Rejoice: September’s Sports Schedule is Peak Cleveland
September 1, 2015Ball Played: Pain in the Goins
September 2, 2015Happy Wednesday, Blawg Pound. The Tribe dropped a tough one last night. Cody Anderson went six very solid innings, surrendering just three hits and two runs, both of which came on sacrifice flies. Yan Gomes hit two solo homers, including a shot to center that tied the game up in the ninth. Francisco Lindor legged out a double in the top of the tenth, but the Indians couldn’t plate him, and Bryan Shaw gave up a walkoff dinger to Toronto’s Ryan Goins. Bleh.
The greatest compliment I can give the Cleveland Indians is that they ruin my life. If I get sucked into a game (usually on the radio; I don’t get SportsTime Ohio), I’m in. I play volleyball twice a week, with games often beginning around the same time the Tribe’s do. I’ll often listen to the pregame in the car on the way to Whiskey Island, and I’ll put the game on on the way home. If it’s reasonably interesting, I’ll put it on at home, and once I put it on, I rarely turn it off. Part of that is because I would listen to Tom Hamilton read the obituary section, but Hammy isn’t even working the series in Toronto; I’ve listened to the last two games with Jim Rosenhaus and John MacDonald on commentary. (I’m not a card-carrying member of the Rosey fan club by any means, but Johnny Mac has been solid, if a bit green.)
The reason the Indians ruin my life is that my volleyballing nights — Tuesday especially — are also meant to be busy writing nights for me. I try to bang out this here column and that there column and whatever else feels relevant. Something I’m not always so good at, however, is thinking of my own words while listening to someone else’s words, and writing is harder without your own words — advanced stuff, I know. Before I know it it’s 11 p.m. and I’m engaged in a losing fight against the following morning.
Whether it’s my night owlish nature or plain old masochism, I still like listening to those ballgames. I hope to come away from listening to a Tribe game like I’ve spent my time well and enjoyed myself, ideally having heard a win. At worst, I hope to come away feeling like I learned about the team. My attention hasn’t stuck with this team all season, but I’ve listened to and watched enough of them to feel like I get them. They’re a different squad now.
Something Rosey said on the radio Tuesday night made sense to me: with Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher gone, guys like Jason Kipnis and Michael Brantley have become the leaders of this team. Swisher and Bourn, as well as David Murphy, were more experienced players and, at least in Swisher’s case, louder personalities. I imagine Nos. 22 and 23 had some leadership role before the midsummer trades, but since the deals they have been forced into more. They are the best everyday players on this team, and it hopefully says something about their leadership that the Tribe has played such good ball over the last couple weeks.
Whether you’re listening on the radio or watching on TV, a three-hour baseball game is worth it for the moments: Francisco Lindor’s magic slide into second base and ensuing celebration; Jeff Manship striking out two en route to a 1-2-3 eighth inning; Yan Gomes’ homer to tie it up in the ninth; Bryan Shaw inducing a double play ball to take it to extra innings.
Alas, the defining moment of the game was light-hitting second baseman Ryan Goins’ walkoff homer to right off of Shaw in the 10th. Toronto won, 5-3. The Indians’ six-game winning streak ended and they fell to 64-67, a step further away from the elusive .500 mark. The playoff dream tiptoes away with 31 games to go.
The Indians really don’t have to make the playoffs for me to consider this season a success. I just want a few more weeks of baseball worth listening to. (If Frankie Lindor is playing, that’s a good bet.)
Batteries not included. pic.twitter.com/RwbvQx6fjU
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) September 2, 2015
Phil Taylor got cut by the Browns yesterday. It was a surprise. It’s especially a disappointment, given that everyone the Browns acquired in the Julio Jones trade has now moved on from Cleveland. That’s bad, but this could be even worse: Of all the 2011 Cleveland Browns, only three are left. Joe Haden, Joe Thomas, Alex Mack — that’s the list. Everyone else from that team is gone. From the offense (e.g., Colt McCoy, Peyton Hillis) to the defense (e.g., D’Qwell Jackson, Sheldon Brown) to the special teams (e.g., Phil Dawson, Ryan Pontbriand), everyone is gone except for Haden, Thomas, and Mack. Everyone. Every. One.1
What in the hell.
Curt Schilling and Dan Levy of Awful Announcing exchanged some emails recently, which AA both responded to and made public. The exchange centered around something Schilling posted on Twitter and Facebook drawing a comparison to the percentage of Germans who were Nazis and Muslims who are extremists. AA wrote on the subject, Schilling took issue with it in his email reply, Levy fired back in an email, and the whole exchange was published. I don’t want to discuss it at length; I’ll just say that I don’t think either side comes out of this looking good.
