Can Kwan Do Something That Hasn’t Happened in 70 Years?

We understand that batting average as a statistic has been devalued in today’s game and that on base percentage is more meaningful, after all baseball is about getting on base (thus avoiding outs) and moving once you are on, which slugging percentage measures.

However, back in the day, when we were growing up, it was a big deal, the man who led their respective league in average was considered the “batting champ”, and it is still considered part of the traditional “triple crown”, a player who leads the league in average, home runs, and runs batted in.

We bring this up because in our lifetime, Cleveland has never had a batting champion. The last Indian/Guardian to lead the American League in average was Bobby Avila, and that occurred way back in 1954.

No, we aren’t that old!

A few players have come close. In the 1994 strike season, Paul O’Neill of the Yankees was awarded the batting title with a .359 average. Albert Belle was second at .357 and Kenny Lofton was fourth at .349.

Belle also hit 36 homers and knocked in 101 runs in just 106 games. No doubt it is among the things fans were robbed of by the players’ strike/lockout.

We bet most people won’t remember the previous high finish in the batting race, but it belongs to Miguel Dilone, who hit .341 in 1980 to finish third behind George Brett’s epic season of hitting .390 and Cecil Cooper who hit .352.

Dilone was a speedster who wound up with a lifetime .265 average, but for that season, he was a catalyst, with a .375 on base percentage and 61 steals, which at that time was a club record, topping the 52 swiped by Ray Chapman in 1917.

Could the string be broken this season? We don’t want to jinx the incredible Steven Kwan, but it sure looks like a possibility.

Kwan is currently second in the AL batting race, but that comes with an asterisk. The official leader is Bobby Witt of Kansas City at .326, and Kwan is second only because right now he doesn’t have enough at bats to qualify for the lead. If you add the necessary at bats in, Kwan ranks second at .318, just three points behind Witt.

However, Kwan’s real batting average is .380, 54 points better than the Royals’s shortstop and as soon as the Guardians’ leftfielder has enough at bats, he will have a sizeable advantage in the race.

The Guardians have played 66 games, and a qualifier has the have 3.1 plate appearances per contest, meaning Kwan would need 205 times at the dish. He currently has 183. Keep in mind, he is a leadoff hitter, so he often gets five at bats per night, so he should close that gap very soon.

Kwan is also putting up great numbers in how the game is viewed now. His on base percentage is .445 which would also lead the league with enough at bats, and he is slugging .534. His previous career best in that category was his rookie season, when he slugged .400.

Can it continue? If you mean hit .380, that might be a bit much to ask, but could he become Cleveland’s first batting champion since 1954? Let’s judge it when he finally qualifies for the top spot and see what kind of edge he has then.

We’ve been watching baseball in Cleveland a long time and we don’t remember a hitter like Steven Kwan. And even though batting average isn’t as important as it once was, doing something that hasn’t been done for 70 years is very much an accomplishment.

Memories Of Manny On Going Into The Cleveland Hall Of Fame

We happened to be in Minnesota on September 2, 1993 when a 21-year-old outfielder drafted just two years earlier made his major league debut.

Manny Ramirez, the Indians’ first round pick that year, arrived in the big leagues after hitting .333 with 31 HR and 115 RBIs at Canton-Akron (AA) and Charlotte (AAA). Ramirez, batting sixth, ahead of another young player, Jim Thome, went 0 for 4.

Thome, of course is in the Hall of Fame, something Ramirez will never do because of his ties to PEDs, but tonight, the Cleveland baseball team put Ramirez into their Hall of Fame, and the memories we have of him are plentiful.

Ramirez opened the season and then Jacobs Field in Cleveland in ’94 and had a game tying hit in late in the season opener. He hit 17 home runs and knocked in 60 in the strike shortened season in 91 games.

In 1995, he emerged as one of the game’s top sluggers, hitting .308 with 31 dingers and 107 ribbies, starting a stretch where he drove in 100 or more runs 12 times in 14 years.

He was an RBI guy. Granted, he spent a good period of time hitting behind Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, and Roberto Alomar in the batting order, but he seemed to understand that hitting a groundball to second with a man on 3rd in the first inning got a run home. He didn’t try to hit one 400 feet.

