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Chicago Cub fans gnash their teeth, go to the wailing wall, and compare themselves to Job because their team has not been to the World Series since 1945. But the Cubs almost got there a few times. They won the National League East in 1984. They're often in first place until the heat of August.
Cubs fans at least have some almosts and September swoons. Since 1959 and the Colavito trade, September may as well have been erased from the Cleveland baseball calendar. August, too. This team was usually out of sight in the American League by the Fourth of July. Since 1959, Cleveland has had eighteen managers and twelve ownership groups, and nothing has changed but the faces. The whole organization seems stuck in the dufus syndrome.
There was the Mother's Day promotion when the team gave out deodorant. What a way to show Mom that you care.
There was the game in 1984 when Smokey the Bear was supposed to throw out the first ball. He couldn't make it, so Bozo the clown filled in. Cleveland writers found the symbolism too good to be true.
There was the saga of Super Joe Charboneau. He was supposed to be the next Rocky Colavito, a good-looking, powerful outfielder. Super Joe was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1980. Nine months later he was banished to the bushes, sleeping on an army cot next to the dryer in the Class AAA Charleston Charlies clubhouse. Charboneau wasn't just napping there; he had moved into the clubhouse. He was the first player in major league history to be a Rookie of the Year one season and back in the minors the next.
Cleveland fans knew Rocky Colavito. Joe Charboneau was not Rocky Colavito, but he was a guy who had been stabbed four times, including once with a Bic pen. He also had eaten raw eggs, shells and all; opened beer cans with his eye socket; sewed up a cut with fishing line; and pulled his own tooth with a pair of pliers and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
You know these stories are true because who could possibly make them up? Who could imagine something like Beer Night when the team had to forfeit a game in 1974? Ah, yes, Beer Night. Ten-Cent Beer Night with no limit. Imagine what a buck's worth of beer would mean. Imagine drinking ten beers in an hour. Imagine the lines at the rest rooms. Imagine selling the beer behind the stadium fence during the game, the fans lining up, some of them simply unzipping and relieving themselves right there, not wanting to lose a place in line to buy ten more beers.
One of the Indians' old owners, Bill Veeck was the man who brought the last World Championship to Cleveland back in 1948. Well, Veeck would have known how to stage Ten-Cent Beer Night. He would have found the slowest taps in the world, and all the vendors would have arthritis. It would have taken five minutes to pour each cup.
Veeck was no fool. But Veeck, like the glory days of Indians baseball, is nothing more than a hazy, beery memory.
So the Indians got the crowd roaring drunk, and then the front office wondered why the fans poured out of the stands and onto the field, scaring the hell out of the players from both teams. Texas Rangers left fielder Jeff Burroughs turned around and saw about twenty-five fans climbing over the wall and heading for him.
"I felt like Custer at Little Big Horn," Burroughs said later. But Little Big Horn was an Indian victory.
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