The always-reliable Terry Pluto takes a walk down memory lane to a time when being an Indians fan, while always enjoyable on some level, wasn't nearly as rewarding as it is today:From 1960 to 1993, the Indians never played a meaningful game in September. They never won more than 86 games. In those 34 seasons, they had six winning records and 18 different managers.
We had a stadium where the sinks leaked, the toilets didn't always flush and parts of the old runways smelled like an animal died but no one could find the corpse. We had one good year of "Super" Joe Charboneau in 1980. We had Larvell Blanks being so upset with manager Frank Robinson that the infielder known as Sugar Bear threw his uniform in a trash can and lit it on fire. We had Bozo the Clown once throwing out the first pitch. We had deodorant being given out to fans on Mother's Day. We had 70,000 fans for Opening Day and barely 5,000 in the stands for the games the rest of April . . .
. . . But most of us never had a team like this when growing up, and it helps to remember that.
1 comment:
I never got deodorant, but I remember fondly taking my mother up to see the Indians on Mother's Day when I was either 16 or 17. We walked up to the stadium, bought upper box seats behind first base for about $25 total, went in, and sat down. We could have bought lower box seats, but I was making $3.50 an hour and couldn't afford $30. For two. There were... maybe... 15K people in the stadium. The only thing I miss about those years was the ability to get awesome seats, cheap, at any time. The trade-off was that you either had to celebrate the talents of the visiting team, or kid yourself that Cory Snyder was going to be a big star.
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