He also would take the single to right-center to score runners. Playing with good hitters and having that mindset is how you have five seasons where you drive in 125 or more runs.

We were in attendance in 1999 when Ramirez homered to knock in his 163rd run of the season, breaking Hal Trosky’s club record of 162 which had stood since 1936. He finished the season with 165.

The last time anyone in baseball history had knocked in more than that was 1938, when Jimmie Foxx drove in 175 runners. Sammy Sosa came closest to that figure in 2001, collecting 160 RBI.

We were also there on a July day in 1995 (July 16th to be exact) when Ramirez hit a game winning homer against Oakland, off of Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley (also a former Indian). Eckersley was videoed saying “wow” when the ball reached the seats. He couldn’t believe someone had hit that pitch out of the park.

We watched a game in Yankee Stadium when Ramirez hit a line drive that we think the second baseman had a bead on but sailed over the fence in right-center. It was like he took out a driver and hit a golf ball.

We were also there on October 1, 2000, when pending free agent Ramirez, in what turned out to be his last at-bat as an Indian, homered off Blue Jay reliever John Frascatore. He received a curtain, and with new owner Larry Dolan in attendance, fans were yelling to his suite to keep the slugger in Cleveland.

To be fair, Dolan put together a great offer, and we went to bed on a Sunday night (we think it was Sunday) during the Winter Meetings hearing the great Peter Gammons report that it looked like Ramirez was going to stay in Cleveland.

Of course, the Red Sox swooped in at the last minute was signed him.

It was always reported that when Boston visited here during the regular season, Ramirez would remark that it was good to be home.

That’s the player the Indians/Guardians are honoring tonight. To our eyes, he’s the best right-handed hitter we’ve ever seen. Combining power and average.

In his eight seasons in Cleveland, he batted .313 with 236 home runs and a 998 OPS. That latter figure is a club record. He’s third all-time in home runs (Thome and Albert Belle) and eighth in runs batted in.

We know what happened later in his career, starting with the whole “Manny being Manny” stuff. But what a hitter. It was great to witness some great moments in his career.

A Trio Deserving Of Heritage Park.

The Cleveland baseball franchise has its own franchise Hall of Fame out behind the centerfield fence called Heritage Park. Everyone may have forgotten this because the team hasn’t added anyone since 2016 when Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Frank Robinson, and Charlie Jamieson were added.

Why has it been six years since the franchise honored anyone? Quite frankly, we have no idea. We have theories, but they would all be the same as some of the other things the team has done to not do anything for the fans.

They just don’t do anything for the people who pay for tickets.

This needs to change next season. Since Progressive (nee Jacobs) Field opened in 1994, the Indians/Guardians have been among the best franchises in baseball, making the post-season 13 times, winning three American League championships, and 11 Central Division titles.

They’ve honored many of the greats from the late 90’s teams which won two pennants: Belle, Thome, Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Sandy Alomar Jr., Charles Nagy, and manager Mike Hargrove, who is also honored for his playing days with the Tribe.

It’s time to start honoring the players who played in the 2000’s, as those teams had some success as well.

We would start with Grady Sizemore. Sizemore spent parts of eight seasons with Cleveland, with injuries taking their toll over the last two, but he was a dynamic force from 2005-2009. He made three All-Star appearances (’05. ’06, and ’07), leading the league in runs scored and doubles in 2006.

That season was the down year between the 2005 team which just missed the post-season and the ’07 team which reached the ALCS. However, we maintain that if the Indians were contenders that season, Sizemore would have been the likely MVP of the league.

He batted .290 (907 OPS) with 22 homers and 53 two baggers, scoring 134 runs, while playing tremendous defense.

As we said, injuries cut his career short, as he only had one more season after 2009 (age 26) where he played more than 100 games. Still, he should be honored for the greatness he exhibited with Cleveland in that five year span.

Jason Kipnis was a mainstay of the early Terry Francona era teams, playing with the team from 2011-2019, making two All-Star teams, and key player on four Cleveland teams that made the post-season.

