Cleveland’s Pro Baseball Team, Mildly Renascent

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As readers of this blog will know, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and under the tutelage of my sports-loving dad, I became a fan, too. I remain a fan and a follower of all the Cleveland professional sports team, the NBA Cavaliers (By lottery this week they won the first pick in the upcoming collegiate draft, a pleasant prospect.); the NFL Browns (I attended the last Cleveland pro sports championship, when the Browns won the NFL title in 1964, two years before the minting of the Super Bowl.); and the baseball Indians (In case you wonder, I am tired of the nickname, embarrassed by it, and wish the franchise would dump it; I tend to just call them the Tribe or CLEVE. At least this year the front office, though still resisting calls to change names, they do seem to have sidelined the brazenly racial “Chief Wahoo” mascot logo.). The history of failure–or least, shortfalls of the ultimate goal–by my teams, hasn’t deterred my fanship, illustrated by a piece I wrote last year, How to Enjoy Sports Even When Your Teams Have a History of Failure.

The Tribe haven’t won a World Series since ’48. This season, so far, the team has been playing surprisingly well, and at the moment they lead their division by a half-game. In their past 25 games they must be playing at about a 17-win and an 8-loss clip. They could still collapse after July 4th, but things look bright right now.

The above is prelude to the fact that last night the Tribe opened a 4-game series in Boston vs. the Red Sox at Fenway Park. It was the first game back in Boston for Terry Francona, now the CLEVE manager, after he held the job in Boston for 8 years, until 2011. As this Cleveland Plain Dealer story reminds, he won two World Series championships during that tenure, and then was quite unceremoniously dumped by the BOSOX brain trust. I’m really glad Cleveland has him in the dugout now. I’m sure his calm leadership is one of the reasons the Tribe is playing so well this season. Who knows, maybe the team can keep it up.

Last night’s game ended up as a route, for my side. The Tribe scored early and often. Their march through the innings went like this: 1-0; 4-0; 4-3; 5-3; 6-3; 12-3, the final score. The Tribe currently leads the American League in homers, with 60, yet oddly last night, though hitting double digits in run production–though they had a total of 16 base hits, with 4 doubles and a triple–they did not hit a homer. Still, it’s alright, for as Mark Reynolds the Tribe’s leading basher with 12 HRs puts it in beat writer Paul Hoynes’ game story, “‘Sometimes, homers are rally killers,’ said [the DH/3rd baseman] with a laugh.”

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Remembering the Pitch That Killed a Major League Ballplayer

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Sowell front coverSowell back coverThe Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read, or been involved with publishing. It chronicles the only fatality ever caused by injury during a baseball game. Ray Chapman was a great Cleveland Indians shortstop who died after struck in the head by a pitch thrown by NY Yankee Carl Mays. The tragedy occurred in the same season that the Tribe won their first World Series, somehow overcoming the loss of one of their best players. I’m glad that Cleveland Plain Dealer sports writer Bill Livingston, @LivyPD, chose to write about it today, the Sunday before Opening Day. Livingston reports that a film based on the book, “Deadball,” may be in the works.The Pitch That Killed is still in print today, in an edition from Ivan R. Dee, independent publisher in Chicago.

Macmillan, where I worked in the late 1980s, was a hotbed of excellent baseball publishing, anchored by The Baseball Encyclopedia. Titles I was responsible for included Two Spectacular Seasons: 1930–The Year the Hitters Ran Wil and 1968: The Year the Pitchers Took Revenge by William B. Mead and the Twentieth Anniversary edition of Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four, an edition that’s still widely available today, including from Powell’s Books, the affiliate bookseller for this site. Colleague and friend Rick Wolff, who edited The Pitch That Killed and The Baseball Encyclopedia also worked on You Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond, Robert Whiting’s enlightening examination of baseball in Japan. As baseball season begins, it’s fun to celebrate some great baseball books.

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First Visual Pun of 2013

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Turning on the TV to see what college football bowl games are on, I noticed something funny on the set, a Twitter hashtag–#caponebowl. Hmm, I thought what is this–the Capone Bowl? A showdown between groups of mobsters for domination of the latest collegiate rankings? Oh, on second thought I guess these photos tell the straight story. Did no one promoting this bowl game think of the (for them) unwelcome association between mobsters and bankers?

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Racist Football Fans Hating on President Obama

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Warning: If you read the Deadspin article associated with the tweet below, you will encounter vile racist haters of President Obama. Disturbing.

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Would a Lawyer Today Dare Send Such a Funny & Profane Letter?

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If it’s Sunday, it must be football, right? In keeping with the day, Shaun Usher, the British proprietor of the always-splendid website Letters of Note has reposted on his site’s Facebook page a funny exchange of correspondence that I chuckled over when he first shared it last February. It gave me another good laugh today. Shaun’s placed the 1974 letters under the heading Regarding Your Stupid Complaint. They were between Dale O. Cox, Esquire, a persnickety Cleveland Browns season ticket holder, and the Browns’ team office.

