August 4, 2009

Fellow Indians Fans, It’s My Column, and I’ll Cry If I Want To

No crying in baseball, huh?

Tell that to Victor Martinez. The All-Star catcher and first baseman reportedly sat in front of his locker holding back tears and clinging to his namesake son like a teddy bear after hearing that he had been dealt from my Cleveland Indians to the Boston Red Sox – the day before his Bobblehead Doll Night at Progressive Field. (Leaving fans pining for Mark Shapiro Voodoo Doll Night, the better to show what they think of the Tribe’s bobbleheaded General Manager.)

Martinez, who had spent all 13 of his years in professional baseball with the Cleveland organization – and mere days before had reiterated his exceedingly rare but apparently heartfelt desire to retire an Indian – choked up as he told the assembled scribes, “This is tough. This is my house. This is my home.”

Yo, Vic. You want to cry? I’ve been lamenting these unlovable losers for probably half a century – at least since that fateful spring morn when the Chief Wahoo sweatshirt showed up in my Easter basket.

Ah, for those halcyon days swatting midges in the bleachers at the old 74,000-seat Municipal Stadium with roughly 1,499 other screw-loose fans. The Arson-Squad bullpens. Deals dispatching budding stars to locales such as Detroit or New York for collections of forgettable names like Spikes and Beene and Buskey. The first blown save ever in a ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. Epic chokes in the last week of the 2005 season and in the 2007 playoffs.

Some fans like to chalk up the Tribe’s soon-to-be 61-year trophy drought to the Curse of Rocky Colavito – resulting from the weird 1959 trade of the American League home-run champ for the batting champ, a transaction an especially witty headline-writer heralded as “40 Home Runs for 140 Singles.” But it’s really all about the pastime’s perverse pecking order.

Hey, Cleveland fans, are you weeping with me over the fact that our team’s starting third baseman, set-up man, RBI leader from last year, starting left fielder, Cy Young award-winning ace and All-Star catcher were dealt in the space of a month for 11 players, 10 of whom were minor-leaguers hailing from squads including, and I kid thee not, the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs and the Modesto Nuts? Try cheering for those Pirates of Pittsburgh, whose forlorn followers are shedding enough tears to keep all Three Rivers flowing – after watching seven of their Opening Day starting nine exit for baseball’s higher-rent districts in a fire sale that makes Old Lady Leary’s conflagration look like a pilot light.

Sportswriting legend Peter Gammons noted last week that with the Chicago Cubbies’ ascension into a tie for first (where they remain parked at this writing), each and every division in the sport was led by the team with the fattest payroll. In baseball, money talks, and pricey, soon-to-be free agents are traded before they walk.

It’s no coincidence that after the Tribe surrendered and swapped its wildly popular but ultimately unaffordable 2007 Cy Young award winner – the 6’7”, Baby Huey-ish C.C. Sabathia – those Damn Yankees sopped him up in their half-billion-dollar spending spree last winter without a second thought. Nor is it happenstance that when Cliff Lee packed his bags this week for the City of Brotherly Love – earning the Tribe the dubious distinction of becoming the first team to ship out reigning Cy Young honorees in consecutive seasons – the prized lefty was heading for the same cash-flush destination as the team’s last big free agent, super-slugger Jim Thome. And in migrating from the Mistake on the Lake to snobby Beantown, Martinez followed in the footsteps of that future Hall-of-Famer who let Manny be Manny in Fenway Park’s friendly confines before loving L.A. and its big bucks.

So how to close the yawning gap between the National Pastime’s haves and have-nuts? Hey, why not ask me how to balance the budget while paying for universal health care and saving Social Security, settling that pesky Arab-Israeli conflict or ridding us of that 87^th modeling, cooking or talent “reality” competition? Heck if I know.

But one thing I know for sure. The running joke in my family is that I will pass from the scene with two strikes on the final batter when the Indians finally are about to lock down a World Series title. The way the superstar turnstile continues to spin away from the shores of Lake Erie, I’m assured of many healthy – and tearful – years to come.