The second baseman has over 1100 hits (1120) and 123 home runs in a Cleveland uniform with an OPS over 800 three times in a four-year span from 2013-16. And he moved to centerfield in 2017 and 2018 for the post-season.

We would also like to see Cody Allen honored in Heritage Park.

Allen is the franchise’s all-time saves leader (149) and the closer in the run from 2016-18 where the Indians got to the World Series in the first of those years. He struck out 564 batters in 440-2/3 innings, leading the AL in games finished in 2015.

Along with Bryan Shaw and Andrew Miller, he was a huge reason Cleveland got to the Fall Classic in ’16 despite a starting rotation ravaged by injuries.

Honoring this trio would be a first step in re-establishing the franchise’s Hall of Fame. The 2022 squad re-awakened fan interest and the organization needs to keep that going.

Celebrating the history of the franchise is never a bad thing. The Guardians need to get back in touch with that.

Reading A Great Book, Thinking Of Albert Belle

We are currently reading Joe Posnanski’s great book, The Baseball 100, and we just read the chapter on Hall of Famer Frank Thomas, who was #74 in the book.

Thomas was a tremendous hitter, perhaps the closest thing to Ted Williams in the last 50 years. Williams is the all time leader in on base percentage at .4817 and none of the players between him and Thomas, ranked 21st at .4191 all finished their career before 1972 save for Barry Bonds, whose statistics are tainted (to us).

Williams is second all-time in slugging at .634 behind Babe Ruth, and Thomas is 22nd at .555 although several of the players from recent times between the Splendid Splinter and The Big Hurt (Bonds, Mark McGwire, Manny Ramirez, and Juan Gonzalez) and also suspected of using PEDs.

There are also a few who haven’t been linked. Those players are Mike Trout, Larry Walker, and Albert Belle.

We continue to hope Belle gets consideration from the Veterans’ Committee, and someday can be inducted into Cooperstown.

At the time both were playing, we always felt Thomas took walks, and so did Belle, but Belle would expand the strike zone when it came to getting runners home. He wouldn’t swing at bad pitches but would put the borderline pitch into play to put a run on the board.

The fact the Sox and the Tribe were rivals for the division title in the strike year of 1994 and on into 1996, makes the comparison move inevitable.

Belle is two years older than Thomas, and of course had his career cut short by a hip injury after the 2000 season when he was just 33 years old.

The right-handed slugger had 95 RBIs in his first full big league season in 1992, and that was the lowest total he had until he retired. He led the AL in ribbies in ’93, ’95, and ’96, the last of those years knocking in 148, before leaving Cleveland as a free agent.

Thomas finished second to Belle in that category in ’93 trailing by just one run knocked in. He drove in 109 in first full year in 1991, the first of eight straight years eclipsing the century mark. He never did lead his league in this department.

He did lead the AL in walks, on-base percentage, and OPS four times from ’91 to ’97. On the other hand, Belle led the Junior Circuit in homers once and runs scored once.

And of course, he had the epic season in 1995 when he hit 50 dingers and 52 doubles during the season (shortened to 144 games by labor issues).

Thomas won two league MVPs, Belle none, although in retrospect, he should have won in ’95 but his attitude with the writers did him in.

When Belle left Cleveland for free agency after the ’96 season, he teamed with Thomas for two seasons, but Chicago won just 80 games both years. The pitching wasn’t good and the Pale Hose didn’t have much offensive talent beyond these two great hitters.

The latter year, Chicago ranked 14th in the AL in ERA.

After his rookie year, Thomas never struck out more than he walked until 2002 when he was 34 years old. Belle didn’t walk as much, but after fanning 128 times in his first full season (’93), he never whiffed more than 105 times in a season again.

These two weren’t wild swing for the fence guys. They were both good hitters who hit with power.

We can’t help but think about Belle when Thomas’ name comes up. What would Belle’s numbers have been had he played two more years, three more years?

It’s fun to think about.

Our Two Cents On The Baseball Hall

Times have changed, that’s for sure. It used to be people could have a good debate about things, particularly sports and walk away friends.

It’s still possible, but in today’s times, usually the argument ends with one person calling the other stupid and criticizing them for having that opinion.

The voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame is one of those discussions. Some voters have their selections made public and then are ridiculed for not putting an “X” by a certain player.

Hey, the writer earned a right to vote by covering baseball for many years, and that’s who he thinks should get in. Most of the voters take the job very seriously.

We don’t have a vote (obviously), but if we did, here would be our criteria. And a few months ago, we posted on social media who we would vote for and several people took the time to tell us we were wrong.

Again, we aren’t saying we are right, it’s just who we think should get in.

First of all, we would not vote for anyone connected with PEDs. We understand there are players already in the Hall who used them, but we would not have voted for them, but if the electorate decided they were worthy, we aren’t going to go crazy.

And we understand Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the poster boys for illegal enhancers, were great players before it appears they started to use, but they knew it was wrong and did it anyway.

As someone once said, if those players thought it was no big deal, they would have used them out in the open, not someplace out of view.

The world is filled with people who did many good things, committed a crime, and still were punished.

And by the way, we would not have voted for David Ortiz.

We are also a “small hall” baseball fan. We see many of the ballots that are published with votes for 10 players. Sorry, there are very few times, if any, where there are 10 Hall of Fame players on a single ballot.

Nowhere does it say you have to vote for that many, and in our opinion, writers shouldn’t be voting for the Top Ten candidates.

For the most part, you know a Hall of Famer when you see them play, but that doesn’t mean time and studying doesn’t make a person change their mind. Look at Tim Raines, for instance. He’s definitely worthy of the honor, but it took a lot of people time to realize it.

As for a Cleveland connection, we hope the veterans group does the right thing and put both Kenny Lofton and yes, Albert Belle in Cooperstown soon.

Lofton was a tremendous player and did it for a very long time, accumulating 2428 hits, with a lifetime batting average of .299 and an on base percentage of .372. In terms of players similar to Lofton are three players already enshrined (Raines, Harry Hooper, and Fred Clarke) and a fourth, Ichiro Sukuki, who will be soon.

Belle was a dominant offensive player for a decade (1991-2000), averaging 40 HR and 130 RBI per 162 games. Had he not retired due to a hip injury at age 33, he likely would have hit 500 home runs (he had 381) and had nine straight 100 RBI seasons when he left the game.

Let’s say he would have knocked in 500 more had he been able to play until 40. That would put him in the top 25 all time.

He had three top 3 MVP finishes (he was robbed of it in 1995) and is still the only player to hit 50 home runs and 50 doubles in the same season.

Instead of saying the Baseball Hall of Fame is irrelevant because of who is not in it, it should be and is a great source of discussion if you are a fan of the game. It’s also not the reason the sport has lost popularity. There are many more reasons for that.

As for the Bonds/Clemens debate? We’ll see how the former players who now hold their fate feel about putting them in. It might even be tougher for them to get in.

First Move For Guardians? Anyone Have New Hitting Coach?

In what figures to be a winter with a lot of changes, including the team’s name, the first move for the Cleveland Guardians was the announcement that hitting coach Ty Van Burkleo will not return for the 2022 season.

You can insert your no-hitter jokes here, and certainly getting held without a hit three times (four times if you count the seven inning effort in Tampa), a Major League record, doesn’t speak well for the person in charge of swinging the bats.

On the other hand, there is the old saying of you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken poop, and it is not like Van Burkleo was working with a bunch of Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, and Jim Thomes.

The front office gave the hitting coach a bunch of hitters with high strikeout and low walk rates, and generally, that doesn’t lead to have a productive offense. Not knowing the strike zone seems to be poison to the theory many hitting coaches espouse, that of getting your pitch, and do something with it.

Occasionally, it works. For us, Tim Anderson of the White Sox is the poster boy of this. Anderson has never had even a decent strikeout/walk ratio. This season, he hit .309 (806 OPS) despite drawing just 22 walks and fanning 119 times.

By the way, those 22 free passes are the second highest total of his career.

Cleveland has a hitter in their system that shows similar numbers, with more power than Anderson, and we wish we would have seen him in September. That man is Oscar Gonzalez.

