Cleveland Indians

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Cleveland Indians

Established:	1901
Former Team Names:	Naps (1903 - 14), Bronchos (1902), Blues (1901)
Ballpark:	Jacobs Field
World Series Titles:	2
Pennants:	5
Division Titles:	6
Wild Cards:	0

1 Early Cleveland Baseball
2 1901-1946: Early to middle history of the franchise
3 1947-1959: Bill Veeck and the 'Big Four'
4 1960-1993: The curse of Rocky Colavito
5 1994-2001: A new beginning
6 2001-present: The Shapiro years
7 Retired Numbers
8 Trivia
9 Local Media
10 External Links

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Early Cleveland Baseball

Professional baseball began in Cleveland in 1870, as it did with other major cities following the success of the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869-1870, the first openly professional baseball club. Cleveland's entry was called Forest City, that being the nickname of the city itself. In the newspapers, the team was often called the Forest Citys, in the same generic way that the team from Chicago was sometimes called The Chicagos. The Forest Citys had begun as an amateur team around 1865. The team joined the first professional league, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players, in 1871. The club was not successful, and dropped out of the league before the end of the 1872 season.

In 1876, the National League supplanted the N.A. as the one major baseball league. Cleveland was not among its charter members, but by 1879 the league was looking for some new entries, and Cleveland was brought on board in 1879. They played mostly in the middle of the pack for six seasons, but were bumped in 1885 when the league brought in the St. Louis franchise from the one-year wonder known as the Union Association. That franchise only lasted a couple of years, but another St. Louis franchise would deal a devastating blow to another Cleveland team some 15 years later.

Cleveland went without major league ball for two seasons, but they were picked up as a new franchise in the then-major American Association in 1887, after the Alleghenys had jumped to the National League. Cleveland followed suit in 1889, as the Association began to crumble. (It expired after 1891, and the National League acquired four of its franchises to swell to 12 teams.) The Cleveland team slowly built up to becoming a power in the league. They acquired the unique nickname Spiders, a tag supposedly inspired by their long-limbed players.

The Spiders survived a challenge from an entry in the one-season Players' League in 1890. The next year the Spiders moved into League Park, which would become the home of Cleveland professional ball for the next 55 years. Led by native Ohioan Cy Young, the Spiders became a contender in the mid-1890s, when they played in the Temple Cup Series (that era's World Series) twice, winning it in 1895. The team began to fade after that, and was dealt a severe blow under the ownership of the Robison brothers.

The Robisons, despite already owning the Spiders, were allowed to also acquire a controlling interest in the St. Louis Cardinals franchise in 1899. They proceeded to strip the Cleveland team of its best players (including Young) to help fill the St. Louis roster. The St. Louis team improved to finish above .500, although well back of first place. Meanwhile, the Spiders were left with essentially a minor league lineup, and began to lose games at a record pace. Drawing almost no fans at home, they ended up playing most of their season on the road, and became known as "The Wanderers", finally slinking home in 12th place, 84 games out of first place, with an all-time worst record of 20 wins and 134 losses.

Following the 1899 season, the National League disbanded the Cleveland franchise along with three other teams in Washington, Baltimore, and Louisville. The disastrous 1899 season would actually be a step toward a new future for Cleveland fans, the very next year.

Seeking to capitalize on general public disillusionment with the National League, Ban Johnson changed the name of his minor league, the Western League, to the American League and shifted the WL's Grand Rapids club to Cleveland, taking over League Park in 1900. Although still a minor league, the new organization was ready to make its move. In 1901 the American League broke with the National Agreement and declared itself a competing Major League. The Cleveland franchise was among its eight charter members.

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1901-1946: Early to middle history of the franchise

With the new league competing for fans, the American League began raiding the older League for players. One of the players that jumped was Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, a Philadelphia Phillies star who signed with the Philadelphia Athletics. When the Phillies got an injunction against the A's, the American League moved Lajoie to Cleveland early in the 1902 season. The team had previously been known as the Broncos or the Blues. In honor of its popular new star Cleveland soon acquired the nickname Naps.

Early on, Cleveland finished in the middle of the pack before contending for the championship in 1908, but the retirement of Cy Young, who returned to Cleveland as part of its American League franchise in 1908, and the untimely death of Addie Joss was a harbinger of things to come for Cleveland. Poor pitching was on tap for several years. Despite the strong hitting of Tris Speaker and Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Naps failed to rise above third place for most of the next decade, and jokes about "Naps" as a synonym for "sleeps" began to circulate. In 1916, the team hired a new manager, Lee Fohl, and brought in two young pitchers, future Hall of Famer Stan Coveleski and Jim Bagby. Behind their strong arms, the Indians would rise back into contention at the end of the decade.

