Cleveland in the World Series: How Does it Feel?

Believe it. Francisco Lindor has helped the Indians reach the World Series. (via Arturo Pardavila III)

Believe it. Francisco Lindor has helped the Indians reach the World Series. (via Arturo Pardavila III)

A generous view of fandom offers something gloriously childlike—an innocent and uncomplicated love. This is fandom as a pursuit sparked only by simple passion, sustained through ordinary devotion. A less generous view of fandom is a more honest view, and it offers something woefully childish. This is something more futile—this is fandom as a twisted, pointless form of emotional gambling.

Through this last lens, there is perhaps no fandom so reckless or so stupid as Cleveland fandom. It is not just expecting to lose, but expecting to lose frequently and painfully and ridiculously. It is losing as a tradition carried out to the point of losing as an identity. It is not just losing, but losing in a way so that the agony of each defeat is iconic enough to generate its own title. The Catch, The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot: an athletic history relayed through snapshots from a catalogue of sadness.

And so the Cavaliers’ NBA championship in June—the first title in franchise history and the first for any Cleveland team since 1964—didn’t just end a drought, it began to realign a city’s sports culture. But while it shifted the foundational narrative of Cleveland fandom, it did not break it entirely. A half century of misery cannot be erased by a single victory. A legacy of losing as layered and as wretched as Cleveland’s is more enduring, something woven too tightly into the character of the fandom to unravel so quickly as that. The collective drought is over, but its most lasting component still holds its deepest roots in place.

For now.

indians-cover-87-newCleveland baseball has gone 68 years without a title its own, with an impressive variety of disappointments and miscellaneous small-scale disasters in the interim. A trade with effects felt strongly enough to spark the idea of a curse. The best evidence on record for Sports Illustrated’s cover jinx, with “Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League” leading to a season of 101 losses. Years of cellar dwelling and myriad what could have beens brought on by injuries and transactions with unhappy endings. A tragedy too large and too senseless to fit the framework and vocabulary offered by baseball. And three trips to the World Series, spread across five decades, each with a profoundly and uniquely miserable outcome. One of baseball’s historically great teams (111 wins!) reduced to a simple backdrop for one of baseball’s historically great catches and the indignity of a four-game sweep in 1954. A series of close calls and quirks of circumstance in 1995, five one-run games ending with a one-hit shutout for Atlanta and another defeat for Cleveland. And finally the blown save of 1997’s Game Seven, as a team that sat two outs away from winning it all dissolved into the nightmare of an extra-innings collapse.

And now—beautifully, weirdly, somewhat improbably—there is this team. The Indians’ status as preseason darlings was dinged before it could even begin, with one key injury to start the year and others that piled up in crucial points to come. But the grind of a slow spring lit into an electric summer. There were more walk-off wins than any other team, a winning streak that lasted long enough to feel like it might really never end, and clever managing, too. The division lead was captured in June and never surrendered; even with a makeshift starting rotation and opponents perfectly designed to exploit that weakness, the postseason has brought only one loss so far.

This is all to say: It is a team that is very easy to adore in a generous, childlike way. It is a team that makes fandom feel like an exercise in innocent and uncomplicated love. I’m sure this is true, to a certain extent, of any winning team loved anywhere by anyone. But as someone who loves Cleveland, someone who has watched this season through the legacy of losing that has framed every season I have ever seen, I have loved this team in a way that is easier than I have felt able to love any other.

Today is my 22nd birthday. As a kid, not quite able to understand either the meaning of “mathematically eliminated from contention” or the fact that my parents could not pass my wish list off to a general manager, I asked for a Cleveland World Series title year after year. Now—at a point where I’ve outgrown that impracticality and intensity of emotion, but maybe not by so much yet—Game 1 will be held on Oct. 25 for the first time in the history of the Series, and the Indians will be there for the first time since I’ve been old enough to understand. In a sense, it feels fundamentally dumb to have noticed this little twist of fate at all, but in a larger sense, it feels too beautiful to bother with how juvenile it might seem.

Caring, generally, is something of a fraught endeavor. It is very easy not to care, and when the object of care in question is something as far from your control and as ultimately insignificant as a baseball team, it can seem preferable not to care. But even when weighed down by a tradition of losing and tangled in a perspective too broad to leave your love pure—caring beats the alternative.

References & Resources


Emma Baccellieri is the weekend writer at Deadspin and the curator of the FanGraphs Newsletter. She also contributes to Baseball Prospectus. Follow her on Twitter @emmabaccellieri.
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Gary
7 years ago

As a fellow Cleveland fan, it is definitely an amazing feeling having the Indians reach this point after being an afterthought for much of the past fifteen years (and beyond) – especially with this year’s absurdly likeable and selfless team. Let’s hope they can give you that win tonight as a birthday present!

Dennis Bedard
7 years ago

The words “Cleveland” and “Indians” make me think of words like Max Alvis, Tony Horton, Joe Azcue, Vic Davalillo, and Sam McDowell. And not to forget the sleeveless uniforms they wore in the late ’60’s.

LondonTribe
7 years ago

Beautifully written.

BD
7 years ago

I no longer live in Cleveland, but lived there during both the 1995 and 1997 World Series losses. I attended many games at the Jake in 1997, so that team holds a special memory for me. The hit over Charles Nagy’s head in game seven sealing the loss is still painful to this day. A friend of mine held a game seven party, complete with a cake decorated “Cleveland Indians- World Series champions!”. The cake was hidden until the 9th inning, and brought out just in time for Jose Mesa’s blown save. After the loss, the adults were devastated and the room was quiet until a child asked when we could eat the cake. The simple innocence of a child put a smile on our faces and provided a brief interlude from the disappointment. Hopefully this is the year that we eat the cake basking in victory, not reflecting on what could have been…

scott
7 years ago

Well Happy Birthday!

Normally I would object to your portrayal of us as “reckless” and “stupid” as well as “gloriously childlike—an innocent and uncomplicated love” – if you were yet another outsider trying to get a handle on what we feel.

I’ve been an Indians fan since 1972 so I’ve been through the hopeless times, the bad trades that only got the other team better, the trading pitching for offense and then (a couple years later) offense for pitching, the threatened relocations, the apathy, the old Stadium, the season being over by the time the Browns got to training camp, and I never got weary of this team. This was always my team. And when an unexpected pennant comes along, especially with the injuries and the likes of Jose Ramirez and Mike Napoli coming out of nowhere, it really does make it all the sweeter. Gloriously childlike, indeed! What a good way to put it.

Horatio
7 years ago

Wonderful piece Emma! Enjoy this series and feed the inner child. Fandom is a silly thing in many ways, but in a world that is so often somber, serious and depressing, it is important to embrace something with childlike glee and exuberance.

Scooter
7 years ago

I’m way behind on my reading, so I’m just seeing this now, as Game 6 ends. I don’t root for either team in this Series, but this piece is really about fandom in general, and I loved it.

Very well written. Thank you.

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