Cleveland Matters

Time flies when your favorite team is awful, doesn't it?

I watched "The Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush" on HBO again today. It's one of those shows that's impossible to turn off when you stumble across it, the story is just that interesting (I should point out that it was followed by "Ted Williams," a documentary about, well, Ted Williams, during which his nephew, named Ted Williams -- really -- claims that, because of the debacle that was Williams' will, his famous uncle will now be most commonly known as "the frozen guy," not, say, "the greatest hitter baseball has ever known." The lesson here is that Ted Williams' nephew, Ted Williams, is an idiot.). The Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1955 rather handily, and waited to see who they would play in the World Series. One of the Dodgers' mentioned that they didn't really care whether they would play the Yankees or Cleveland.

This was, of course, one year after the Indians would get swept in the World Series by the Giants.

Anyway, I think, given the decades of irrelevance that the Tribe has experienced in its history, it's easy to forget why the Indians matter. They don't have the mystique that the Yankees or the Red Sox have, yet in the early days of baseball they were right there, just as important the the league as anything coming out of New York or Boston or even Detroit.

I once read an article in which famed Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully suggested that perhaps the best thing that could happen to baseball would be to cut the league back down to eight teams in each league. It made me wonder, in today's bi-coastal, media controlled world, which teams would make the cut. And I began to worry that my beloved Tribe wouldn't be one of them.

Cleveland's biggest problem these days -- aside from the staggering job loss and crippling depression -- is that it is a one sport town; the people of Northeast Ohio can really only afford to support one team at a time. Who are you going to go see, Ryan Garko (who I happen to like) and Kelly Shoppach (who I happen to not like), or LeBron James (who I like despite his front runner tendencies) and Shaq (who I like despite having played with Kobe)? Honestly, the NFL might want to reconsider extending the season any further, because at a certain point Cleveland fans are going to have to regularly decide between those Browns' tickets and those Cavs tickets', and we all know how that decision would go these days.

It is no coincidence that the Indians dominated after the Browns left and the Cavs got bad again.

So, what, then? Do we wait for LeBron to move to New York before the Tribe can go the World Series and lose again? No, we just hold out hope that we can catch lightning in a bottle again, like we did in '07, and realize that the karma of a city will only allow those years to happen as an exception, not as a rule.

Speaking of karma, does that mean we should trade Cliff Lee? Hey, at least Sabathia had the manners to win the Cy Young while getting our team into the post-season (granted, he actually had help). What could it possibly take to get Lee from the Tribe, given that we have a really cheap option on him next year? And, if we DO trade him, aren't we basically admitting that we have no shot next year, either?

Well, yes to that last one, which might not be too far from the truth. Keeping Cliff Lee means making a number of assumptions, specifically about our future pitching staff. It assumes that Jake Westbrook will be able to return to form after half a season of play this year (he's due back at the beginning of August). It assumes that Fausto Carmona, who was sent all the way to the Rookie League just a month ago, has figured it out, and can be the Cy Young contender he was in '07. It assumes that Hector Rondon's first two starts since getting the call to AAA Columbus are indications of what he'll do the rest of the season, and what he can do next year. It assumes that Aaron Laffey and Scott Lewis, if healthy, can live up to their potential. And it assumes that we can get something out of our AAAA guys, David Huff and Jeremy Sowers, who always seem to be one inning away from being solid pitchers.

It also assumes that any of those guys could move to the bullpen if they don't land a starting job and, in doing so, save said bullpen from itself.

And, yes, I would go so far as to say it assumes we have a new manager.

That's an awful lot of assumptions to make. That's an awful lot of "what if's."

Sadly, at this point, that's all we have.