Last, a song. If you’ve never listened to Freddie King, dig on some Freddie King. He isn’t B.B. King or Albert King, nor is he related to them. He’s just a friggin’ blues powerhouse. Great tone, great voice, great rhythm section, and he only slung his guitar strap over one shoulder.
I listen to him sometimes when the Indians are done ruining my life. One has a better understanding of the blues after a loss to the Blue Jays.
Enjoy the day, all.
- If I’ve missed someone, please let me know. [↩]
45 Comments
I know there are some like the Ricky Williams trade that are worse, but the Phil Taylor trade is probably in the top 10 worst trades in NFL history. I wasn’t ever a big Heckert guy. I always thought he looked good only as compared to even worse Browns GMs. The cutting of Phil Taylor reinforces this belief.
And Ray Farmer hasn’t exactly distinguished himself. God, will it ever end?
I hate to say it, but I think I believe Heckert was a better GM than Ray is now…ugh.
Danny Shelton, Joel Bitonio? Kirksey? Crowell as an UDFA? Looking like Gaines will boom on his boom-or-bust prospects. Farmer done well outside those first two picks he made. Chalk it up to a learning curve.
Will, not only do you go with an under-appreciated Blues artist, but you go with an under-appreciated song from him. Well played (though I’d probably have gone with “Hide Away” or “It’s too Bad” after last nights game).
Desir, admitting he made a mistake and signing Tramon Williams rather than stubbornly forcing the coaches to run Gilbert out week after week, convincing Alex Mack to stay after Banner and Lombardi screwed it all up by letting it get that far, letting Jordan Cameron go…much more good than bad with Farmer.
Okay, fair enough, but you cannot blow the No. 8 overall pick. Cannot do it. And he did it.
Too soon to judge Farmer other than saying his ’14 first round reflected a disastrously bad methodology balancing talent and non-physical attributes in players. But you can’t say he convinced Mack to stay – Mack was restricted and couldn’t leave if the Browns matched the offer. Moreover, the contract he crafted left him an unusual early escape from the team. You could easily argue that the escape provision was inserted so that Mack could get the hell away from Farmer, his talent evaluation and the vibe he’s created.
With any luck, Ifo will heal up, and return to his first-round grade, and we’ll forget about Mr. Gilbert.
Agree about that email exchange with Schilling leaving no one smelling so great. Almost like Levy felt the need to go over the top in response to Schilling’s chesty positions. If you divulge what someone asked to be confidential because you didn’t grant requisite prior approval you’ve self-sabotaged your argument that you are more decent.
And wow, that slide by Lindor. He’s the anti-Weeden: just oozes those improvisational instincts you don’t learn in an instructional video.
Said vibe including his meddlesome texting to the sidelines, which betrays a troubling sense of insecurity, egotism, and immaturity, not to mention a lack of respect and trust for his head coach. Farmer’s got a long way to go before he proves himself even a competent GM. Hitting on a few lower-round picks and UDFAs isn’t going to do it for me.
His steadfast refusal to draft a quality WR still burns my cookies.
Stonehands Mayle just makes it worse. It’s almost like Farmer picked him and said “There, a WR, now shut up.”
Farmer definitetly has the whole new-age-businessman-I’m-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room-helicopter-parent vibe going on.
yeah. To be fair, when Mack went a-courtin’ for his contract Farmer had just been elevated to GM so we don’t know whether that contractual escape had anything to do with Farmer, more likely related to them upsetting veterans when they fired Chud. My point to Max was that we’ll know very soon how Mack feels about Farmer. At this point he’s even refusing to mouth the usual “of course staying in Cleveland is my first choice.” It doesn’t smell good to me.
^^^ this, I will grant you, steams my clams
ehhh the texting doesnt bug me very much, if only because theres a whole lot we dont know about the situation. I dont think it would have been an issue had Kyle’s Daddy not wanted the Golden Child to GTFO of Dodge before his resume was besmirched by the street urchins of Cleveland. Id also wager heavily that it happens often in other places, but goes unreported
Dallas blew Mo Claiborne, almost made the Super Bowl last year. I hate that he blew the Gilbert pick (which I was on board with at the time) but it isn’t some automatic qualification for dismissal on its own
from your keyboard to Paul browns ears…
Gabriel, Hawkins, Hartline, Bibbs.
He just seems to think we can get total production rather than production-from-one. I agree that we need one guy the other team fears though.
“The Indians really don’t have to make the playoffs for me to consider this season a success.”