As readers of this blog may recall, from pieces such as How to Enjoy Sports Even When Your Teams Have a History of Failure, and a Personal History essay, I grew up following the ups and (often the) downs of Cleveland sports teams. With my late father and brother, I had the great good fortune to attend the last professional sports championship of a Cleveland team–when in the 1964 NFL title game the Browns upset the Baltimore Colts, 27-0. As the scanned copy of a grade school composition of mine will attest, the season ticket holders we sat near in the upper deck in Section 42 were a colorful bunch, like “Bert, a lover of wine” who “often fixe[d] himself a Diet-Rite and wine cocktail,” and Eddie, who “As soon as the first half ends, breaks out [a] thermos of chili . . . he shares with John, while John splits one of his many bottles of wine with him.” (See bottom of post for the whole piece.)

In the summer of 1977, after I was graduated from Franconia College, I worked as a beer vendor at Cleveland Indians’ baseball games. I enjoyed walking the wide open grandstands of cavernous Municipal Stadium, calling out such pitches as “Beer Here!” and “Get Your Cold Ones!”. My happy run as a vendor ended though when I worked a Cleveland Browns pre-season game, and was appalled to discover that the placid beer-drinking Indians fans I’d come to enjoy serving had morphed into, as I wrote in that personal history essay, “an unruly, inebriated mass. . . I was lucky I didn’t have my rack of beers stolen along with all my earnings.”

With these recollection of public drinking and intoxication at Municipal Stadium, you can see why I derive such a good laugh from the correspondence between Mr. Cox and the Browns (headings and signatures abridged):

November 18, 1974

The Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Stadium
Cleveland, OH

Gentlemen:

I am one of your season ticket holders who attends or tries to attend every game. It appears that one of the pastimes of several fans has become the sailing of paper airplanes generally made out of the game program. As you know, there is the risk of serious eye injury and perhaps an ear injury as a result of such airplanes. I am sure that this has been called to your attention and that several of your ushers and policemen witnessed the same.

Please be advised that since you are in a position to control or terminate such action on the part of fans, I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events. It is hoped that this disrespectful and possibly dangerous activity will be terminated.

Very truly yours,

Dale O. Cox

The Browns’ reply, from their General Counsel and cc:d to team owner Art Modell, was written only three days later:

Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. 

Very truly yours, 

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP. 

James N. Bailey,
General Counsel

cc: Arthur B. Modell

Cleveland Browns letters
—
In the years following the exchange with Mr. Cox, Art Modell–who died this past September at age 87–would later be tagged with infamy among many Cleveland sports fans for relocating the Browns to Baltimore in 1996. Yet it’s plain to me that at least in 1974 he was still a stand-up guy, or he wouldn’t have condoned his team attorney sending such a funny, profane letter to a customer who was himself a lawyer, and one who included in his letter an implied threat of litigation–“I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events.” Would any caution-ridden lawyer today dare to send such a letter in response? If you have thoughts on this and would like to continue the conversation, please let me know what you think in the comments field below. A final point on Mr. Usher’s Letters of Note presentation for this exchange. He uses a photo in it of a Cleveland stadium, but it is the new Browns stadium, built and opened in 1999, on the site of the old Municipal Stadium, where I attended games as a boy and worked in 1977.

A grade school essay of mine on the fans I sat near at Cleveland Browns’ games.

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Back in NYC–Blogging/Working/Watching Olympics

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Nice being away for more than two weeks’ vacation, and now real good being back home in Manhattan. Catching up to things here for the blog, which I didn’t post to very much or tend while I was away. Looking to get back in to the writing and posting and rthym right away.

While catching up on the blog and my book company biz, I’m also catching up on some Olympics action that I’d had a chance only to read about–the amazingly competitive US-Canada women’s football match from last weekend. The NBC rebroadcast I’m watching in NY on channel 450 shows what an epic seesaw affair it was. I know the US wins 4-3; the match is now heading to overtime periods, tied 3-3. It’s become a contentious contest with referees’ calls playing a key role. Canada was leading 3-2 when two calls went against them: Their goalie was flagged for holding the ball too long after a save, leading to a penalty kick; on the kick, the ball caromed off a Canadian defender, leading to a free kick which Abby Wambach nailed for the equalizer.

To this point, Canada’s Christine Sinclair has scored a hat trick, at least two of which were precise headers, and Megan Rapinoe has two goals. One of hers, the kick that tied the score at 1-1 early in the second half, was a rarity–an unassisted corner! Her other one, making it 2-2, also showed a very adroit foot. I’ve heard that Canada may file some form of protest, so I’m watching for the next controversial whistle. The US hasn’t led for a second, yet.

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