100 Things Indians Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

Maddux.

Contents

Foreword by Tom Hamilton

Introduction

1. The Rebirth of the Franchise

2. A Long Time Coming

3. A Year to Remember

4. Filling the Seats

5. The Pinnacle of Heartbreak

6. Rapid Robert

7. Little Lake Nellie

8. Ring the Belle

9. Planning Ahead

10. Ten Cent Beer Night

11. Hometown Hero

12. Check out Heritage Park

13. Little O

14. Swing and a Drive

15. Breaking Barriers

16. A Bug’s Life

17. Perfection

18. The Clock Strikes 2:00 am

19. The Catch (and the Sweep)

20. World Series Walk-Off

21. Comeback for the Ages

22. Bang John Adams’ Drum

23. Slim Jim

24. The One That Wasn’t

25. The Curse of Rocky Colavito

26. The 180-Foot Dash

27. A Most Unfortunate Pitch

28. A Series to Remember

29. Hold Up

30. In the Nick of Father Time

31. The Dark Ages

32. Meet Slider, Indians Mascot

33. Major League

34. Comedy of Errors

35. Taking Back Tito

36. Handsome Lou

37. The SI Jinx Strikes

38. K-Love

39. Visit League Park

40. Center of the Baseball Universe

41. Stick a Cork in It

42. The End of an Era

43. The First Taste of Victory

44. Wild Wednesday

45. Cleveland Municipal Stadium

46. Snow-pening Day

47. Visit the Player Statues

48. The Quest for 200

49. Veeck’s Trek

50. Decisions, Decisions

51. Once in a Lifetime

52. Pick Your Favorite Condiment in the Hot Dog Derby

53. Grover

54. Bye Bye, Cy

55. Web Gem

56. Quite Frankly

57. Rally Alley

58. Hard-Headed

59. Honoring a Legend

60. Justice for All

61. Super Joe

62. A Banner Season

63. Selby vs. Rivera

64. Great Sock-cess

65. The Score

66. Vote for Pedro

67. Negotiation Tactics

68. Kenny’s Catch

69. Carnegie and Ontario

70. Visit Indians Spring Training

71. Living in the Shadow

72. Streak Snappers

73. Friends Turned Enemies

74. Colossal Collision

75. Start of the Franchise

76. Manny Being Manny

77. Nap Time

78. Off the Scoreboard

79. Red to Toe

80. Sunk by the Sun

81. Wow

82. Attend Both Parts of the Battle of Ohio

83. Sibling Rivalry

84. Catch-22

85. Mr. 3,000

86. Thunderstruck

87. No Help Needed

88. Fifty-Fifty

89. Experience Opening Day

90. Dynamic Double-Play Duo

91. Spitting Image

92. Bizarre Bartering

93. Mental Blauch

94. Turning the Paige

95. Killer Twin Killings

96. The Art of Pitching

97. Juan Gone

98. Blast Off: Watch Postgame Fireworks

99. Atta Boy, Addie

100. Pronk’s Cycle

Sources

Foreword by Tom Hamilton

I wish I would have been good enough as a player to have played at this level, but I wasn’t. So for me, becoming the radio announcer for the Indians was the next-best thing to being a major league player. There are only 30 of these jobs and I was one of the lucky ones who got one of the 30. The odds of that aren’t very good for a guy who grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin.

Listening to Milwaukee Braves games and then the Brewers when I was growing up, this job seemed like the impossible dream but it became a reality. I can’t quite get over the fact that it really happened. From a professional standpoint, the Cleveland Indians mean everything to me. I can’t think of a better organization to have worked for. We can’t think of a better city to have raised our four children. We came here with a two-month-old and now have four children and we never had any thoughts of going anywhere else. We had other opportunities, but never seriously considered them because we thought that much of the organization and the city.

I know how blessed we have been to get this opportunity and to have witnessed a ballpark that helped revitalize a city, a ballclub that ended all of the national jokes about Cleveland. You think of this ballpark and those teams in the ’90s—that was the end of late-night talk shows taking shots at Cleveland. It ended it. To have seen all of those great moments and the great Hall of Fame players who have played here, I’ve been really blessed.

You never know how fans are going to take you. I think I was really fortunate that I worked with Herb Score for eight years, since Herb was such an icon. Because Herb accepted me, that opened the door for fans to accept me. It was very fortuitous to be able to work with Herb.

You want to work in a city where the fans care. The worst thing is apathy. Florida has great weather. So do California and Atlanta. But in a lot of those places, those people didn’t grow up with those teams. They moved to those cities, so they may be fans, but they don’t live and die with it like they do here in Cleveland and some of the other Midwest cities.

