Cleveland Indians Tickets

Staff Writer Eric Chima
In the annals of baseball lore, the curses are well-documented. There was the Curse of the Bambino, of course, and the Cubs’ famed billy goat curse, and the curse of the Black Sox. But while two of those have since been broken, there’s a less-mentioned—but probably just as devastating—curse around Major League Baseball: the Curse of Rocky Colavito.

Of course, the real curse that has plagued the Cleveland Indians since 1960 was probably one of bad management, bad luck and bad players. But for Cleveland fans, it must seem like there was something bigger at work. After all, for any fan born between 1950 and 1980, the defining image of the Tribe was bad, bad play—almost laughably terrible, really. In truth, the Indians’ history has been defined by decades of comedy and short bursts of glory.

The early years of major league baseball in Cleveland were rather chaotic. There were some tumultuous early seasons as various Cleveland clubs fluctuated between the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the National League and the American Association. Three franchises were born and all three crumbled. At one point Cy Young led the team (then known as the Cleveland Spiders) to the 1985 N.L. championship. Four years later, following some shady trading by its owners, the stripped-down team would finish with 20 wins and 134 losses, still the worst record ever, and was disbanded shortly thereafter. Cleveland is that kind of team.

In 1901, the Cleveland Bronchos (or Blues) were among the eight charter members of the newly-formed American League. Two years later they were changed to the Cleveland Naps, after popular star Napoleon Lajoie; after Lajoie left in 1914, the team was renamed the Cleveland Indians in a poll of local newspapers. They won the 1920 World Series behind stars Tris Speaker, Stan Covaleski and Jim Bagby, then settled into another middling period. Speaker’s .388 batting average was supplanted by the Yankees and Babe Ruth, and team began a series of middle-of-the-pack finishes that continued into the mid-‘30s.

The cold period ended, as they often do, with Hall-of-Famers. Bob Feller, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, joined the club in 1936. Larry Doby became the second black player in the league, just 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson, and led the league in homers twice. New owner Bill Veeck signed Satchel Paige out of the Negro Leagues as the first black pitcher in the majors. Together with Lou Boudreau and Gene Bearden, the team won a one-game playoff and then the 1948 World Series. By 1954 the team featured the Big Four: Feller, Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, and Mike Garcia, and won a record 111 games before losing to Willie Mays and the Giants in the World Series.

That was the cue for another stretch of tragedy in Cleveland, and it began with the trade of fan favorite Rocky Colavito in 1960. They followed that by trading away Luis Tiant, Tommy John and Lou Piniella. It was the start of a span of 35 years in which the Tribe finished in third one time, fourth five times and last place 29 times.

The Indians were so miserable that they became something of a joke around baseball. They were the butt of jokes (A child, the victim of abuse by his parents, is asked who he wants to live with; “The Cleveland Indians,” he replies. “They don’t beat anybody.”) . They lost their best players, time after time. When the team had a budding star, Joe Charbeneau—so good he was nicknamed “Super Joe”—he promptly hurt himself and never made it back to the Majors. They were bought out by the owner of the Stouffer’s food company, who then fell on hard times and couldn’t finance the team. Sports Illustrated picked them to win the 1987 World Series, only to watch them lose 101 games. Movies were made about how bad this team was (1989’s Major League). And the whole thing was capped off on “ten-cent beer night” in 1974, when the fans rioted and the team was forced to forfeit.

This was a bad team. Things changed for the better, though, when the Tribe moved to Jacobs Field in 1994. The team went from last place in 1993 to one game out of first when the ’94 season was cancelled by a strike. The next year they shot to first place and their first World Series berth in over 40 years, prompting another seven year run of great Indians teams. They were led by the likes of Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Eddie Murray, Jim Thome, Carlos Baerga, Robbie Alomar, and Juan Gonzalez—amassing some of the most fearsome lineups ever assembled. The city, famed for laughing at the team rather than supporting it, turned out 455 consecutive sellouts, the most in baseball history.

But amidst all the victories, the team still didn’t bring home a World Series. They came the closest in 1997, when they took a one-run lead into the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series, but Jose Mesa—channeling the ghost of Colavito, perhaps, or maybe just pitching badly—gave up the lead, and the team went on to lose. They never returned to the series after that, and eventually stopped making the playoffs. They lost Belle, Ramirez and Thome to free agent contracts, and managed to trade away another busload of budding stars.

By 2002, the Indians were back to their losing ways, not cracking .500 for the next three years. In 2005 they returned to contention, but collapsed spectacularly in the last week to miss the playoffs, then fell apart again altogether in 2006. It was proof, at least, that the Indians would not fail to entertain. They fluctuate between the comical and the spectacular. They trade stars and lose in the most heart-wrenching fashion imaginable (Willie Mays’ famous catch? Yeah, that was against the Indians.), but they have also overcome the largest deficit in major league history (12 runs against the Mariners in 2001) and handed the Yankees their worst defeat ever (22-0 in 2004). For nearly 50 years, they held the record for the best and worst seasons ever compiled.

Say this for the Indians: whatever they do, its worth watching.