One of the tenets of being a diehard fan of a team is that you are rooting for that team, no matter what. If Damien Satan III was called up from the minors and got on base every time up, while at the same time All-Stars on your team’s rivals began dying, a hardcore fan might say that’s some extraordinary luck and change the subject to how cute Damien’s rottweiler is and how he helps the poor trade their souls for goods and services. As a Mets fan I have rooted for some loathsome characters and players I just did not like, only to cheer them without a second thought when they came through at a key—or even not so key—moment.
Postseason battles between other teams are a different matter. Most of the time, who cares who wins or who doesn’t? Unlike the Super Bowl, which is just a day (thankfully), sometimes you never really get behind either team and instead put much of your energy into devouring guacamole or your favorite intoxicant at the party spread before one team takes a 32-0 lead. But to watch the World Series—and what red-blooded baseball fan does not? (though if the Yankees are involved you do what you have to do)— is a four- to seven-night commitment. It’s hard to watch for that long while staying objective. Just ask Joe Buck! (And thank you, Fox, for finally deeming this round of baseball competition worthy of a channel not numbered in the 400s, where people staying in hotels or living within their means might have access.)
I used to pick my rooting interests before the World Series and stuck by them. Then the 1993 World Series happened. I have loved the Blue Jays since their first-ever game in 1977, played in a snowstorm, when I spent hours willing the broadcast beamed onto my black-and-white TV in New York by an ESPN that did not yet exist. The 1993 pennant winner was the Phillies, a team I have never liked since much of my baseball fan apprenticeship in the 1970s and early 1980s, was spent watching the Phillies serve as the boxing glove to the Mets’ punching bag. Yet there I was in October of ’93, rooting for the Phillies to come back on the Jays in the butt ugly 15-14 Game Four that Toronto held on to win. I was never so relieved in a non-Mets rooting/non-Yankees loathing postseason circumstance as when Joe Carter hit that walkoff home run, touched them all, and put an end to Philadelphia’s and my misery. I felt dirty when it was over. Or maybe that was the bender I was on from my high school reunion that weekend. But that is nothing compared to the impending benders throughout parts of the Midwest if either the Cubs or Indians take the title they have been cumulatively been waiting 174 seasons for.
The Cubs have not won since 1908. You may have heard this. Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown and Orval Overall won the four games against the Tigers, whom the Cubs had beaten the previous year for the world’s championship, as they possessively called it then. Three Finger and Overall each pitched complete games shutouts in the final two games of the World Series. The 2016 Cubs had that many complete-game shutouts all year. It was a different time, but as forever Cubs fan and forever funnyman Bill Murray said, most people don’t get what it’s like to root for a team that never wins. “It builds character.”
Cleveland fans would know all about that. Cleveland has not won the World Series since 1948, with a team managed by Lou Boudreau. The 30-year-old player-manager had come up with the first widely discussed shift for Ted Williams and Lou was 1948 AL MVP (when only one manager was honored by The Sporting News, Billy Meyer was named TSN Manager of the Year with Ralph Kiner’s ’48 Pirates). Boudreau did lead the league in WAR, which in 1948 he might have thought was a slight at being declared 4-F during World War II because of arthritic ankles.
There are the silly curses: Billy goats in Chicago, Rocky Colavito in Cleveland. There is the Midwestern sturdiness aspect. And there are the nicknames that are the last in a long line for these franchises. “Cubs” stuck as the name after the White Stockings, Colts, and Orphans came and went. Cleveland started with Blues and went with Bronchos (not sure of why it was spelled that way) and Naps (for the great Napoleon Lajoie, long forgotten despite his stellar name and game). “Indians” has been the name for more than a century, but I can’t say it’s right. Charles Bender was already a stellar member of the Philadelphia A’s for a decade and had long been known as “Chief” when “Indians” became the official name for Cleveland’s team. I’m sure he kept calling them “Cleveland” or “Naps,” just as he kept signing his name “Charles Bender” for autographs until the end of his life in the spring of 1954, a year after he was elected to the Hall of Fame. That the ’54 Tribe won an AL-record 111 games and were swept in the World Series is a coincidence, I’m sure.
I’m not here to talk about the team nickname. That it is offensive to a people that has so much dignity is enough for me. I will try avoiding using the word “Indians” here and in speech, but it will be difficult. You see, when I was in my back yard, throwing a ball in the air and hitting it, I made up not just a whole cast of teammates, but an entire American League of fictional stars. (I picked the Indians for my fictional career because beiong on the Mets seemed too far-fetched.) And I was third baseman when the Indians finally won the World Series. This was in the 1970s, but given that I was 11 and 12 at the time, their championship was projected as around 1990. And now we’re 40 years past me teaching myself to switch-hit so I could be a switch-hitter in my pretend American League. And we’re 26 years past the projected date of that world championship. (By the way I hit the Series clinching inside-the-park homer, lefty, naturally—and don’t think the hair didn’t prick up on the back of my neck when Cleveland’s Tyler Naquin ended a game with a touch-’em-all home run earlier this year.
Just like I don’t summarily discount clutch hitting because the player at the plate believes it exists, I am not going to assume that because I may be OK with a nickname that the group it targets isn’t deeply affected. My family goes back far enough in this country that I am not sure if we are more German or Irish or Spanish or whatever. But whoever it was carrying my genes was a newcomer next to the natives. And they may be as insulted as they might be if Cleveland’s team was called Krauts or Micks or what have you.
But this is about taking sides in a ballgame. And I remain torn. I have numerous friends—and some relatives—who are Cubs fans. I have a new edition of a book on the Cubs I co-wrote that you can buy while supplies last. And they play in the best ballpark still in existence, though I have not been to Wrigley Field since it had its up-do.
On the other side, I know just one Indians fan, and the book I was paid to work on about the Indians is 20 years old and so long out of print I can’t even find a mention of it on the internet. Though I may have gone the other way on the nickname, I am not opposed to the ballclub. They pitch, they hit, they run, they win, they are not the Yankees.
But I am a prisoner, awaiting my heart to tap me mid-game and say who I am rooting for. A prisoner of baseball. And happily so.