I always wanted to live in the Midwest, as did my wife. We wanted to raise a family in the Midwest because we believe in those values. But also, the fans care so much. If fans care, it can’t help but make you be a better broadcaster. You may have a bad season, but you know how much they care for that night’s game.

This job has given us a great life. We owe everything to baseball. The home we live in, the ability to send our kids to college—we owe all of that to baseball. Outside of my family, nothing means more to me than what the Indians have meant.

—Tom Hamilton

Introduction

I was eight years old, a third-grader at Parkside Elementary School with few interests other than playing outside, watching Hey Arnold!, eating chicken fingers, and following the Cleveland Indians. I had no idea that one of those hobbies—not the chicken fingers—would provide the fuel for the activity that eventually became my career.

On April 15, 1998, the Indians hosted the Seattle Mariners at Jacobs Field. In the third inning, menacing Mariners southpaw Randy Johnson buzzed a fastball near the head of Tribe leadoff man Kenny Lofton. Tempers flared, benches cleared and, temporarily, cooler heads prevailed. Johnson returned to the mound. Lofton settled back into the batter’s box. And then it happened again. Johnson fired a heater in nearly the same location. The benches cleared again and both players were ejected.

I had never seen anything like it. I witnessed the Indians’ World Series misstep six months earlier and the theatrical journey they traveled to arrive at that point. But I had never seen this element of the game, one with so much attitude and passion. At school the next day, I wanted to discuss the events with my friends and classmates, but they were more intent on learning multiplication or watching Bill Nye the Science Guy. So, I wrote about it. I recapped what I had watched unfold. In a way, it was a third-grader penning a game story, a type of writing I would repeat hundreds of times later on in my life. I wasn’t assigned to write anything. I just wanted to. A handful of years later, when I felt the urge to take a high school journalism class, that sequence appeared in my mind. I wasn’t aware at the time, but even as a little kid, I wanted to be a sportswriter. Of course, accepting the fact that my 72-mph fastball wouldn’t cut it in the big leagues certainly helped me reach that conclusion a bit more swiftly.

When I was asked to write this book, the task seemed somewhat surreal at first. Eight-year-old me would have been just as eager to attack it as I was when I actually received the inquiry. A native Clevelander, I grew up during the golden era of Indians baseball. For the first part of my life, sellout crowds, household names, and memorable Octobers were all I knew. I was spoiled. Still, it never really seemed crazy that I ended up covering the Indians. It just felt right. And to write a book about their history just reinforced the connection I have had with the team since my childhood.

I have had the opportunity to interview and get to know many of the players, coaches, and executives I grew up idolizing. Those relationships are quite different now; I don’t wear my youth-large Jim Thome T-shirt when I interview him. Now, it’s no big deal to sit in Robbie Alomar’s suite at the Rogers Centre in Toronto and ask him about his relationship with his brother. Sandy Alomar Jr. and I have spent hours reminiscing about his magical 1997 season and analyzing why his little brother always picks up the tab when they share a meal.

The main thing I have learned during my years covering the Indians is that many who have spent a decent amount of time in the organization will speak passionately about it. The Indians were a charter member of the American League in 1901. Since then, there is enough history to fill thousands of pages. Speaking to current and former players and coaches and front-office bigwigs about the more than 100 years of moments and memories and personalities has been a privilege. To an eight-year-old in April 1998, the Johnson-Lofton feud was the most essential event in franchise history, but in reality, it’s just one tiny, tiny blip on the radar. Here are 100 of those more pressing and memorable moments, personalities, events, and activities.

1. The Rebirth of the Franchise

The Indians were set to host an open house at newly minted Jacobs Field on April 3, 1994, a Sunday afternoon. It snowed. The event was canceled.

It was not the most promising omen for the grand opening of a new ballpark set to happen the next day.

The Friday before Opening Day, the Indians dedicated a statue to Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller outside of Gate C, out beyond center field. A day later, the Indians and Pirates squared off in an exhibition game intended to serve as a test for ballpark operations. Fans poured into the stadium until it was packed to near capacity.

The open house was supposed to give fans who didn’t have tickets to Saturday’s affair a chance to explore the new building. Mother Nature, however, refused to cooperate. Fortunately for the team, Opening Day brought sunny skies, albeit with chilly temperatures. It was 48 degrees at first pitch.

People were so excited and they were wide-eyed, their jaws dropped, smiling and thanking us, said Bob DiBiasio, Indians senior vice president of public affairs. They were in awe that this was theirs. It was a real badge of honor for people in our town to say, ‘This is mine. This is ours. I’m so proud to call this my ballpark.’

