hoping to get the 1932 Olympics (they would go to Los Angeles), and when it didn't, it was kind of stuck with it. The Indians didn't abandon cozy League Park completely until 1947.

But its great size did come into play in 1948, when, thanks to a very good ball club and the incessant promotion of new owner Bill Veeck, the Indians established a major league attendance record of 2,620,627 and followed that up by bringing in 2,233,771 the next season.

As the years went on, the very size of the ballpark worked against them. Who needed to buy a ticket in advance? No matter who was in town, you could awake on the morning of the game and make a snap decision to hit Municipal Stadium.

One thing we'll never know is what the disappointment of 1954 meant in the Big Picture. The '54 Indians established an American League record by winning 111 games. An interesting byproduct was that the Yankees were second with 103 wins, and no Casey Stengel team ever won more.

Anchored by a Bob Lemon-Early Wynn-Mike Garcia pitching staff, the Indians were expected to walk through the New York Giants in the World Series. But the Giants stole Game 1 when Willie Mays made the famous catch off Vic Wertz and Dusty Rhodes hit his cheesy pinch-hit homer (probably carrying 257 1/2 feet down the 257-foot right-field foul line), and three days later (no travel day), it was over, just like that. The Indians had been swept. There had to be massive fan disillusionment.

The Tribe finished a strong second to the White Sox in 1959, and that was the last time they had even a long-distance sniff until the aborted 1994 season. Through it all, Cleveland never ceased caring about the Indians. The fans listened to and watched the games, and they had their firm opinions, as expressed in some wonderful letters to the editor in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on the 15 full-time and two interim managers the Indians presented for their perusal (none for more than three years) until Mike Hargrove began his nine-year tenure in 1991.

They just didn't go to the big, fading mansion on the lake very often.

I really don't think people who follow baseball were shocked when Jacobs Field opened in 1994 and people responded to general manager John Hart's nice young ball club by filling the place on a nightly basis. There was always a residual fan base. The Indians would have finished first in 1994, and they did finish first every year from 1995-99, during which time they became the first team ever to sell out a ballpark before a season began.

But it would have been nice to finish the deal, and the Indians twice lost in the World Series ('95 and '97), the second time in excruciating fashion when closer Jose Mesa could not hold a one-run lead in the ninth inning of Game 7 against the Marlins.

There was a tear-down situation based on financial considerations, but now GM Mark Shapiro and a sharp staff have reconstructed the squad. It is impossible not to like this team, and if you heard the noise in The Jake Monday night, you know the fans have embraced them.

C'mon. The Marlins have won twice. The Diamondbacks have won. The Rockies might win. This is fair? You got yours three years ago. If these fans wind up getting theirs, please remember there are a lot worse clubs to lose to than the Cleveland Indians.