CLEVELAND -- The last out had been recorded moments earlier and the Guardians were freshly down 0-2 to the White Sox in this best-of-five ALDS when I passed a club employee in the underbelly of Progressive Field.
“If we’re ever going to end ‘This Thing,’” he said, “it’s gonna have to be the hard way.”
I capitalize “This Thing,” because I respect my elders.
This Thing, in case you can’t tell, is Cleveland’s World Series championship drought, the longest in baseball.* This Thing is 78 years old. This Thing goes back as long as Scrabble and Velcro and frisbees and vinyl records and the Polaroid camera. This Thing is the exact same age as my dad … and my dad is old!
*Technically, the Arizona Cardinals have the only longer championship drought in major North American pro sports. But considering the franchise has moved twice, no one in Arizona even knows that.
As a native Clevelander, I’ve lived with This Thing lingering in the background of my 45 years.
I can’t say I knew anything about it in the 1980s. I was just a little kid. I didn’t know the Indians, at the time, were very, very bad at baseball. They looked so good to me, sitting in the general admission stands at Municipal Stadium so that I could be near my hero, Cory Snyder. I didn’t know he wasn’t especially good at baseball, either (0.7 WAR in nine seasons). He hit three home runs in a game on my sixth birthday. That was enough for me to believe he was the second coming of Babe Ruth. (Just kidding … I had no idea who Babe Ruth was.)
The presence of This Thing did not become apparent to me until the Indians actually became … good. You know all about that. They moved into Jacobs Field (an actual ballpark, not a stadium … big difference) in 1994, packed the park, had a bunch of young players ready to pop, rounded out the roster with some star vets, then pounced on the 144-game shortened season in 1995 by somehow winning 100 games.*
*Fun fact: Every single win that season was a comeback featuring a home run and a double by Albert Belle. (This is not actually true, but it feels true, and that’s really all that matters when we’re talking about memories.)
This Thing should have died there. It was only 47 years old, a wee bitty baby when compared to The Things in Boston and both sides of Chicago. If we look at the U.S. population in 1948 and factor in the survival rate, you figure a little more than half the people alive in 1948 were still alive in 1995. That’s not bad. That’s a lot of people who would have witnessed -- or at least been alive for -- not one, but two Cleveland baseball championships.
Then Cleveland got beat by the Braves in the 1995 World Series. The strike zone was wider than the Cuyahoga River, there was no ABS Challenge at the time and one of the greatest lineups in history was not enough.
OK, so you roll on into 1996, and … whoops, Roberto Alomar just popped one over the fence in extras for the Orioles to win the Division Series.
All right, so they’ll get ‘em in ’97 with the high socks and the late-season surge and, you know, THE 2-1 LEAD IN THE BOTTOM OF THE NINTH INNING OF GAME 7 OF THE WORLD SERIES. Nope.
I think that’s when I was finally old enough to realize This Thing was a thing. I started to watch these loaded Indians teams not with a feeling of obvious inevitability but more of a curious bewilderment. I suppose the sportswriter in me was beginning to be born. I was less and less emotionally invested in the results and more and more fascinated by them.
The Indians fell to the Yankees in the 1998 ALCS. They lost to the Red Sox in the 1999 ALDS*, which went the distance. They missed the playoffs with 90 wins in 2000, back when you could miss the playoffs with 90 wins. They lost to the 116-win Mariners in the 2001 ALDS, again in five games.
*You look back, and it makes absolutely no sense. I don’t know how many baseball fans outside of Cleveland realize the 1999 Indians scored 1,009 runs. That is, I believe, over 1,000 runs! That is so many runs! And they didn’t make it out of the ALDS.
Since the 1995 team ended a 41-year playoff drought, Cleveland has not gone more than five seasons without a postseason appearance. That’s aided by the existence of the AL Central, but it’s still a truly remarkable achievement for a small-market team with one of the lowest payrolls in the game.
But these postseason appearances so often amount to Sideshow Bob stepping on rake after rake. There was the 3-1 lead blown against Boston in the 2007 ALCS. A 3-1 lead was blown against the Cubs in the 2016 World Series. Then a 2-0 lead was blown against the Yankees in the 2017 ALDS. The team just last year that made history with a 15 1/2-game comeback against the Tigers to win the division, only to lose to those same Tigers in a decisive Game 3 in the Wild Card Series.
So now here we are, on the cusp of another winner-take-all game. If you keep knocking on the door, does someone answer?
Well, I go back to what that team employee said. The Guards are definitely doing this the hard way.
They have climbed back from that 0-2 hole. They did it on the road at the Rate, in a ballpark full of rowdy fans who had been tailgating all day. They did it because José Ramírez, who, at 5-foot-8, 190-pounds, is what you would expect an AI chatbot to come up with if you asked it to generate an underdog baseball player that perfectly represents a Rust Belt town, playing like a man possessed. They put themselves in a position to be just the fourth team to win a Division Series after losing the first two games at home.
And the craziest part: They’re not doing it against Cleveland!
Even if the Guardians survive the White Sox, This Thing might rear its ugly head again, when they face what is objectively a better Rays team in the ALCS.
But there’s something beautiful about watching this plucky little team try to take This Thing down. It’s the hard way or no way.