Just how much better was Cleveland’s new venue compared to old Municipal Stadium? Mark Shapiro, then the club’s director of minor league operations, was overseeing the end of minor league spring training in Winter Haven, Florida, so he could not attend the opener at Jacobs Field. Instead, he and player development advisor Johnny Goryl ventured to a local Beef ‘O’ Brady’s and requested that management find the game on TV.

It was a major cultural shift, not just for the fans, but for us, Shapiro said. "We went from a weight room that was basically a crowbar and three sets of dumbbells in the corner of the training room to a state of the art weight room. We went from a kitchen that was one refrigerator with a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly and a loaf of bread on top of the fridge to an incredible kitchen.

When you look at the training, the fueling, the development of our athletes, we went from prehistoric to state of the art, cutting edge. It wasn’t a subtle jump. It was a dramatic jump.

And its debut received a dramatic amount of attention.

DiBiasio escorted President Bill Clinton around the ballpark that day. Clinton tossed out the ceremonial first pitch. Draped in a blue Indians windbreaker and blue Tribe hat with a red brim, he wore a light brown mitt on his right hand as he heaved a baseball down the middle to catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. Ohio Governor George Voinovich and Feller followed with ceremonial first pitches of their own.

The Indians had planned for this day. They rebuilt their roster, devoting long, trying years to developing young players. When that green talent started to blossom, they cashed in on the free-agent market and pieced together a group that they felt could contend, all right as the organization opened the doors on a brand new ballpark. The endeavor culminated in that Monday afternoon. All the hard work and pain suffered through decades of losing, the long, miserable nights at a massive, mostly empty stadium—it was all set to dissipate in favor of a new era, one Cleveland hoped would be rife with triumph and glory.

President Bill Clinton throws out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day 1994 before the Indians and Mariners squared off. It was the first-ever game at Jacobs Field.

And then Seattle Mariners pitcher Randy Johnson held the Tribe hitless through the first seven innings of the first game.

Alomar finally ended Johnson’s bid at an Opening Day no-hitter with a single to right field with no outs in the eighth. The base knock came after Feller, the only pitcher in major league history to toss a no-no on Opening Day, broke into the ESPN TV booth and attempted to jinx Johnson on air. Alomar’s hit moved Candy Maldonado, who had walked, to second. Both runners advanced a base on a wild pitch and Manny Ramirez brought them home with a double off the wall in left field to tie the game.

The matinee extended to extra innings and both teams plated a run in the 10th. In the 11th, the Indians christened their new home with a fitting finale to its first affair. Reserve outfielder Wayne Kirby slapped a two-out single to left field off of Seattle reliever Kevin King. Eddie Murray scored from third and the Indians celebrated.

The Indians would take an immediate liking to their new residence. They won a franchise-record 18 consecutive home games from May 13–June 19 in their inaugural year at Jacobs Field. The club had the best home record in the league in 1994, at 35–16. Of course, it all began with that Monday afternoon. What a fortuitous finish and a proper culmination to everything the organization had worked toward.

I would contend that that was the singular most important day in franchise history, DiBiasio said. It provided us the ability to carry forward, where if this thing is not built, we’re gone. There is no baseball in Cleveland.

Ballpark Firsts

Plenty of history has been made at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, where Progressive Field, then named Jabobs Field, opened in 1994. The ballpark’s firsts include the following:

First pitch: President Bill Clinton on April 4, 1994

Actual pitch: Dennis Martinez on April 4, 1994

Hit: Seattle Mariners outfielder Eric Anthony, a home run, on April 4, 1994

Home run: Anthony on April 4, 1994

Hit by an Indian: Sandy Alomar on April 4, 1994

Home run by an Indian: Eddie Murray on April 7, 1994

Grand slam: Paul Sorrento on May 9, 1995

Inside-the-park home run: David Bell off of Seattle’s Randy Johnson on April 15, 1998

No-hitter: Angels right-hander Ervin Santana on July 27, 2011

Triple play: Casey Blake to Asdrubal Cabrera to Victor Martinez on August 27, 2007

Unassisted triple play: Asdrubal Cabrera on May 12, 2008

2. A Long Time Coming

September 8, 1995, was akin to Christmas in Cleveland. Call it Clinchmas. You know presents will reside under the tree, but it’s still exciting to first spot them. The Indians knew their division title was inevitable in ’95, but celebrating the capturing of the playoff berth still proved to be a joyous occasion.

