Some things that are going through my mind, as the weather gets cooler—
Here’s the bad luck that Cleveland sports fans suffer. Here are Cliff Lee’s victory totals per season since 2004: 14, 18, 14, 5, 22, 14, and 12. Note the number right in the middle of those totals, the number 5. That, of course, came in 2007, the year the Tribe won the AL Central Division title.
Imagine, if you will, an Indians rotation that fall featuring C.C. Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, and the Lee who pitched any of the other six years since he became a full time starter in the big leagues. If Lee hadn’t been slow to recover from an abdominal injury that season and had a normal season, the Indians may have a World Series trophy from that season.
That’s bad luck.
The venom of Cleveland sports fans is somehow centered on former Plain Dealer basketball writer Brian Windhorst for some reason. Windhorst is leaving to work for ESPN.com, mostly covering (or as the worldwide leader is known to do, over-cover) the Miami Heat.
Look, Windhorst is an excellent writer and has earned the right to pursue a better gig. Beat writers are not making million dollar salaries. We will miss his outstanding work covering the Cavaliers and the NBA.
That’s the reason that people are mad about this. Not only have we lost one of the best basketball players around, we’ve also lost one of the sports’ best writers.
Windhorst should take the anger directed his way as a compliment. You can’t remember this type of reaction for a member of the media leaving the market. It just goes to show how good Brian Windhorst is as a writer.
Dwayne Wade strained a hamstring in the Heat’s first exhibition game. Why did that bring a smile to the face of everyone in northeast Ohio?
And now a beef regarding television sports. Saturday, with the two National League playoff spots were up for grabs, FOX showed the Cleveland market the Yankees-Red Sox game, which basically meant nothing, except whether the Yanks would be the division titlists or a wild card team.
The real drama was with the Giants-Padres game, which we didn’t get to see.
On the same day, ABC affiliate WEWS showed the Notre Dame-Boston College football game instead of a battle of two top ten teams in Oregon and Stanford which was played at the same time and was also aired on ABC.
Can we get to see the best games and not the contests the local stations thinks we want to see?
A couple of commercial airing in Cleveland got me wondering. First is the commercial for Gallucci’s Italian Foods where the owner talks about having to work in the family business while his friends were out playing ball. The ad is supposed to show how dedicated he is, but instead, he comes off as bitter that he had to do this.
The other is the commercial for Lady Jane’s, which airs on WKNR where the owner reminds KNR personality Aaron Goldhammer that he doesn’t pay for his haircuts at the establishment. Look, we get that celebrities get free stuff, but do they really need to flaunt it? Why not just say that Goldhammer gets his hair cut at the place and leave it at that.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 