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.

The Bobby Bradley Question.

With the Cleveland Indians’ offensive woes, there has been a lot of speculation among impatient fans about bringing up certain players from the farm, most notably, slugging first baseman Bobby Bradley.

We aren’t sure that will help the Tribe, though.

First, if you read this blog enough or follow on Twitter, you know our least favorite kind of hitter, the high strikeout, low walk, low batting average guys. The pre-2019 Joey Gallo would be the poster boy for that kind of offensive player.

That said, we aren’t anti-strikeout either. Big boppers like Hall of Famer Jim Thome, and the most recent vintage left-handed hitting slugger, Travis Hafner are great offensive players.

They strikeout a lot and walk a ton, leading to both great on base percentages and slugging percentages.

Bradley is not that. This year, he has fanned 67 times at Columbus, while walking just 18 times. To us, this doesn’t show a great knowledge of the strike zone. It also shows that he is a mistake hitter.

And in the big leagues, pitchers don’t make as many mistakes.

This isn’t unusual for Bradley. A year ago, he struck out 148 times and walked just 56.

He broke out as a prospect in 2016 at Lynchburg, when he hit 29 homers and knocked in 102 runs, hitting .235. He fanned 170 times, walking 75 times.

The following year, his strikeouts went down to 122, which is good, but he still only hit .251.

His OPS in both years hovered around 800, which is good at the big league level, but this was A ball and AA ball.

This year has been his best year yet. Although Columbus is a big time hitter’s park, Bradley has a 908 OPS on the road and has belted 7 of his 16 homers away from the Clippers’ home yard.

All in all, Bradley’s career minor league numbers show a .253 batting average and an 843 OPS.

For sake of comparison, Thome had a .317 batting average and a 920 OPS in the minors. Hafner was a .298 hitter in the minors with a 918 OPS.

Another comparison would be a player currently on the Indians’ big league roster. This player had a minor league batting average of .276 and an OPS of 775.

Fans are complaining that Jake Bauers isn’t hitting in the majors and his numbers aren’t all that different.

We are firm believers in the “can’t be worse” theory in sports, and we get the argument that Bradley might be better than what Terry Francona writes in the lineup on a daily basis.

We just don’t think Bradley should be viewed as a cure all for Cleveland’s offensive problems.

The other issue is defensively. Bradley is clearly a 1B/DH. He’s never played anywhere else, and he probably can’t.

If you bring Bradley up, where does he play? If he replaces Bauers, you lose some defensive flexibility, and that was a problem when Hanley Ramirez was here.

That’s not a huge deal, but it is a factor.

We are sure the Indians want Bradley to show more control of the strike zone that he has shown, and we are also positive they have told him that.

When he does, the front office will want to take a look at him.

And the first time he comes up in a clutch situation and flails at a pitch out of the strike zone, fans will want to send him back.

It’s a conundrum to be sure. But, right now, we question whether or not Bobby Bradley will ever be a big time hitter at the big league level.

Keeping Lindor Should Be Tribe’s Priority

Earlier this week, Major League Baseball announced a television broadcast contract extension with Fox, which will pay each team an additional $24 million starting in 2022.

Coincidentally, the Indians’ Francisco Lindor is eligible for free agency following the 2021 season. So, we’ve found a good way for the Indians to spend that extra TV money.

We have pounded the drum on this for the past few years. If you can keep Lindor with the Indians for a total of at least ten seasons, or through the 2024 campaign (when he will be 31 years old), we will become universally recognized as the best position player ever to don a Cleveland baseball uniform.

Lindor currently has accumulated 23.9 WAR over his four years with the Indians. The all time franchise leader is Napoleon Lajoie with 79.9. The recently turned 25 year old shortstop had 7.9 WAR in 2018, and at his age, it would not be a stretch to think he will improve for the next several years.

So, let’s say he averages 9.0 WAR over the next six years. That would get him to 77.9 for his career, very close to Lajoie’s total, and ahead of Tris Speaker for second place.

However, this statistic has Kenny Lofton 4th in club history. We loved Lofton as a player, and believe he should have received serious Hall of Fame consideration, but he’s not the fourth best position player in team history.

Let’s look at traditional statistics.

Lindor has 665 base hits currently, getting 183 a year ago. If he averages 180 over the next six years, he would have 1745 knocks, which would rank 5th on the Indians’ all time list.

Home runs? The switch-hitting Lindor has 98 dingers to date. Averaging 30 through the 2024 season would give him 278 homers, second in club history behind recently inducted Hall of Famer Jim Thome. Keep in mind, Lindor has hit more than 30 in each of the last two years.

As for RBIs, Frankie is sitting at 310, getting 92 last year. If he averages 90 through ’24, that would give him 850, tying him for 7th with Ken Keltner in Indians’ annals.