The Indians won 100 games in 1995, a strike-shortened season that limited teams to 144 contests. They outscored their opponents by nearly two runs per game, finishing 14 games ahead of any other American League team and 30 games ahead of the second-best finisher in their division, the Kansas City Royals. Cleveland led the American League in runs, hits, home runs, stolen bases, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and total bases. Indians hitters struck out less frequently than any other offense, while the pitching staff’s ERA was nearly a half-run better than that of any other AL staff. They issued the fewest number of free passes and recorded the third-most strikeouts.

Jason Giambi was a rookie infielder for the Oakland Athletics in 1995. They went 0–7 against the Indians that season.

If you could go into Cleveland and play well, you knew what kind of ballclub you had, Giambi said, because they were so good and so stacked that if you could play with them, you had a good team.

The Indians finished at least nine games over the .500 mark in each full month of the regular season. Their worst showing came in July, when they posted an 18–9 mark. They didn’t slow down in August or September, when the division title was all but a guarantee. The players wanted to out-do one another. They sought bragging rights within the clubhouse. They didn’t want to stop. The hunger to exceed their own standards and those of their peers drove them to new heights.

That’s why you win by 30 games, said Bob DiBiasio, Indians senior vice president of public affairs.

The Indians sat at 85–37 on September 8. They gripped a commanding 22½-game lead in the division. That Friday evening, they hosted the Baltimore Orioles in a series-opening affair. An eager group of 41,656—a sellout crowd, of course—filled Jacobs Field, knowing what was likely to come after nine triumphant innings. In the third inning, Omar Vizquel opened the scoring with a sacrifice fly. Eddie Murray followed three batters later with a two-run single. Cleveland coasted from there. Orel Hershiser didn’t need any more backing. The back end of the Tribe bullpen—Paul Assenmacher, Julian Tavarez and Jose Mesa, who earned his 40th save—cruised through the final frames.

As Jim Thome straddled third base, waiting—for eons, seemingly—for Jeff Huson’s two-out pop-up to descend from the stratosphere and fall into his glove, fans shrieked with excitement. Thome squeezed the division-clinching out in his glove, kept his left arm raised and dashed to the mob scene at the center of the diamond. Indians coaches embraced in the home dugout as fireworks exploded high above the outfield. The players dumped a cooler of Gatorade onto manager Mike Hargrove.

Radio announcer Tom Hamilton shouted: The season of dreams has become a reality. Cleveland: You will have an October to remember!

It marked the earliest any team in the divisional play era had clinched a postseason berth. It marked the Indians’ first ticket to October in 41 years. It marked a new beginning for a franchise that had suffered through decades of ineptitude.

The team raised a flag after the game to signify its accomplishment. Kenny Lofton was granted the honor of pulling it, as Garth Brooks’ The Dance played on the ballpark sound system, a request called in by Hargrove. It was the favorite song of Steve Olin, the Indians relief pitcher who died—along with teammate Tim Crews—in a tragic boating accident just two years earlier. As the Indians paid tribute on this momentous evening, tears streamed down the players’ faces.

Looking back on the memory of

The dance we shared ‘neath the stars above

For a moment all the world was right

How could I have known that you’d ever say goodbye

And now I’m glad I didn’t know

The way it all would end, the way it all would go

Our lives are better left to chance, I could have missed the pain

But I’d have had to miss the dance

Upon clinching a playoff spot, the front office received congratulatory phone calls from former players, including Gary Bell, Max Alvis, Duane Kuiper, and Pat Tabler. Former Cleveland Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano wrote the team a note that read: Wonderful job knocking the town on its ear.

Right then, you thought, ‘This is blown up,’ DiBiasio said. Just pure joy. There is no joy in doing things by yourself. The joy comes in working as a team and achieving success. You’re able to turn to your buddy and have big hugs and tears. Just, ‘Wow. We did it. We’re here. We’re legit.’

For former shortstop Omar Vizquel, it’s a feat only appreciated more with time: You don’t realize what kind of team and what kind of teammates you have until you see it now from where we are. You look back and say, ‘Wow, those guys were amazing. We had one of the greatest teams ever.’

3. A Year to Remember

The Indians had everything in 1948. They had three starting pitchers with at least 19 wins: Bob Lemon (20), Gene Bearden (20), and Bob Feller (19). They had hitters who produced sparkling offensive numbers: Joe Gordon (32 home runs, 124 RBIs), Lou Boudreau (.355 average, 18 home runs, 106 RBIs), Ken Keltner (.297 average, 31 home runs, 119 RBIs), Larry Doby (.301 average, 14 home runs), and Dale Mitchell (.336 average, 204 hits).

Cleveland had three players (Boudreau, Gordon, Keltner) in the All-Star Game starting lineup and two more (Lemon, Feller) on the