Tris Speaker took over the reins as player-manager in 1919 and the team started the 1920s strong. With Speaker hitting .388, Jim Bagby's 30 victories and solid performances from Steve O'Neill and Stan Coveleski, the team went on to win the pennant and defeat the Brooklyn Robins 5-2 in the World Series for their first title. However, the season was soured by tragedy. That August, shortstop Ray Chapman was killed by a pitch to the head from Yankees pitcher Carl Mays. It was the only fatal play in baseball history.

To make matters worse, by September, the 1919 Black Sox scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players were charged with throwing the 1919 World Series had begun to unravel. Cleveland and Brooklyn played the 1920 World Series under a cloud of public suspicion. Cleveland won the series 5 games to 2 after shutting out Brooklyn 3-0 at League Park (then called Dunn Field).

Following the 1920 championship, the team did not reach the heights they had achieved in 1920 in the rest of the decade. Speaker and Coveleski were aging and the Yankees were rising with a new weapon: Babe Ruth and the home run. They managed two second-place finishes but spent much of the decade in the cellar.

The Tribe, as the Indians are affectionately referred to by Clevelanders, were a middling team by the 1930s, finishing third or fourth most years. In 1936, Cleveland introduced a 17-year old named Bob Feller, a pitcher with a dominating fastball. By 1940, Feller, along with Ken Keltner, Mel Harder and Lou Boudreau led the Indians to within one game of the pennant. The team was wracked with dissension, with some players (including Feller) going so far as to request that owner Alva Bradley fire manager Oscar Vitt. Reporters lampooned them as the Cleveland Crybabies. Feller, who had pitched a no-hitter to open the season and won 27 games, lost the final game of the season to unknown Floyd Giebell of the Detroit Tigers. Giebell never won another major league game.

With a young team, Cleveland was poised for a solid decade. Their much-despised manager Vitt was replaced by Roger Peckinpaugh in 1941. Unfortunately, the nation entered World War II and Feller went to serve in the Navy, delaying the Tribe's success. [edit]

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1947-1959: Bill Veeck and the 'Big Four'

In 1946 Bill Veeck formed an investment group that purchased the Cleveland Indians. A former owner of a minor league franchise in Milwaukee, Veeck brought to Cleveland a gift for promotion. At Cleveland he began the innovative Major League career that would bring him fame among many and infamy to others.

Recognizing that he had acquired a solid team, Veeck soon abandoned the aging and small and lightless League Park to take up full-time residence in massive Cleveland Stadium. Prior to 1947 the Indians played most of their games at League Park, occasionally played several weekend games at Municipal Stadium. Veeck agreed to move the club out of League Park and into Municipal Stadium permanently. In later years, fans and media scorned the stadium, dubbed the "mistake on the lake", but at the time it was a good idea, as the team was able to draw huge crowds that were possible in no other big league facility.

Making the most of the field itself in the cavernous stadium, Veeck had a portable center field fence installed, which he could move in or out depending on how the distance favored the Indians against their opponents in a given series. (He played similar shenanigans with the Milwaukee club.) The fence moved as much as 15 feet between series opponents. Following the 1947 season, the American League countered with a rule change that fixed the distance of a outfield wall for the duration of a season. The massive stadium did, however, permit the Indians to set the all-time one game regular-season attendance record in 1954 at over 84,000.

Veeck hired rubber-faced Max Patkin, the "Clown Prince of Baseball" as a coach. Patkin's appearance in the coaching box was the sort of promotional stunt by Bill Veeck that delighted fans and infuriated the front office of the American League.

Under Veeck's leadership, Cleveland's most significant achievement was breaking the color barrier in the American League by signing Larry Doby, formerly a player for the Negro League's Newark Eagles in 1947, eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers. Doby battled racism on and off the field (just as Jackie Robinson did that same year, in the National League) before posting a .301 batting average in 1948, his first full season. A power-hitting center fielder, Doby led the American League twice in homers.

