The Dream is Back

The dream is back

Here's hoping Indians take road rarely traveled Monday, October 15, 2007
Mike McIntyre
Plain Dealer Reporter

A decade ago, when baseball in October hadn't been explored by a team of Cleveland ers in 40 years, we looked down to marvel at our own footprints like Neil Armstrong marking the lunar dust.

One small step for man, one giant monkey off our back.

Our footprints in 1995 formed a warpath as the Indians marched all the way to the sixth game of the World Series in Atlanta. Two years later, we retraced every step and added one more.

It was the seventh game of the '97 World Series and Cleveland stood at the champion's gates in balmy Miami. Victory was a baby step away.

But Indians pitcher Jose Mesa - carrying the hopes of a long-suffering city starved for a champion - fell through a trap door in the bottom of the ninth. Then Edgar Renteria, a shortstop for the Florida Marlins, used a wooden bat and a quick swat to smack Charlie Nagy through, too.

We all slid behind them like Alice down the rabbit hole.

It was not a wonderland. It wasn't even a wonder why land.

Why? Because we're Cleveland, that's why.

A year later, in 1998, the New York Yankees - that team we buggy-whipped last week - stopped the Indians in the sixth game of the American League Championship Series.

We hadn't returned to the ALCS since. Until now.

Nine years is long enough between walks.

Today, we find ourselves on another expedition, retracing our steps in newer, lighter shoes. Today, we stand on the ground we graced in 1997 as we returned from Baltimore tied 1-1 in the American League Championship Series, in the same footprint we had made in 1995 after escaping Seattle tied 1-1.

The Indians pulled themselves out of quicksand early Sunday morning. Now, the best-of-seven ALCS against the Boston Red Sox stands even at 1-1. Immediately ahead lie three games at home and countless potholes to avoid
We can see the World Series down the road again. It's not far now.

The town is marching in lock step, awakened by the prospect of winning baseball and by the palpable reality that the Indians might fulfill the hopes that the Cavaliers raised this year for a championship - finally, a championship - in Cleveland.

We don't need handheld GPS devices to guide us. We carry little gear - a television (high- def preferred), an old-fashioned radio, maybe a newfangled cell phone geared for instant updates. For the more fortunate, there are tickets to the games at Jacobs Field, which glows like an oasis in the autumn night.

It is not a mirage.

The town is dressed to kill the Red Sox. Kids and their parents wear T-shirts glorifying the new players, Grady Sizemore and C.C. Sabathia, and the old players, Albert Belle and Dennis Martinez, and, in some cases, both: Kenny Lofton.

He has - we have - been down this road before.

We know enough now to smell the roses along the way - each hit, each defensive gem, every clutch pitch a fragrant blossom. As each victory blooms, we know we are that much closer to arriving at that spot where Jose Mesa stood a decade ago.

When we get there, somebody tell pitcher Joe Borowski, the new guy who fills Mesa's former role as late-inning closer, to zig instead of zag.