Partly because I grew up watching a Cleveland Indians team whose best
players were usually household names like Duane Kuiper and Charlie
Spikes. Never heard of them? Those were the good ones.
Almost every guy I grew up watching was either light-hitting, slow, or
unable to field his position, in addition (in several notable cases) to
being alcoholics, philanders, or otherwise unbalanced, the type you
sort of expect are destined to die in somebody’s basement in a
cardboard box, only to be found later when the boiler explodes and the
forensic experts can only guess it was caused by a vagrant peeing pure
sterno onto a hotplate with worn-out wiring.
Eight days later, you’re reading the obituary, and you think, hey, I used to have that guy’s baseball card.
I mean, that was Indians baseball in the 1970s.
Our biggest prospect ever was Joe Charbonneau, who was more famous for
opening beer bottles with his eye socket than hitting home runs.
We called him "Super Joe."
Yeah, yeah, the Indians didn’t suck in the 90s, although you knew damn
well Jose Mesa was gonna screw up the save in game seven. Yeah, yeah. But I had moved out of Cleveland ten years earlier, and so my excitement about it just wasn’t the same.
In the meantime, I had lived in Chicago, where I got to watch the Cubs
and White Sox of the late ’80s. I moved to Washington, DC just in time to catch
the Orioles break the record for horrible starts to a season. Then I
got to New York in the early ’90s to watch the Mets and Yankees, then
to Los Angeles in the mid ’90s.
Look it up. Every time I move to a new city, the baseball team immediately starts to suck, no matter how good they just were.
I’ve been in Los Angeles now for almost a decade. Remember Kirk Gibson pumping his fist in the World Series? That was before I got here.
And now, after a long, slow slide, here’s the Dodgers’
projected starting lineup for 2005 at the moment, I kid you not:
1B Hee-Seop Choi .251
2B Jeff Kent .289
SS Cesar Izturis .288
3B Jose Valentin .216
C David Ross .170
LF Jayson Werth .262
CF Milton Bradley .267
RF Shawn Green .266
Starting rotation: Brad Penny, Jeff Weaver, Kaz Ishii, Edwin Jackson, and either Wilson Alvarez or Elmer Dessens.
Wow. Most expansion teams are better. Much better.
This is pure 1970s Cleveland. Guys who can’t hit? Check. Guys in key
defensive positions who can’t field? Check. Slow guys? Check. Guys
who’ve never had a single good year, but the GM says are promising?
Guys who used to be really good but now suck? Inured guys? Check,
check check. Half-crazed nutjob eager to wade into the stands and
start biting people, destined to wind up getting killed by a waitress’
boyfriend in self-defense? Check.
This is why, as you read this, I am on a plane to Australia.
I am going to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is the Aussie
equivalent of Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park rolled into one.
And once
there, I will be rooting for Australia to beat the crap out of
Pakistan, not because I have anything against the visitors (in fact, I
actually quite admire some of their bowlers, even if Shoaib Akhtar needs a
longer approach than a C-130 cargo plane), but just because I want just
once in my life to root for
the winning side in an important baseball-like sporting event, even if
I have to travel halfway around the goddam planet to do it.
Although if Australia starts trying to talk Super Joe out of retirement… well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.