The team of my youth is in front of me, as bleak as its dark road uniforms, losers in extra innings to upstarts, so close to redemption, nearly a half-century of ache in each labored breath, generations of regret in every tear.
On the field the Florida Marlins are beaming and hugging each other, waving to friends, soaking up the anthem of winners, Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” while their fans pretend they all deserve such instant glory.
The Cleveland Indians had Game 7 of the World Series, led the game from the third inning to the ninth and then could not close the dream.
“I told my team not to feel sad or ashamed, to feel good about what they are,” said manager Mike Hargrove. “They are a team of heart, and character and talent.”
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And casualties again.
None of the Indians is old enough to know when the pain began, not even Hargrove on his 48th birthday, one year less than the great-toothed Chief Wahoo of cap and shoulder patch, as politically specious and downright contemptuous now as then, one year less than the last world championship for the Indians.
Beats there a heart too hard not to feel the anguish of the Cleveland Indians failing in the World Series? Not mine, not the nation’s, an audience indifferent rather than compassionate.
Cleveland’s shame has no friends, only labels.
The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. Beaten by John Elway. Done in by Earnest Byner. Destroyed by Michael Jordan.
And now? The Hit. Nibbled by Edgar Renteria.
Pro Player Stadium is on its feet, all 134,408 feet, all 1.3 million-plus toes. Jaws in Cleveland are tighter than a librarian’s bun.
Eleventh inning. Florida’s Bobby Bonilla is on first base with one out. A groundball from Craig Counsell rolls under second baseman Tony Fernandez’s glove. Instead of one on, two out, the Marlins have the bases loaded with one out after an intentional walk to Jim Eisenreich.
Devon White whacks another ball at Fernandez, who cuts down Bonilla at home. Bringing up Edgar Renteria.
Charles Nagy, the Cleveland pitcher deemed too inadequate to start the game, has been asked to finish it. Renteria’s bat meets Nagy’s pitch and the ball takes all of Cleveland’s heart with it into center field.
Edgar Renteria. Two words that will live in contempt wherever Lake Erie licks land. Edgar Renteria.
The Year the Indians win the Series? It sounds like another B-movie burlesque.
Well, better than Florida, too new to be so exclusive, a Series winner before it has been around long enough to have an old-timers game. Justice is not only blind, but she can’t count.
Game 7 will save this Series for history, the most tense and traditional of all the games. But enough dramatics, just enough, just in time to grab the conscience of the nation? Enough to save all of baseball? This rope is not long enough to haul baseball back from where it naps.
So little regarded has baseball become that the first pitch of Game 7 had to wait for the finish of a midseason NFL game.
The Series offered teams without appeal, the Marlins a checkbook-funded bunch of mercenaries, too inadequate over the long season to validate the investment, and the Indians, a bland and muted crew of third-thoughts, steeped in their own remorse, in the Series on coincidence and serendipity.
The new World Series winners are the modern model of the baseball franchise, overbought and underfutured. Wayne Huizenga, the man who owns the team and the stadium it plays in, wants someone to build him another one. If he pulls this off, I’m buying whatever stock he’s selling.
Five years for the Marlins. Forty-nine years for the Indians, 80 for the Sox, 89 for the Cubs. The improbable happens. The impossiple takes longer.