Really? They are 16 games out of first place and five out of the second Wild Card. If MLB hadn’t expanded the playoffs, it’d be nine out. They started the season a popular pick to make the playoffs and a dark horse for the World Series. Thanks to yet another slow start that effectively killed most local interest, they’ve been a non-entity for pretty much all of the summer. This perfectly timed streak hasn’t changed their disappointing body of work this season.
So yeah…. I’d consider this season a lot of things, but a success isn’t one of them.
He wanted out the first time, but I’m sure going to JAX and continuing to lose wasnt all that appealing (the Devil you know…). Maybe he bluffed and said if they didnt give him the out clause that he’d sign with JAX anyway, so they felt they had to do it and could then use the nxt 2 years trying to convince him to stay. If he leaves now, its because he wanted to, and there wasn’t much (other than drafting a competent QB) else they could do.
The contractual escape had everything to do with Mack being able to hit the market again in his prime and get paid even more. I have to imagine that even if a player loved the team he was with, he’d still get that kind of option in his contract if possible.
So yeah…. I don’t think the Mack contract says anything about Farmer. It was the rare situation where a player was basically able to dictate the terms of his contract. (Thanks, Banner.) Lesson: sign your players early when you have the leverage.
Meh… It’s not a good thing, but I think you can do it and still get better. Honestly, how many good teams miss on 1st round picks? How many bad teams hit on them and still end up stinking?
I think Clevelanders need to get out of the “1st round savior” mentality and realize that a team succeeds or fails based on the aggregate of their roster moves.
hi WILL … i posted on another WFNY thread that the 5 players we got for WR julio jones were : phil taylor , greg little , owen marecic , weeden & t.richardson … how bad is that ??
You don’t think he’s counting on Mr. Gordon seeing the light, do you?
hi MG … you may as well throw in orchard , x.cooper , i.campbell & ekpre-olomu . this was an excellent draft for farmer (except for mayle) & may be the one to help turn things around … now he just has to score a franchise QB.
shelton , starks & cooper are the reasons taylor & kitchen got their walking papers … we look younger , tougher & more athletic now on that D-line.
winner winner chicken dinner
Post-’99 Browns have been brought down by the smartest-man-in-the-room syndrome more times than we can count. Policy was so smarmy smart he only needed a GM who was a powerless green figurehead like Dwight Clark. Same with Mangini. Butch ignores his scouts and goes with Warren because, well, something. Holms knows better than everybody, he trades up for Richardson and snags Weeden in the first round because if you really like a guy … And Banner just knows there’s a real football football guy lurking within his bean-counting soul, so he grabs a sycophant like Lombardi because where else is Lombardi gonna get a GM position with that leprous resume.
Yeah, just got myself totally psyched for the season. When do the Cavs start again?
+ 1 billion. Yeah, that’s right. 1 billion.
And I think that’s the scariest part about Farmer. As much as I like the whole of what he has done here, he seems to be cut from the same cloth.
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj9/willcaban/2424425-6555272247-hyde-.gif
Preach it.
Napoleon got some of his army out of Russia, as did Guderian a century later. Sure didn’t make either campaign a success!
Let’s let this baby grow up and get old before we give the postmortem.
“Farmer done well outside those first two picks he made. Chalk it up to a learning curve”.
Bridgewater and Beckham or Watkins not being on this team is a hell of a learning curve. This team has searched 15 years for it’s franchise QB/WR combo and could have had both in ONE ROUND of a draft.
Sorry those are unforgivable.
+1 trillion!!!
Cue the storyline change for LeBron James and the Cavaliers: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lebron-james-influence-over-cavaliers-164518997.html
This is the second “article” I’ve seen today on this subject.
Deep breaths, deeeeeeep breaths…
everything is forgiveable. the penance is what increases based on the sin.
That’s a serious penance then.
Like, 1,000,000 Hail Mary’s and 2 nights without supper.
pre-postmortem is the new hot take!
So, I finally read Curt Schilling’s tweet. Forgetting that posting your opinions for the world to see is a fool’s errand to begin with and I feel no regret for anyone that takes heat for their foolishly-posted opinion (including myself), can someone please explain how Schilling was comparing ALL Muslims to Nazis? It just ain’t true. For what it’s worth, he was actually comparing ALL Muslims to ALL Germans. (The logical conclusion of this comparison is even odder than the non-comparison that everyone is inflamed about.)
Re Schilling and Levy: It looked to me like just another way to make yourself the news – and it worked. The story is no longer just “Schilling;” now it’s “Schilling and Levy.” With one deft keystroke, Levy both created and reported a story. Pretty slimy, regardless of whether he thinks Schilling is slimy.
SIDS
All I need to hear is the word Schilling and nothing else matters. Never liked him as a player like him less as a baseball commentator. Which network does he work for again?