Sightless in the Forest City

Did you know Cleveland's nickname is "The Forest City"? An apt monicker it was for the Tribe in the 1960s and '70s, when management couldn't see the forest for the trees when it came to building a team.

Well, they did build a team: a team with (for a while) great pitching and nothing else. After I wrote those posts about the Cardinals, I couldn't help but feel blue for the boy I was in Cleveland in the 1960s, naively rooting for a team that had no chance of winning the pennant. The Cards were able to grow and groom youngsters as a foundation for a pennant winner (McCarver, Boyer, Javier, Flood, Shannon, Maxvill, Gibson, Carlton, Washburn, Sadecki, Briles, Hoerner, Carlton) while trading astutely for just the right pieces (Brock, White, Cepeda, Maris, Groat) when they needed them. Cleveland could spot good pitchers, but the position players they signed mostly stunk, and their trades became ever more pathetic as they had less and less to offer in trades.

Consider the pitching talent the team had in the 1960s: Jim Perry, Mudcat Grant, Gary Bell, augmented by wiley vets like Cal McLish, Jack Harshman and Dick Donovan initially. Then, as this staff aged, up came Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Mike Hargan, Sonny Siebert. Wow! (By the way, the Ron Taylor pictured on the Rookie Card with McDowell was traded in '62 to St. Louis for Fred Whitfield. As a relief ace, he helped both the Cards ('64) and Mets ('69) to pennants. Whitfield helped The Tribe put a lock on fifth place.)

But the Tribe did not use its pitching talent wisely. Since pitching was the team's strength, they needed to trade one or two of them to get some hitting. But the one big guy they traded--Jim Perry--was traded for another pitcher! Perry won 145 games for other teams. The guy they got for him--Jack Kralick--won 20 for The Tribe--over 4 years!

For the decade 1958 to 1968, Cleveland's pitching ranked anywhere from solid to awesome. The Tribe had a Dodgers-type staff. That's a good thing. But then you look at the other side of the coin: the position players of the '60s. Just simply awful. Once the team of Rocky Colavito/Vic Power/Minoso/Piersall/Billy Martin was destroyed through poor trades, the downhill slide was inevitable. Here's a list of "players" I grew up trying to root for in the 1960s:

Jerry Kindall, Larry Brown, Bob "Fat" Chance, Willie Kirkland, Vic Davalillo, Vern Fuller (oy!), Al Luplow (double oy!), Pedro Gonzalez, George Banks, Jack Heideman, Jack Kubiszyn, Richie Scheinblum and Tony Martinez. It makes me weep to see them all together like that. My youth! Undermined by probably the poorest crop of farmhands in the history of the game!

Oh, there were a few decent players in that era, guys like Fred "Wingy" Whitfield, Max Alvis, The Immortal Joe Azcue, Johnny Romano, Chuck Hinton, Chico Salmon and Tito Francona who would have made for a great BENCH if Cleveland had any position players of real value. Leon Wagner was probably the only true above-average player of that period. "Get Your Rags from Daddy Wags" read the sign above his mod fashion store. Had to love him! But the rest? OY!!!!!!!!

This is why I don't spend much time analyzing Cleveland's personnel decisions. It's simple: good pitching, rarely traded for anyone of value; lousy position players who couldn't be traded for anyone of value; and a bad farm system that rarely produced anyone of value. There just wasn't much talent outside of the pitchers for management to misjudge in those days. Colavito-for-Kuenn shot a fatal hole in the underside of an already aging ship, and the poor players produced by the farm system finally sank the ship. Not until 1987 was there even the glimmer of hope for us Tribe fans, and then that's about all it was--a glimmer.

In case you missed it ...

For the three newcomers to this site since it was launched earlier this year, here's the post explaining why I felt the need to create this nerdy baseball blog:

The summer of 1959 marked the beginning of my life. The Cleveland Indians' desperate battle for the pennant, led by the charismatic Rocky Colavito and the enigmatic Tito Francona, shook me awake. At the age of 9, I experienced euphoria and torment, discovering, through a mere game, the full range of human emotions.

Of course, 1959 marked the beginning of, not quite a death, but a long decline for our beloved Tribe. The Indians' failure to win the pennant in the final days of the season sent egomaniac general manager Frank "Trader" Lane on a quixotic trading spree designed to push Cleveland over the top in 1960. The Colavito-for-Kuenn trade may have been the worst in Tribe history. But other deals, like shipping budding star Gordy Coleman to Cincy for aging tippler Johnny Temple, were also disasters. (Coleman's 26 HRs in '61 helped propel Cincy to first place in the N.L.)

But I was hooked. Baseball had brought me to life, just as directly as Dr. Frankenstein's machine jump-started his monster. Before that summer, my memories are mostly vague ones. But I can still recall vivid details of that summer, that pennant race, and the men who fought so hard but fell short in the end. Pitcher Jack Harshman, an aging Baltimore cast-off, winning a key game late in the season with timely hitting as well as gutsy pitching. All of it brought to me by the voices of Jimmy Dudley and Bob Neal, pouring the flow of the game into my ear, pressed against my transistor radio. "Colavito swings, and there it goes! That ball is going, going--it's gone, for a home run!" Dudley's signature home run call, sweet music to my ears.

So, while my date of birth says I am 58 years old, my conscious life age is 49. Many times I have tried to break baseball's grip on my life. Impossible. I remember my grandmother Dowding, in her nineties, leaning into the radio,listening to the Tribe, praying to her god for one more pennant. She died at 99 without one. (Pennant, not a god.) With any luck (I don't have a god except baseball), I will only have to wait until October to see another Tribe pennant fluttering in the breeze.

Or will I? This is The Tribe, after all. I'm sure Trader Lane's ghost is haunting us still--and giggling hysterically at our misery.