Our guess is Lindor will be moved down in the batting order as soon as this year to take advantage of his pop, so that estimate might be conservative.

And in runs scored, Lindor has 377 runs, scoring 129 in 2018. Averaging 100 per year for the next six seasons would give him 977 tallies, putting him 3rd on the Tribe’s all time list.

So, as you can see, keeping Lindor for ten seasons puts him near the top in most of the major categories in Indians’ history. And we were conservative with some of the numbers because, so he might rank higher.

Keeping him beyond that, or dare say, for his entire career would probably put him at the top of those lists.

Also, at 25, and with just three full big league seasons under his belt, he has three top 10 MVP finishes.

We understand it takes two to tango, and Lindor has to want to stay here for awhile. But we say make it worth his while.

The big contracts this off-season will be Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. Once those deals are agreed to, the Tribe front office should have a good idea of what it will take to sign the shortstop.

We don’t want to hear about being a small to mid market in this case. Lindor is one of the top ten, if not five players in baseball. If you have to go over your comfort level to keep him, you have to do it.

You drafted and signed this guy, and watched him become a great player. They need to make sure he never plays anywhere else.

And your fan base deserves a player who never plays anywhere else too.

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.

Sign Lindor This Winter? Don’t Hold Your Breath

We said this many times throughout this past baseball season, perhaps the best thing about the Cleveland Indians is that their two best players are 25 and under in Jose Ramirez (25) and Francisco Lindor, who just turned 24 a couple of weeks ago.

Lindor, who has two straight top ten finishes in the American League MVP voting at his young age, is under the Tribe’s control through the 2021 season, giving him four more full seasons with the Indians.

The Cleveland front office would undoubtedly like to sign their shortstop to a long term deal to keep him with his home ballpark being Progressive Field for the foreseeable future, but Lindor seems to understand his value gets higher every season, particularly if he keeps performing like he has.

At his age, he is getting nothing but better, and even with a slump last year in May and June, the switch-hitting Lindor still had a career high 842 OPS, mostly due to a career high .505 slugging percentage.

He had 81 extra base hits, made his second All Star team, and won his first Silver Slugger Award, in addition to being a finalist for the Gold Glove at short.

We are sure Lindor won’t sign this off-season either as he will likely wait until Bryce Harper’s free agency is resolved next off-season.

It has been said Harper could become the sports’ first $400 million player. If he gets that amount, you’d have to think Lindor will get close to that amount, if not exceed it.

Granted when Harper finished his third big league season, he was just 21 years old, two years younger than Lindor was when last season ended.

In those first three seasons, the highest finish in the MVP voting for Harper was 30th in his rookie season. He won the award the following season, his fourth year, but hasn’t been in the top ten since.

Harper and Mike Trout might be the faces of baseball, but Lindor’s definitely on a level right below those two. His personality and the obvious joy he plays with are things MLB should market, and will as he continues to get better as a player.

We made the point last off-season that if Lindor plays 10 years in an Indians’ uniform, he will be the greatest position player in franchise history. So, the stakes to keep him with the Tribe long term are very high.

In our lifetime, we haven’t had that player like George Brett, Derek Jeter, Tony Gwynn for this franchise. A truly great player who plays their entire career in Cleveland.

Remember that when Jim Thome goes into the Hall of Fame, perhaps next summer, he will be the first player to spend the majority of his career with the Indians to go into the Hall since Lou Boudreau. He was inducted in 1971!

Despite all the great players who were here in the 90’s: Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Thome, none of them can claim to have never worn another uniform.

We understand that’s not the way the sport is now, but wouldn’t it be nice if Frankie Lindor was that guy for our team.

We are sure the Dolan family, Chris Antonetti, and GM Mike Chernoff would like it to happen too. Lindor is that kind of player.

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.

Thome In ’18, And Other Hall Of Fame Thoughts

A year from now, Cleveland Indians’ fans will be waiting for the results of the Baseball Hall of Fame voting with great anticipation.

Jim Thome will be eligible for the first time and with over 600 home runs in his career and not even any anecdotal connection to performance enhancing drugs, he should be a strong candidate to get elected next year.

He would be the first player to play the majority of his career in a Cleveland uniform since Larry Doby was inducted in 1998, and we believe he would be the first Indians to be elected by the baseball writers since Lou Boudreau in 1970.

It says a lot about the state of the franchise from 1960-1994 that it has been 46 years since the Tribe had a Hall of Famer that played to the Indians in the prime of his career.

Thome played 55% of his games with Cleveland, and coincidentally hit 55% of his 612 home runs in an Indians’ uniform. He also played every one of his games with the Tribe through age 31.

He belted 200 more long balls with the Indians than he did with any other team.

Omar Vizquel will also be eligible for the first time, although he likely will not get in on his first year on the ballot.