In 1948, needing pitching for the stretch run of the 1948 pennant race, Veeck turned to theNegro Leagues again and signed pitching legend Satchel Paige amid much controversy. At an official age of 42, Paige became the oldest rookie in Major League baseball history, and the first black pitcher. Paige ended the year with a 6-1 record with a 2.48 ERA, 45 strikeouts, 2 shutouts and 2 base hits. A legend for twenty years in the Negro Leagues, among the greatest pitchers to ever play the game, Paige became in 1947 the Major League's oldest "rookie."

In 1948, veterans Boudreau, Keltner, and Joe Gordon had career offensive seasons, while newcomers Larry Doby and Gene Bearden also had standout seasons. The team went down to the wire with the Boston Red Sox, winning a one-game playoff, the first in American League history, to go to the World Series. In the series, the Tribe defeated the Boston Braves four games to two for their first championship in 28 years.

In 1949 Cleveland again contended before falling to third place. On September 23, 1949, Bill Veeck and the Indians buried their 1948 pennant in center field before a game, the day after they were mathematically eliminated from the pennant race.

In 1949 Veeck was forced to sell the Indians during a difficult divorce, but left behind a competitive team that continued to contend through the early 1950s, featuring Feller, Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, and Mike Garcia (also known as the Big Four). However, Cleveland only won a single pennant in the decade, finishing second to the New York Yankees five times. In 1954, Cleveland won a then-record 111 games and returned to the World Series against the New York Giants. The team was upset by the Giants in a sweep and the 1954 series became famous for Willie Mays amazing over-the-shoulder catch off the bat of Vic Wertz in Game 1. [edit]

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1960-1993: The curse of Rocky Colavito

Frank 'Trader' Lane was an early culprit in the construction of what became a running joke in baseball for three decades. However, the team's ill-advised trades under a number of general managers would haunt fans for years to come. A 30+ year slump began for the Indians with the club's most infamous trade; which involved slugging right fielder and fan favorite, Rocky Colavito.

Just before opening day in 1960 Colavito was traded to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn. Akron Beacon Journal columnist Terry Pluto documented the decades of woe that followed the trade in his book The Curse of Rocky Colavito. Pluto takes an in-depth look at this particular era, in which the franchise perennially played an almost comically bad brand of baseball. Pluto has written other books on the Indians, most notably, Our Tribe : A Baseball Memoir.

In the 1960s, the team also sent Tommy John, Luis Tiant, and Lou Piniella packing, receiving little in return. The 1970s were little better as the team traded away players Graig Nettles, Chris Chambliss and Buddy Bell. Without any strength in their farm system to nurture, the team fell deeper and deeper into a slump. The Tribe had consecutive losing seasons between 1969 and 1974. The nadir was the ill-conceived Ten Cent Beer Night promotion at a 1974 game against the Rangers. The next year the team featured Frank Robinson as MLB's first African American manager, but he was fired in 1977. From 1959 to 1993, the Indians managed one third-place and five fourth-place finishes but spent the rest of the time in the American League cellar. One of the few bright spots in this time frame occurred on May 15, 1981, when Len Barker pitched a perfect game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Also, in 1989, the Indians became the central part of the movie Major League, starring Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, and Corbin Bernsen.

The slide continued until the Tribe's inaugural season at Jacobs Field in 1994.

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1994-2001: A new beginning

Indians General Manager John Hart and team owner Dick Jacobs finally found the light at the end of the tunnel. In what seems to have been a case of life imitating art, the 1994 Cleveland Indians re-discovered their winning ways of the 1940s and 1950s; The 1989 motion picture Major League featured the Indians as a worst-to-first story: the 1993 Indians ended their era at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, 76-86, which was last in the American League East Division. The team opened the 1994 season with a new stadium, Jacobs Field, and with it came the success and the spirits of their movie counterparts. The 1994 MLB Season ended prematurely, with a Players Union strike; on the day the strike began, the Indians were one game behind the Chicago White Sox -- their newly-formed AL Central rivals-- with 49 left to be played.

The strike, which extended into the 1995 season, hardly dampened the teams newly found success. Without losing a step, the 1995 Indians went 100-44 in a shortened season. The team went on to defeat the Boston Red Sox in the Divisional Series; and the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS, reaching the World Series for their first time since 1954. Although the Tribe went on to lose to the World Series four games to two against the Atlanta Braves, 1995 was still a remarkable year for the Indians; besides winning 100 games, they also led Major League Baseball in batting average and led the American League in team ERA. The fans responded and the Indians, who had been perenially near the bottom in ticket sales, sold out every home game after June 12th and set a Major League Baseball record with 455 consecutive sellouts from 1995 to 2001.

