A celebration of sorts

In Cleveland , Ohio major league baseball is a celebration of losing traditions. Like some sorry old dog that reappears after it's drunken owner whoops on it , baseball season rolls around back here every year since the inception of the American League in 1901. Since 1901 the Cleveland American League teams entered have managed to capture the world series flag only twice , 1920 and 1948. Second place finishes are not really worth mention. Losing is losing and Cleveland professional baseball is a career study in loss. Sitting in the grandstand a few rows back from the home team dugout this past Tuesday evening's game with the Baltimore Orioles with my old pal Steinie gave me plenty of time to get a real closeup view of two last place teams " playing out the string". Both of these teams seasons are over , all that remains is the month of September for their 2008 efforts. Watching the village idiot manager Eric Wedge visit the pitching mound gave me the feeling that the creepy cabal of dunces led by Wedge and GM Shapiro have managed to take a first place team in 2007 {whose choke in the ALCS remains my favorite example of Cleveland baseball losing traditions in the 21st century } and due to their off season inactivity resulted in a 2008 cellar dwelling . Baseball demands tradition and it is insulting to watch third base coach Joel Skinner at work this season. Skinner's pivotal error in base running judgement in the 2007 ALCS would have cost him his job in any major league city save Cleveland. Losing is rewarded here. The 2008 Cleveland American League team is more akin to the high minor league teams that were fielded here in the seventies and eighties , insulting any hometown fans sober enough to notice , and led by such rank amateur players as Rick Manning and his like. The reason for attending games then was always to watch the opposing teams real baseball clubs chew up the home team. Baltimore fielded great teams who fielded competitive teams from the mid sixties through the early eighties. I recall a night game in the mid seventies that went extra innings at the old Cleveland Stadium that was approaching the American League one a.m. cutoff , that forced Brooks Robinson to come off the Orioles bench to put away the hapless Cleveland team with a pinch hit home run down the left field line that made a deafening clatter as it bounced from seat to concrete. Lights out tribe fans , home a little after one a.m. Could not have been more than a few hundred fans left in the stadium to witness Brooks walk off dinger. A few years later I attended a game at the old Baltimore Memorial Stadium after dining at Brooks restaurant a few blocks from the Baltimore stadium. The food was all right , she crab soup , crab cakes , white tablecloths good service , though the baseball fans led by upper deck leather lunged " Wild Bill Nagy " a real trip to witness. We sat in the section occupied by this local rabid Baltimore Orioles fan Nagy and were amazed by his active antics versus the lonely drumbeat metered out by the Cleveland equivalent John Addams and his incessant annoying drumming in the Cleveland Stadium bleachers. Then who would have guessed it ? The Orioles fielded competitive teams based on superb pitching and stellar defense , led by real managers , a stellar roster , and embodied by playing baseball " the Oriole Way" , described by Cal Ripkin Senior as " perfect practice makes perfect". The opposite held sway in Cleveland baseball traditions , drunkenness , wife swapping , mental illness , horrible trades , and managerial incompetence the bell weather for losing that continues to this very day in Cleveland American league baseball traditions. The last real competent field manager the Cleveland American League team hired was Al Lopez , and he was gone by the late nineteen fifties....... It is with great sadness that I take my hat off to the sad fate suffered by Detroit baseball fans in the loss of their beloved baseball architectural gem Tiger Stadium. Having watched fifty or so games at the corner of Michigan and Trumbell from it's original green colored confines to it's later blue painted interiors , I feel that this is a loss of no small matter. The upper deck " Tigers Den" seats perhaps the best in baseball. The flagpole in deep center field unique as the lower deck bleachers. The right field overhang which dated back to it's original place as the area behind home plate. The legion of half nuts fans that graced the upper deck bleachers , giving it an insane asylum on holiday air unique in baseball. I could go on. Comerica Park is a large mistake and indicative of the new generation faux intimate baseball stadiums that plague professional baseball today. I would no sooner visit Comerica park than I would revisit Camden Yards. I visited Camden Yards to watch a game in the 1993 season and witnessed the end of traditional baseball from a fans point of view. We sat in the lower grandstand of Camden Yards past the third base line towards left field and spent the game staring into right field due to the position of the seating. To view the balls and strikes or infield play meant to spend the game with the neck tilted right. Good night! Same goes for the majority of the baseball stadiums constructed since. Commerica, Progressive , Camden Yards. All the same to me. Phony and without any real heart and soul. I do not easily suffer the fool these days so attendance out of pocket at any professional baseball game played at home or on the road best come with a positive hook. No Commerica Park in my future though I sure do miss Tiger Stadium already............In this season of loss , I prefer to end on a high note. I was fortunate enough to witness Cleveland catcher Kelly Shoppach's five extra base hit performance earlier this month. Rebuilding a team like the 2008 Cleveland American League baseball team starts with a solid catcher. Shoppach might fit the bill.The 2009 is sooner than you think , and it is time to start cleaning house now from the top , Shapiro , down , Wedge. Those tow jokers , like Rick Manning and his ilk need to be excised once nad for good from this town along with the sorry racist mascot wahoo and that little stinking pinko hallucination slider. Ughh!

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