Ah Cleveland, how doth I love thee?

Let me count the ways...

There are so many obvious ways. Ways with catching titles like "The Drive." "The Fumble." "The Shot." All of those are much too easy, so I will start my list with a trip down memory lane. A trip to when I was but a wee lad. Back when I walked up hill both ways to school. Back when the likes of Chris Bando and Tommy Hinzo were the kings of Cleveland. Everyone knew them. They could walk no where without being mobbed by adoring Wahoo fans. Or at least, they were players that their parents knew of vaguely and could probably approximate the positions they might play at any given time.



The year: 1987
The scene: The Sports Illustrated baseball preview issue.
The back story: The Indians won 86 games in 1986.
The crime: The SI cover showed Indians hitters Joe Carter and Cory Snyder, and carried the words "INDIAN UPRISING" and the sub-headline, "Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League!"
The outcome: The Indians lost 101 games in 1987 and were not in fact, as SI would have you believe, the best team in the American League.

'Tis better to have had your hopes lifted high so that they could be ruthlessly and thoroughly crushed than to never have had hopes at all, I suppose.