My Team Always Loses

Sept. 28, 2007

1948_indians2.jpg

Take a look at the above photo. It's really old. You couldn't date it via the players' uniforms, I suppose, although those stirrup socks are somewhat telltale. But note the guy on the left, the one who looks like the principal in your great aunt’s high school yearbook. This is a man who reeks of Burma-Shave and Vitalis. Half-digested Porterhouse steaks cling soulfully to his lower intestine. When he bought those shoes, he was hoping they'd make him look like Caesar Romero.

I’m a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan, and this is a picture of the 1948 Indians. Nineteen forty-eight (the year of our Lord) was the last time the Indians - my Indians, and the Indians my dad pulled for before they killed him - won the World Series. Think about that. It’s been almost 60 years since the good people of Cleveland have been able to dance a drunken polka on the infield, safe in the knowledge that the Tribe has held off those barbarian Yankees and all other pretenders to the throne. In 1948, the same year that Cadillac introduced fins, the Indians won the Big Enchilada.

But they haven’t done it since then. Because my team always loses.

I grew up, God forbid, in semi-rural Alabama. But I come from Alabama with a pirogi on my knee. I was born in Cleveland, and my family remained a Cleveland Family long after my dad packed us up in the wagon and followed a sweat-inducing factory job south of the Mason-Dixon. We were steadfastly religious about the Indians and Browns. And it wasn’t easy.

This is old news if you’re from Cleveland, but no other city with a professional sports team has gone longer without a champion than the Mistake on the Lake. The last Cleveland team to win the whole thing was the Browns, in 1964. Here's what they looked like:

1964_browns2.jpg

Then the glory petered out.

Until a sudden, surreal return to dignity in the mid-1990s, the Indians were so rotten for so long, they could have legally been marketed as fertilizer. But the Browns dabbled in almost-championship play several times in the 1980s, only to reach the playoffs with a full head of steam, then fold like a stack of extra-large Gap t-shirts.

Nowadays, the Browns qualify as a team solely because of their matching helmets. But the Indians have taken up the slack. This year, while everybody has been busy pondering A-Rod’s stripper girlfriend and whatever the hell it is that spurts out of Barry Bonds’ pituitary gland, the Indians have quietly won the American League Central division. As I type this, they just happen to have the best record in all of major league baseball. That’s right – the Indians are looking hot, and the playoffs kick off in just a few days. Time for them to start holding their bats at the wrong end.

They made it to the Series in '95 - something I truly thought I'd never see - and I wept. And they blew it. Then they made it to the Series in '97, and I yelped. And they really blew it. They're the Indians, you see, and my team always loses. But they have to win eventually. Don't they? If George Bush can become president twice in four years, certainly the Tribe can win the World Series once while I’m still breathing. I'd even accept it on a re-count.

So, this year, when you're surfing the channels and see the Indians swinging and throwing and running and sliding, remember that I'm not surfing. I'm looking straight at them, and I'm riveted. For reasons that even I can't quite put my finger on, it means something to me, and I'll be miserable if they collapse. I so want to dance that drunken polka. I so want to hoist the pirogi of a champion. At long last, I want my team to win.

Pray for me.

- Paul Tatara

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