Saturday's gaff by the Indians angers an already alienated fan base
Opinion by Tim Shirer
Let me start out by saying, I am not like the rest of the media in Cleveland, I do not unnecessarily bash the Cleveland Indians and how they run their organization. I am not one of those Cleveland journalists that rips the Indians and praises the Browns no matter how good or bad the Browns are. I try to be fair. When the Browns were horrible for 19 of the last 22 years, I criticized them as they deserved to be criticized, the Browns organization does not like me very much because I told the truth about what they were. Last year I wrote on commentary during the Browns season, and I praised them for the improvements that have made and expressed my opinion that I thought Odell Beckham, Jr. should be traded because he is a distraction. It is no coincidence that they were better without him. But I am getting off topic. Today’s topic is the Indians and the last 24 hours of decisions.
On Friday night temperatures in Northeast Ohio were not warm, skies were not blue, in fact they were grey and large amounts of rain was falling, large amounts, amounts that caused flooding in places. To cap it all off winds were gusting over 50 miles per hour in a lot of places. So, all of this would make a person with a reasonable knowledge of the game of baseball think, okay the game will be cancelled tonight. WRONG!!! The powers that be in the Indians front office who make these decisions decided that they had to play the game. It did not go well. Not because the Indians were tagged with an 11-2 loss by the Blue Jays in the debut of their latest prize pitching prospect Eli Morgan’s debut. No, it did not go well because the playing conditions were horrendous. It is a miracle that no player on either team suffered an injury.
I assumed that they played the game on Friday because they did not want to play a double header on Saturday or Sunday since the Indians are already scheduled to play a doubleheader with the AL Central Division leading Chicago White Sox on Monday, makes sense kind of, I guess.
So, then we fast forward to Saturday (today) and the weather has improved immensely over Friday, the temperatures are warmer, the sun even peaked out and the winds were out of the northeast at a reasonable 13 miles per hour. I was once told by a fire chief that if winds are above 15 miles per hour fire works could not be shot off. Okay, that makes sense, so why can’t you play baseball when the winds were 13 mph? I get there could be some winds gusts, but would they be worse than Friday night? The Indians decided to postpone Saturday night’s game. No real reason has been given except “weather conditions”. If weather conditions were a reason to postpone this game than the Indians should not have played very many games at home in April because weather conditions were much worse than today for most of the month.
This postponement also now causes the Indians who are already having issues with their pitching staff to now play two doubleheaders in a row. Is it really going to help that they only play seven innings now in each of the games and not nine? Is that the real reason? If that is that is not a valid excuse.
Also, you have a fan base right or wrong that is not happy with ownership right now. I do not agree with the people who dislike the Dolans, but that’s another commentary. But this just furthers their narrative of a badly run team. There have not been many things in the last 27 years that the Browns have done better than the Indians, those of us who are free thinkers and are not brainwashed by an anchorman/play by play man know this. But when it comes to the public relations machine the Browns blow the Indians away every single time.
This situation this weekend is a perfect example of the public relations nightmare that is the Cleveland Indians. I want to make it perfectly clear I am not blaming one individual, this is more of a baseball problem not just the Indians. Not only do the fans who had tickets not get to enjoy today’s game, they cannot even exchange the ticket for tomorrow’s game, they must wait and exchange it for a game on June 11th or later. I’m sure the excuse will be Covid-19 restrictions, that is an easy escape.
When will the Indians learn that unfortunately they are second fiddle in Cleveland to a football team that does not even have to win a game to draw fans? Until they learn this and stop making these types of gaffs attendance will be in the bottom of MLB teams. Fair or not, that is how the fan base in Cleveland works and after all this time you would think the people who runs things at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario would understand that.
POSTED 05/29/2021 20:41
Lake County Sentinel
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