Playing at both AA and AAA this season, Gonzalez hit .293 with an 869 OPS despite striking out 112 times (in 504 plate appearances) and drawing just 22 walks. Oh, and he belted 31 home runs too.

Sometimes, hitters have that type hand-eye coordination which allows them to put the bat on the ball, it just has to be near home plate. We’ve heard about guys being “bad ball” hitters, so they do exist.

On the other hand, if you are going have a batting average of say, .230 or less, it’s probably smart to be able to draw some walks, and get on base (read that as avoid making outs).

Now, back to Van Burkleo. As we said, it’s not like he was working with this year’s Astros lineup, and since we aren’t privy to his sessions with the players, we have no idea what he is telling them to do.

What we do know, is for whatever reason, the hitters weren’t buying in. The pupils had tuned out the teacher, and sometimes, that happens.

And we have always maintained we would like to see some different voices on Terry Francona’s coaching staff as well. There have been very few changes to the staff since Francona took over in 2013. At times, the message can get stale.

That said, we love Tito’s basic philosophy of the squad going out there everyday and trying to win the game played that day. It’s really all the team can do.

So, a philosophy change with a new hitting instructor is welcome. However, if the front office isn’t going to get some better hitters, we doubt we will see a huge improvement in terms of the hitting next year.

The two things go hand in hand.

Did Cookie Galvanize The Tribe?

The 2019 Cleveland Indians are certainly a different type of team.

After floundering around the first 60 games of the season, perhaps this squad finally found a rallying point with Carlos Carrasco’s blood disorder.

Different things unite teams every year. In 1997, the favored Indians were scuffling. Kenny Lofton had been traded during spring training, Albert Belle left during the winter as a free agent, and Carlos Baerga had been moved the season before.

Cleveland, coming off two straight division titles, had to integrate Matt Williams, David Justice, and Marquis Grissom into the culture.

Then, on Jim Thome’s birthday, August 27th, with the Tribe sitting at 67-61, the Indians decided to wear their red socks high to honor their teammate, and won 10-4.

They went on to win 9 of the next 11, increasing their division lead from 2.5 to 5.5 games and coasted to a third straight division title. And a post-season run that didn’t end until the seventh game of the World Series.

Carrasco is a respected and popular teammate who has been in the organization since the 2009 season when he came over in the Cliff Lee trade. He’s gone through Tommy John surgery and a heart procedure.

He was ineffective as a starter, and was sent to the bullpen to figure things out and get more aggressive. When he returned to the rotation, he simply became one of the most reliable starting pitchers in baseball.

And he means a lot to his teammates, who may have wanted to win that night for their teammate, and perhaps Carrasco’s illness may have reminded the other 24 players in the locker room that baseball is a game, and having fun is part of playing the game.

In the past four games, Francisco Lindor’s smile has been front and center in the dugout. We don’t remember seeing it as much earlier this year, although we might be blocking it out because the offense has been dormant.

Make no mistake, Lindor is the leader of this baseball team, and probably has been for a few years.

Yes, Michael Brantley and Jason Kipnis, both players with more seniority, have been part of the leadership group, but Lindor is the Tribe’s heartbeat, one they were missing throughout the first month of the season.

How long will this continue? There’s no way to tell, heck it could end today. The Indians start a long stretch against some of the sport’s lesser teams, and maybe they lose their edge and settle back into a malaise.

If they do, it’s a sign there are bigger things wrong here.

Yes, the Tribe still has a long way to go. They are still 9.5 games behind the Minnesota Twins in the division.

However, they are still just a game and a half behind Texas for the second wild card spot, a half game behind Boston. Can you imagine the Red Sox saying they are going to be a seller if they were in the Tribe’s position?

Of course not. That’s why if the standings are about the same when the Midsummer Classic is played at Progressive Field a month from now, and the front office is talking about moving productive players, they are doing you a disservice as fans.

We will see how the next few weeks play out for the Indians, but if they go on a little run here, Carlos Carrasco might be a major contributor, even if he doesn’t throw one pitch.

