What could be better for this born-again city with such a baseball buzz? Maybe if Albert Belle had thrown the ceremonial first pitch, just so these people could boo him from here to Halloween.
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His presence, however, was not required Tuesday night when the World Series returned to Jacobs Field. He hasn’t been missed in these parts all season, thank you. His absence merely makes Cleveland feel fonder about this moment.
You needn’t bother searching for fair-weather fans in Jacobs Field, even when the wind-chill factor exceeds the 29 degrees that existed for Game 3. What’s a little frostbite when you’ve been waiting to come in from the cold for so long? The Indians haven’t won a World Series since 1948, an eternity everywhere but in Chicago.
In Cleveland, the national pastime has suffered, and suffering is the regional ritual. When the Indians were awful, decade after decade, at least there was football. Alas, the Browns don’t live here anymore, gone to Baltimore with their little squirrel of an owner, Art Modell.
But the Indians have restored the faith. They were tabbed as baseball’s weakest division champions, this side of Houston. Yet, here’s the Tribe, playing in a Fall Classic that could pass for the Winter Carnival with the home-ice advantage now after splitting two games in the tropics.
The local consensus, whispered with fingers crossed, is that it’s time for the Indians. They’ve already staged sneak attacks on the two best teams in the American League, the Orioles and Yankees. Several of those games were won in weird fashion, but since the Indians haven’t enjoyed a particularly memorable half-century, who can deny they’re overdue?
Besides, luck is the residue of design. These Indians feast on mistakes, most notably a perception that the Indians don’t belong here. The Indians won four one-run games against the Orioles and couldn’t have done so without a botched squeeze play and a wild pitch for two runs.
So it was that Bip Roberts, the first Cleveland batter Tuesday night, tapped innocuously enough back to the mound, where pitcher Al Leiter reached for it, snagged it briefly, then dropped it for an error. Here we go again.
After David Justice walked, Matt Williams reached on a single that could have been caught by Devon White in center. Then Sandy Alomar’s looper to short left glanced off the glove of Edgar Renteria, his back to the infield. The Indians had two unearned runs without hitting a ball hard.
Wait, there was more in the fourth. Leiter walked the first two Indians, both of whom advanced a base when Tony Fernandez flied to right-fielder Gary Sheffield, who didn’t seem to consider the possibility the runners might be more alert than he.
Leiter walked two more men, anyway, and the game was tied. But then Manny Ramirez slapped a fairly routine grounder toward third, where Bobby Bonilla double-clutched and bungled the play with a wild throw. It was Bonilla’s second error, Florida’s third, and Cleveland collected three runs on one hit for a 5-3 advantage.
When a member of the Indians finally swung and hit the entire ball–Jim Thome’s rocket home run in the fifth–it quite naturally also scored Alomar, whose squibber back to Leiter once again was mangled by the pitcher, although this play was scored an infield single.
Thome thought he had another homer in the seventh, but he was robbed by Sheffield at the wall in right center. A fabulous catch. As Marlins’ manager Jim Leyland told his players, “There are 26 other teams at home now around the fireplace. Best way to keep warm is to keep moving.”