CLEVELAND – Out on Ontario Street, on a wonderfully sun-dappled morning, a one-man retro crew named Francis Gladden was hoping for communion with the sporting gods. On his head was a weather-beaten Indians cap, with “1948” stenciled in white letters on the back. On his shoulders was a No. 32 Browns jersey.
“I’m trying to summon the spirit of ’64,” Francis Gladden said.
Gladden is a retired insurance executive from suburban Shaker Heights who was born in 1946, meaning he was 2 years old the last time the Indians won the World Series, meaning he was 18 the last time the Browns were NFL champions. Meaning that as a Cleveland sports fan, he’s been thirsty for a long, long, long time.
“My nephew lives in New York,” Gladden said, “and he tells me that all he hears from the people he works with who are Yankees fans is that they haven’t won a world championship in seven years. The Mets fans, all they do is whine that it’s been 20 years (actually, 21) for them.
“And I feel bad for my son. He was born in 1965. He’s 42 years old. And he’s never seen his teams win a damn thing. There’s a couple generations of people around here, they’ve never seen these teams win a damn thing.”
He smiled.
“One of these years,” Gladden said. “Maybe this year.”
This, as much as anything, is what the Yankees walked into last night, for the first game of their ALDS matchup with the Central Division-champion Indians. They didn’t just walk into a hostile ballpark with rabid fans. They walked into 43 years of empty calendars. Forty-three years of accumulated frustration. And for a night at least, the Indians gave them plenty of hope, a lot of runs, and most important, a Game 1 win.
The fans of Cleveland, Ohio, want someone to pay for Edgar Renteria in 1997, and Tom Glavine in 1995, and Willie Mays in 1954, and enough dreadful seasons scattered in there, going back 59 years, to have made the Indians the easy nominee to play the perennially dreadful team depicted in the “Major League” movies.
They want someone to pay for Ernest Byner’s fumble in 1988 and John Elway’s drive in 1987, for “Red Right 88” in 1981 and for the 34-0 shellacking they took off the ’68 Colts two weeks before Joe Namath’s guarantee. They want someone to pay for the four-game drubbing LeBron James’ Cavs took last year, and for Michael Jordan’s buzzer-beater in 1989, and for Ted Stepien and, hell, while we’re at it, for the Cleveland Barons NHL team becoming the last team in the history of North American sports to just vanish one day, folding into the North Stars back in 1978.
Forty three years. Think about that. In New York City, we have nine sports franchises in the four major professional leagues. No one roots for all nine. Most rational people pick one from each of the four columns, cast their lot with them. And yet nobody, no matter how you pick your teams, has had to go 43 years without a title.
All nine have won titles since 1964, 22 of them in all, most recently the Devils in 2003 and most distantly the Jets in 1968. If you happen to make your alliances Yankees-Giants-Islanders-Knicks, then you’ve had 14 titles off your personal buffet table; even if you’re the rare Mets-Jets-Rangers-Nets fan, you’ve got six.
Folks in other cities don’t like to hear about the Mets’ 21-year drought. And they really break into a heat rash if you try to call the Yankees’ seven-year absence from the Canyon of Heroes as anything other than “God occasionally paying attention.”
So that is what the Yankees will deal with throughout this series, and especially last night, as Cleveland welcomed October baseball back to town for the first time in six years. It isn’t just Grady Sizemore and Casey Blake and C.C. Sabathia and Joe Borowski standing on the other side of the front line.
It’s Bob Feller and Vic Wertz and Tony Fernandez. And Bernie Kosar and Marty Schottenheimer and Leroy Kelley. And LeBron James and Mark Price and World B. Free. And Jim Neilson and Bob Stewart (like you didn’t know they were the only co-captains the Barons ever had). All of them on the wall, along with the denizens of the city with the longest of all professional blackouts. One of these years. Maybe this year.