Category: Cleveland Indians (Page 73 of 96)

With historic baseball chokes becoming topic of the month for sports writers, it inevitably brings up my favorite baseball lore of all time…the 1951 pennant race. In the Rosenthal column quoted below, he draws on it for comparison to today’s White Sox.

The 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers blew a 13 1/2-game lead on Aug. 11 when the New York Giants went 38-8 down the stretch, forcing a one-game playoff that the Giants won on Bobby Thomson’s home run.

Two things I love about this story. First, one of my alltime favorite MASH episodes used the 1951 pennant race as a vehicle for a year-in-the-life episode, wherein Klinger convinces Charles to bet the house on the Dodgers, the entire rest of the camp bets on the Giants, culminating in the epic radio call, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”

Second, the mystery of how the Giants could possibly have gone 38-8 down the stretch got even more fantastic when the Wall Street Journal did a story a few years back detailing how the Giants stole the signs for the last two months of the season at the Polo Grounds, through an elaborate binocular, wire, door bell and signal system. There is nothing better than old school baseball chicanery, and if the Giants did in fact steal the signs to win the 1951 pennant, that is old school baseball chicanery at its finest.

Just getting beat, according to FoxSports’ Ken Rosenthal…by the Indians.

The Indians rank first in the league in ERA; the Sox are fourth. The Indians rank fourth in runs; the Sox are tied for eighth. The Sox hold a slight edge in defensive efficiency, a statistic that measures the percentage of balls in play that are converted into outs. But overall, the Sox and Indians rank 2-3 in the majors behind the A’s.

Maybe us Clevelanders just simply can’t accept that the Tribe is this good.

Chicago Sun Times columnist and regular on ESPN’s Around The Horn, Jay Mariotti, hears nothing but gagging coming out of the White Sox, and sees a lot to like about the Tribe.

Whether the Sox go on to finish the biggest regular-season fold in baseball history or somehow do a backdoor slider into the playoffs, it should be obvious now that the rampaging Indians are a much better team and are worthier of the American League Central title.

Long term?

Whatever the final outcome, the Sox should be mortified by the presence of the Tribe. Anyone who thinks Williams has laid groundwork for long-term divisional success doesn’t understand the golden future of the Indians, who have the same championship potential of their ’90s clubs. GM Mark Shapiro downsized the big-boom era for a kiddie movement, and his daring plan worked fantastically.

This time it’s Gene Wojciechowski focusing on the White Sox…

Since then they’ve had a posture problem, slumping at the exact moment the Indians became the ’27 Yankees. Cleveland began shaving away the White Sox lead as though it were peach fuzz.

The Tribe is big news, folks.

Jayson Stark lays out just how historic the Tribe’s current shot at the division title is…

Only one team in the history of baseball — the 1914 “Miracle” Braves — was ever 15 games out at any point of any season and came back to finish first. But that team fell 15 back in the first week of July, not the first week of August.

Stark gives a great write up of last night’s game, then goes to Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen for some comic relief.

“I’ll be concerned,” Guillen said, “when we’re one game behind.” But if he ever does find himself one game behind, we’re betting “concerned” won’t be the first word out of his mouth. Actually, we’re betting you won’t be able to print the first word out of his mouth.

I’m betting if the Sox blow this lead and lose the division, Ozzie Guillen will be fired the next day. That’ll get him concerned.