Tribe Fans Get To Celebrate A Hall Of Famer

It has been so long since a position player who played the majority of his career as a Cleveland Indian was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the writers, you would have had to have seen Lou Boudreau patrolling shortstop for the Tribe in the 1940’s.

And you thought the 52 year championship drought was a long time.

Boudreau was inducted into Cooperstown in 1970, so it has been 48 years until Jim Thome was voted yesterday into the Hall.

And make no mistake, Thome is a Cleveland Indian through and through.

The powerful left-handed hitter played 1399 of his games (out of 2543) as a Tribesman, hit 337 of his 612 home runs as an Indian, and knocked in 939 of his 1699 runs here.

For comparison, his next highest total for another team would be 529 games, 134 homers, and 362 RBIs as a Chicago White Sox player.

Thome is 8th all time in home runs, 26th in runs batted in, 7th in walks, 23rd in slugging percentage, and 18th in OPS.

Among the active players he is ahead of in the latter statistic are Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols, who everyone regards as the most feared offensive players of today.

For those of you who still hold a grudge against Thome for leaving via free agency following the 2002 season, get over yourselves. You witnessed greatness, and you should appreciate that at the very least.

Think about it, from the team Boudreau left the Indians after the 1950 season until Thome made his debut on September 4, 1991, northeast Ohio fans didn’t get a chance to see a truly great player on an everyday basis.

True, we got to see Frank Robinson at the end of his career, Dave Winfield too, and Roberto Alomar spend three seasons at Jacobs Field, but all three had their best year’s elsewhere.

NOTE: Larry Doby played in Cleveland until 1955 and spent the ’58 season here too, but he was voted into Cooperstown by the Veterans’ Committee.

Cleveland fans have seen great pitching too, with Gaylord Perry, Dennis Eckersley, and Bert Blyleven taking the mound here for the good guys, but the last hurler who spent the majority of his career here was Bob Lemon, who was inducted in 1976.

Thome was here when Jacobs Field opened in 1994, he was part of the first Indians’ team to make the post-season since 1954. Heck, he caught the pop up that clinched the Central Division title in 1995.

He hit four home runs in that post-season.

He moved from third base to first base in 1997 when the Tribe traded for Matt Williams, and in game five of the ALDS against the Yankees, the deciding game, had a sacrifice bunt (he had only one in the regular season for his entire career) which set up Cleveland’s fourth run in what turned out to be a 4-3 victory.

He also made a diving stop in the field and turned it into a force out.

He’s the Tribe’s all time leader in home runs, walks, strikeouts, and intentional walks.

We hope that someday Thome is joined in Cooperstown by Omar Vizquel, and the Veterans’ Committee will see fit to honor Albert Belle and Kenny Lofton, two other greats from those teams of the 1990’s.

For now, savor the memories that Thome provided Tribe fans. It’s been a long time since the franchise had a Hall of Fame player. So, it shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Best Tribe Era Ever: 1994–???

The first baseball year we can remember is 1965. As a lifelong Clevelander, our dad was a fan of the Indians, and we have never changed allegiances.

It wasn’t easy to stay loyal.

In that ’65 season, the Tribe finished 81-81 in fifth place in the ten team American League. Little did we know that was kind of the norm for the first 29 years we followed the Cleveland Indians.

1968 was the year of the pitcher, and it was also the best finish by Cleveland between the time we started being aware of the team and when they moved into Jacobs Field in 1994.

The Tribe went 86-75 in the last season of the true pennant race, when you won your league and went to the World Series, or you went home.

Even then, Cleveland finished 16-1/2 games behind the Tigers, so they weren’t really in contention.

The closest to being in the race we experienced was 1974, when the Indians were in first place as late as July 12th, and were just two games out on August 6th.

However, they went 20-35 the rest of the way and finished 4th, 14 games out of first.

The Indians had good players, guys like Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Buddy Bell, Ray Fosse, Bert Blyleven, Graig Nettles, and Chris Chambliss, but of the franchise’s top 20 players of all time in WAR, only McDowell played in Cleveland between 1965 and 1990.

Remember, the franchise played in three World Series in its history from 1901 through 1994.

Since the move out of old Municipal Stadium, everything has changed. First, the Tribe has appeared in three World Series in the last 22 seasons.