The Tribe took the AL Central Crown again in 1996, but lost to the Baltimore Orioles (three games to one) in the Divisional Series. In 1997 the Tribe started lukewarm, but finished the regular season hot. Taking their third consecutive AL Central title, the Tribe shocked the baseball world by beating the heavily-favored New York Yankees in the Divisional Series (3-2). After getting payback for 1996 against the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS, the Tribe went on to finish a bittersweet season against the Florida Marlins. In a dramatic series, which featured (among other oddities) one of the coldest games in World Series history, Indians fans were reminded that the Curse of Rocky Colavito was not, in fact, dead: with the Indians in the lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning of game seven, the Marlins managed to tie the game. Relief Pitcher Jose Mesa, who is largely blamed by Tribe fans for the loss, gave up the run. The Marlins went on to clinch the title in the bottom of the eleventh, with Edgar Renteria driving the game winning RBI just past the glove of leaping Indians second baseman Tony Fernandez. In his 2002 autobiography, Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel directly blamed Mesa for the loss, leading to Mesa vowing to bean Vizquel every time they faced off; Mesa's made good on that vow to date.

In 1998, the Indians fell short of returning to the World Series for a third time in four seasons, being beaten by the New York Yankees in the ALCS. In 1999, the Divisional Series was the stage for one of the biggest collapses in MLB postseason history; the Indians, who were in command with a two games to none lead going into game three, gave up three consecutive games to the Boston Red Sox. The debacle cost Indians manager Mike Hargrove his job.

In 2000, the Indians got off to a mediocre start, going 44-42 at the break. They soon caught fire and went 46-30 the rest of the way to finish 90-72. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough as they ended up five games behind the Chicago White Sox in the Central division and missed the wild card by one game to the Seattle Mariners. In 2000, Larry Dolan bought the Indians for $323 million from Richard Jacobs, who, along with his late brother David, had paid $35 million for the club in 1986.

2001 saw a return to prominence for the Indians. After losing Manny Ramirez and Sandy Alomar Jr. to free agency, the Tribe signed former-MVP Juan Gonzalez, who arguably had one his best years in 2001, and reclaimed the Central division with a 91-71 record. One of the highlights of the season was a game televised nationally on ESPN on August 5th, where the Indians erased a 12-run deficit to the Mariners and won the game in extra innings, now known as the Impossible Return. The playoff run was short lived, however, as they were eliminated in the first round by the juggernaut Mariners.

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2001-present: The Shapiro years

In the 2001 offseason, GM John Hart resigned and his assistant Mark Shapiro took the reins. Shapiro decided that the Indians team was aging, and needed to be rebuilt with young minor-league talent. This sent Cleveland fans in an uproar, and the Indians struggled through 2002 and 2003, posting losing records both years.

In 2002, Shapiro traded fan favorite pitching ace Bartolo Colon for then-unknowns Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Grady Sizemore. He also acquired Travis Hafner in a trade with the Texas Rangers involving Ryan Drese and picked up Coco Crisp from the St. Louis Cardinals for aging starter Chuck Finley.

In 2004, the young talent finally started to hit its stride, and the Indians were a terrific offensive team. Unfortunately, the bullpen was a major Achilles heel. They blew more than 20 saves that year, and the Indians finished with an 80-82 record.

In early 2005, the offense was anemic, and couldn't score runs like the year before. However, the offense soon picked up, and the Indians began a 9-game winning streak in mid-June, going over .500 for good. After a brief July slump, the Indians caught fire in August, and they cut a 15.5 game deficit in the Central Division to the White Sox down to 1.5 games. However, the season came to a heartbreaking end as the Indians went on to lose six of their last seven games, five of them by one run, and missed the playoffs by only two games.

During the 2006 offseason the Indians traded the popular Coco Crisp along with David Riske and Josh Bard to the Boston Red Sox for reliever Guillermo Mota, third base prospect Andy Marte, catching prospect Kelly Shoppach, a player to be named later and cash, and Arthur Rhodes to the Philadelphia Phillies for outfielder Jason Michaels. Free agent pitchers Kevin Millwood and Scott Elarton signed with other teams, and Shapiro signed Paul Byrd and Jason Johnson to replace them. The Indians were terrible again in 2006, their 78-84 record only good for fourth place.

2007 has proven to be a monster year for the Tribe, due in large part to the coming-of-age of Fausto Carmona on the mound. As of August 29, they are 75-57 and lead the AL Central by 4.5 games over the Detroit Tigers.

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