The shortstop, best known for his defense, won 11 Gold Gloves and managed to get 2877 hits in his long career. He was a solid offensive player through age 39 with the Giants when he hit .295 with a 749 OPS.

With Trevor Hoffman and Vlad Guerrero just missing enshrinement this year and Chipper Jones being eligible for the first time along with Thome, it may be tough for all four to make it into the Hall.

That makes it doubly tough for Vizquel in 2018.

As for yesterday’s results, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens received over 50% of the vote for the first time, and only three players who attained that level did not finally get into Cooperstown.

Many experts are saying the increase is due to younger voters, who didn’t cover the game in the “Steroid Era”.

Our opinion is they should talk to the writers who did cover the sport then and talk about what happened. This is a situation where the statistics do not tell the entire story.

We weren’t alive when Lincoln was assassinated, but we know what happened. Not doing the research is not doing your due diligence.

Those players blatantly cheated, and we understand some players who used may already be enshrined, like Ivan Rodriguez and Jeff Bagwell. We would not have voted for Pudge, who was mentioned in Jose Canseco’s book.

There is nothing that concrete on Bagwell.

After watching the last installment of Ken Burns’ documentary on the game, which addresses the best hitter and pitcher of that generation using PEDs, we can’t understand how anyone could vote for either after watching.

And yes, they were great players before they took performance enhancers, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook that they used.

What they did wasn’t fair to the players who didn’t use, and their accomplishments have hindered the candidacies of players like Fred McGriff, Jeff Kent, and Mike Mussina.

Hopefully, a year from now, we will have cause to celebrate Jim Thome, the first true Tribe player in a generation to make the Hall of Fame.

Another thing many of us have never seen in our lifetime.

Sign Lindor Long Term, He’ll Be Best Ever For Tribe

It should be fairly obvious by now that the Cleveland Indians have a very special player in shortstop Francisco Lindor.

He’s already the best player on a team that will likely make the post-season, and he’s just 22-years-old, not turning 23 until well after the season is over.

Since getting called up on June 14th a year ago, the switch-hitter has batted .316 with a 825 OPS, and this year, he has an outside shot at a 200 hit season.

We have been advocating since last year (yes, we know that sounds crazy), to sign Lindor to a long term deal to make sure he stays in a Cleveland uniform for a long, long time.

And we mean not just a deal to cover his arbitration seasons and maybe delay his free agency by a year or two. No, we would sign him to a ten year deal, keeping with the franchise through the prime of his career and beyond.

That’s how good we believe this kid is.

Throughout his minor league career, we thought that Lindor could be to the Indians what Derek Jeter was to the New York Yankees, and we’ve seen nothing that has made us change our mind.

Besides his playing ability, and remember, a baseball player’s prime is usually between ages 27 to 29, so he is five years away from that, Lindor’s joy for the game is always evident. His smile and zest for baseball should be marketed not only in Cleveland, but by Major League Baseball.

We also believe that if Lindor would stay for ten more years, he would become the best position player in the history of the Cleveland Indians.

We understand the names that came before, Hall of Fame players who spent the majority of their careers with the Tribe. Names like Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, Lou Boudreau, Earl Averill, and those players of recent ilk like Jim Thome, who will be inducted into Cooperstown soon.

Look at the Tribe’s list of all time leaders, and tell me Lindor wouldn’t top all of these lists if he remained healthy and played a total of 12 years here–

Games played: Terry Turner 1619. Lindor played in 241 after last night, and if he played 140 per season, which is probably conservative, he would be at 1641.

Runs: Averill 1154. Lindor has 142 to date with 92 this season.

Hits: Lajoie 2052. Frankie’s next hit is #300, with 170 hits per season, again conservative, the shortstop will be at 2000.

Doubles: Speaker 486. Lindor has 49 right now, and as he gets older and stronger, we can see 40 per year as a norm. Besides, it’s no disgrace to be behind “The Gray Eagle”, who is the all time leader in this category.

RBI’s: Averill 1084. Lindor has 121 for his career, and again as he gets stronger, should be able to start knocking in 80-90 per season.

By the time he would have completed that decade with the Tribe, the only major stats he would likely not be on top of would be home runs (although he would be in the top ten), and stolen bases, because that aspect of the game has been de-emphasized.

We don’t go crazy with superlatives either. Part of the reason Lindor could be the best Tribe player ever would be that the franchise has never really been able to keep great players for an extended period.

Even throughout the golden age of the 1990’s, none of the great players who played at Jacobs Field ever played their entire career in Cleveland.

The front office needs to make a long term deal with Lindor this winter. He is simply worth it, and it would show fans that this ownership is anxious to keep a player like this here for the long haul.

We are seeing the beginning of greatness with Francisco Lindor. Let’s hope we continue to watch for a long time.

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.