We’ve seen great players, such as Jim Thome, who likely will be the first Cleveland player who spent the majority of his career as an Indian to be elected to the Hall of Fame since Lou Boudreau in 1971.

Other great talents wearing a Tribe uniform in that time frame are Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle, Omar Vizquel, and Kenny Lofton, and it continues today to Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Michael Brantley, and Corey Kluber.

We have already said if Lindor plays the majority of his career in Cleveland, he will be regarded as the best player ever to where an Indians uniform, and Kluber may rank behind just Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Bob Lemon as the best starting pitchers in the Tribe history.

There were no players of that caliber when we watched the Indians growing up.

Since 1995, we have seen ten teams (including this year) that will advance to the playoffs. We understand baseball is different now, they split to two divisions after expansion in 1969, and to three divisions in ’94.

And while just two teams made the post-season before ’69, now ten teams in the majors advance. However, outside of the major market behemoths in Boston and New York, the Cleveland Indians have made the post-season more often than any other American League team since 1994.

That’s a tribute to the organization and it’s really incredible considering that from 2002 to 2012, a period of 11 years, they made the playoffs just once.

So, to older fans, these are the glory days for the Cleveland Indians. Great players, very good teams, excellent organization.

There is only one thing missing…eliminating the shadow of 1948, currently the longest World Championship drought in the game.

Time for Tribe to Honor Albert Belle

Over the last few years, the Cleveland Indians have honored several of the players from their playoff teams of the late 90’s by putting them into the club’s Hall of Fame.

Sandy Alomar Jr. was the first to go in, fitting because he was the first piece of the puzzle when the Tribe traded for him after the 1990 season.

Kenny Lofton and Charles Nagy quickly followed him and last year, Carlos Baerga received the honor.

And there is no doubt that Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez will be inducted some day very soon, but their playing days ended too recently to be considered.

However, there is one name that is missing. The central figure for the first few years of the winning seasons including the strike shortened 1994 season and the American League Championship team of 1995.

It is time for the Indians to put Albert Belle in the franchise’s Hall of Fame.

We realize Belle’s departure from Cleveland as a free agent after the 1996 season was not exactly friendly and he antagonized the fan base when he came back to the lakefront as a member of the White Sox in subsequent visits. But you can’t ignore the fact that he’s one of the best players ever to wear an Indian uniform.

The slugger hit 242 home runs with the Tribe, leaving town as the franchise leader (he was passed by Jim Thome), and hit .295 with a 949 OPS in 913 games as a member of the team.

He led the American League in runs batted in three times with Cleveland, as well as leading the AL once in home runs, doubles, and runs scored once in his tenure here.

And in his last three seasons on the north coast, he finished second twice and third once in the MVP voting.

Of course, baseball historians will wonder years from now why Belle didn’t win the award in 1995 when he batted .317 (8^th in the league) with 50 HR (led league) and 126 RBI (tied for AL lead) on the best team by far in the junior circuit.

He hit at least 34 home runs the last five seasons in Cleveland, and knocked in at least 100 runs in those seasons as well. The significance of that is the 1994 season, the strike season, lasted only 113 games.

Yes, Belle was a controversial figure to be sure. He was suspended early in his career for different issues, and was once sat down because of a corked bat.

However, we also may have been the most studious players in the game when it came to his craft. He studied opposing pitchers and made adjustments.

In game five of the ’95 World Series, Belle went to school on new Hall of Famer Greg Maddux’ pitching him away and homered to right field in the first inning.

There is no question when you went to an Indians’ game in those days; you waited in your seat for Albert Belle to come to the plate. If you were at home, you made sure you were watching when Belle was hitting.

He was a “must see” player.

The Indians haven’t announced their honoree for the 2014 season yet, and the lately the antagonism between the Tribe and Belle has softened, so maybe he will get the nod.

But if they aren’t considering Albert Belle, they should. And we have a feeling when Belle is inducted, the fans will respond with a thunderous ovation.

Cleveland is a forgiving city, and they want to open their arms for the most exciting player to wear a Tribe uniform over the last 50 years.