With Apologies to Paul Byrd

With apologies to Paul Byrd I said quick prayers, and hoped for the best - to stay close; a shootout. I expected a shootout and one man dead, little did I know. Apologies, then to Eric Wedge for the second guessing, but yeah I’d been down this path. And this path, this path is wide and long. My entire city walks this path on our ways to work. So forgive me my pessimism which started long before Earnest dropped the ball, or Sipe threw late. No, it is bigger than that. You may not have been here in ‘95 or 1997. I liked the ‘95 team, and was enamored with the ‘97 team. But I love this team, and like many nervous lover’s I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I say to myself "live in the moment," but think back to Mesa, game seven, or Ehlo getting burned to start Jordan’s legacy. Or that drive, 98 yards. Apologies, Paul, it wasn’t ‘bout you. No indeed, it was bigger. We haven’t had a winner here since before the Cuyahoga burned and Cleveland became a joke, the butt of them, really. Ten - cent beer night, bottlegate, Modell skipping town. Looking back I actually cried at how far I hope we’ve come. You see, the nineties were about illusion; new ballpark’s, stadiums, and a poorly used Waterfront Line. But nothing really changed. Cleveland Schools were no place to send a child. And the neighborhoods! But now, perhaps, maybe perhaps things are different. Euclid Avenue, the Museum, and downtown are torn up, a pain in the ass. But maybe it’s time we fixed the guts before the sexy. We got that wrong a decade ago. That’s what the Tribe’s done right these last few years, too: the guts before the sexy. So I sat there, on pinstripes and needles on the living room floor, living and dying with each pitch. "Why don’t you sit on the couch, where it’s more comfortable?" My wife asks. "Because they’re doing good while I’m on the floor!" I snap back, referring to the inning I sat in the overstuffed chair, and the Tribe gave some back; near cardiac arrest for me. And Joe Borowoski scares the sh*t out of me. This team, indeed, is aging me. I’d have it no other way: I am Indian blue.