CLEVELAND — Cubs fans grousing about everything that has gone wrong in the last 10 years since that one shining moment, behold the Cleveland American League baseball franchise.
Last weekend, with the Reds and beloved former Cleveland manager Terry Francona in town, the Guardians literally rolled out a red carpet from right field and nudged from the shadows a parade of players from their 2016 World Series team, some of them with the kind of pained expressions more often seen at the DMV.
They were, after all, the guys who lost that 2016 World Series in the 10th inning of Game 7 after blowing a 3-1 lead in the series.
Corey Kluber, Coco Crisp, Andrew Miller, Steve Bartman’s neighbor, Jason Kipnis, et al.
Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the losers of the 2016 World Series.
The Guardians — who don’t even bear the same nickname as they did back then — gave away Rajai Davis bobbleheads to commemorate the eighth-inning home run in Game 7 that forestalled defeat by two innings.
They gave away T-shirts with the image of a “league champions” ring emblazoned above the words “A Summer to Remember.”
They showed exactly zero sense of irony during the whole thing, no awareness for how pathetic the scene smacked.
Imagine being a fan who endured the agonizing side of that rainy night in November and then 10 years later was expected to indulge the celebration and wonder of the heartbreak.
It’s so absurdly tone deaf that it sounds like something the Cubs would do.
Just listen to Francona try to make the best out of the media attention he got at the outset of the series.
“The biggest thing, obviously, I wish we could have had a parade,” he said before giving the local TV people what they came for.
“But pride won out over disappointment. I was so proud of that group. They were beat to [crap], man. Andrew Miller was in the training room every night, just saying, ‘I’ll be ready tomorrow.’ Kluber on short rest (twice). And [Josh] Tomlin . . . Sometimes you just get lucky in the game and you’re around a group like that.”
No woulda, coulda, shouldas from the locals. No what-ifs. Just unvarnished questions about accomplishment (however short it might have fallen), about Mike Napoli’s toughness, the front-office coup to land Miller in a deadline trade from the Yankees, the way the city still embraces that team.
Echoes of 1969 and 1984 for certain generations of North Side Chicagoans pre-2016.
Guess that’s what you have left when nobody who played for the last championship in town is still alive to celebrate it. Nobody knows that better than Cubs fans.
Cleveland’s last World Series title was 1948, giving them the longest active drought in the majors (with all due respect to the Mariners, who might claim infinity for their zero World Series appearances for the 50th-year franchise).
Francona gave his old pals in the Cleveland media what he could, recalling the day of the Miller acquisition and opining how it seemed like everyone else acquired by contenders at that deadline didn’t pan out.
At which point, he was reminded by a media wag about Aroldis Chapman.
He didn’t respond to that. And then when it was pointed out that the Cubs made a run at both Chapman and Miller but didn’t want to give up Schwarber, he changed the subject to the catcher, Jonathan Lucroy, who exercised no-trade rights to nix a move to Cleveland.
It may be 10 years since the Cubs went all in, cashed in every bit of talent and trade capital necessary to satisfy a thirsty fan base and justify all the luxury-level prices they charge those loyal fans.
But glance only a few hours to the east to know how much emptier and painful those 10 years since 2016 might have been.
The closest thing to a might-have-been question Francona got over the weekend involved the 17-minute rain delay that many Cubs players and fans consider decisive.
“You know what,” he said. “I just don’t feel like that did us in. Of all people, (veteran) Bryan Shaw was the pitcher. He didn’t give a [crap]. It didn’t bother him, and he’s the one pitching.
“I give the Cubs credit,” Francona said. “You hear about what’s-his-name having a meeting.”
Jason Heyward?
“Yeah. I think lesser teams than the Cubs probably don’t win that game,” Francona said. “But I just never really bought into that. You play the game when they tell you and go where they tell you and try to see if you can win.”
And if you don’t? Well, there’s always a bobblehead and a T-shirt.
