26th Man Let Them Down, but They’re Still Prospering

I really feel that I let Cleveland down.

Season after season, my favorite town in Ohio and I had a deal. Every April, like clockwork, I would write a column predicting that this would be the year the Cleveland baseball club finally won the pennant. Whereupon the swell folks at Municipal Stadium would take this column, clip it, frame it, mount it on one of the stadium’s walls for all to see and congratulate me on my obvious intelligence and faith.

Then Cleveland would go out and finish in seventh place, usually because there was no eighth place.

It was a running gag, but we both took it seriously. One season, the public-relations director for the club wrote a note informing me that I would be invited to either toss out the ceremonial first ball at one of Cleveland’s World Series games that autumn, or, barring that, ride in a convertible with the champions in the city’s ticker-tape parade.

Well, that was a while ago.

Those framed columns became yellowing journalism after a number of years, sitting there on the stadium walls like bad motel art. To my everlasting joy, no Clevelander ever accused me of being a jinx, or requested that I heave my columns into the other garbage in Lake Erie. To the contrary, I received dozens of thank-you notes, the tone of which brought to mind those old wine-cooler commercials, the ones with the old-timer in the rocking chair saying: “And thanks for your support.”

One woman wrote to invite me to her bedroom full of authentic Cleveland souvenirs and posters. I blushed.

Another called me “Cleveland’s 26th man.”

I wrote her back that October to say that having seen Cleveland’s 25 other men, perhaps what this team needed was not my support but my arm and bat.

And then “Major League” came out, that movie about Cleveland finally winning the big one. That was the one in which Charlie Sheen crossed Bob Feller with Ryne Duren. Wild thing, he made their hearts sing. And Tom Berenger played a hobbled catcher, Wesley Snipes a swift center fielder and Corbin Bernsen a natty third basemen, and together they all made American Express commercials and lived happily ever after, although in the sequel they had to use a designated Snipes.

I was jealous.

For I had foreseen a Cleveland pennant first. But did the producers cut me in for 10% of the gross? No, they did not. Did they ask me to play a happy-go-lucky media slob, an invitation they could have sent advising, “Come as you are?” No, they did not. They got that wacky Bob Uecker instead. Me, I didn’t even get a guest shot on “Mr. Belvedere.”

Well, I abandoned Cleveland. Shame on me.

All those Aprils I had written my love columns--careful never to date them April 1 for fear of someone thinking it a hoax--declaring that Cleveland was about to experience a non-fiction championship season.

And then I forgot.

Everything was set this season for this to be the one. Rather than having to defeat six other teams in its division, Cleveland this time would need to defeat only four. The club had outstanding talent and a calamity-free spring.

Best of all, it had a new stadium, majestic Jacobs Field, named of course in honor of that immortal man, uh, somebody named Jacobs.

Boy, what a nice place to hang one of my columns. Better write a beauty this spring, I reminded myself. Maybe some song lyrics about “going to Cleveland, Cleveland,” to the tune of that Paul Simon song about Graceland. Be sure to give everybody a great big Ohio hi.

And then I forgot.

“What happened to your traditional Cleveland column?” Clevelanders began to write. Forgot.

Well, you know the rest. Who’s in first place? Who’s got one of the American League’s best records? Who’s winning more than 60% of its games? Who went out and got Eddie Murray and Jack Morris and Dennis Martinez and guys who actually know how to win? Who’s won more home games than anybody in baseball? Whose attendance is soaring as thousands file past all that beautiful but wasted wall space?

Maybe I was the jinx.

In any case, I am so delighted that this will be the year. I realize that midseason is a pretty cheesy time to be making predictions, but, you know what they say, a midsummer night’s dream is better than no dream at all.

My only other regret? It’s that when Cleveland and Atlanta get together this October for one of the all-time great World Series, it will be the first time in baseball history that I will spend an entire championship series calling neither team by its given nickname.

Having said that, go, Cleveland, go.