Champions!

A few quick comments on the last two games:

Byrd will have games like that, particularly when a team is on a hot hitting streak like the A's were that night. I have faith in him to right himself. Let's hope he has a good final outing.

Jake Westbrook is so amazing when he's on, it's unreal. Hopefully, today was a sign of things to come.

And it was almost as if Grady was going to close the deal today with sheer force of will.

So let's talk about the lean years.

I remember sitting in a bar in Atlanta, GA watching the Tribe play the Mariners in 2001 and thinking that if Colon could win his first start, we'd be fine, because that meant he could win his second start and we'd just need one more win on top of that (how much faith I had back then). And Colon lost his first start. And we went out in the first round.

In 2002, the Indians started the season 11-1 (the one loss coming to the Angels who, at the time, were not predicted to do much, but would go on to win it all). I remember an interview with Travis Fryman after the fast start where he points out that the team was still good, even after losing so many great players.

And then the wheels came off the wagon.

I followed the team as best I could in 2003, but this was before I discovered MLB.tv and I was living in Los Angeles. I don't know that I was actually able to catch even a single game, but followed the scores online. I remember that game against Detroit with the long delay and the awful start by whoever it was when Jake Westbrook came in and pitched seven scoreless innings and someone said to someone else "hey, maybe that guy should be a starter."

I discovered the wonderful world of watching games online in 2004. I was able to follow the team regularly for the first time since I left Ohio in the spring of 2000. It was agonizing, of course. I can remember cancelling my monthly MLB.tv suscription and the operator offering me a post-season package and explaining to him that my team was no where near being in the post-season.

Fortunately, I had a new assistant at work and he was a lifelong Red Sox fan, so I could at least be happy for him.

I spent all of 2005 telling anyone who'd listen that the wheels would come off the White Sox wagon and we'd catch them. No, really, I was saying this before the All-Star break. At one point, people actually started believing me. And we all know what happened in the last week.

I had high hopes in 2006. We all did. I even sent out my first pre-season Tribe breakdown to anyone unfortunate enough to have given me their e-mail address.

I did the same before THIS season started. And the number reason I gave for why the Tribe would win the divison? Depth. As I've mentioned before, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

So here we are, AL Central champs, ghost of the 90's floating everywhere.

Someone put up a poll on the official Indians message board the other day asking who their favorite Indians team was. It's hard to argue with the '95 team, as they meant so much symbolically.

But I'm going to go with this team. I'm going to go with the core group that I watched wallow in mediocrity for the last few years, only to finally find the recipe for sucess. I'm going to go with Grady, Pronk, and Victor making their first post-season appearances. I'm going to go with Lofton's next shot at a ring and two Cy Young candidates. I'm going to go with a team that matches the teams of the 90's in home game homeruns and also has one of the best rotations in baseball. I'm going with a team I watch grow together over the course of the last few years.

So here we go.