The Birth of the Cleveland Guardians
“Does Bob Feller still pitch for them?”
I look up at the nurse adjusting his pillow. He’s been asking to have his pillow adjusted every few minutes for the last hour and she’s done it with a smile each time.
“Bob Feller fought in World War II.” I tell her. She laughs as I lean forward to face him.
“No, he’s retired” I reply.
The local car dealership commercial fades from the television and Progressive Field appears. I immediately sit up and lean as far forward in my seat as I can while the camera pans across rows of Clevelanders that look sick with anxious anticipation.
“No score, bottom of the 15th as the Guardians come up to bat.” The commentator declares. Even he is seemingly losing energy as this playoff game drags on.
“Here we go!!” I project my voice to make sure he can hear me. I’ve been projecting my voice for the last four and a half hours when speaking to him and I’m not sure how much longer I can go on. “It’s the bottom of the inning and it’s tied! They can win it here!” I’ve told him this at the bottom of each of the last seven innings as I’m not sure he can see well enough to follow what’s happening even though his wheelchair is so close to the tv he could kick his feet up on the credenza.
“Or they can lose it here” he grumbles in response. The stroke changed a lot about him but not his sports optimism Clevelanders are known for.
“That’s not how baseball works” I mumble to no one in particular.
“Are ya ready kids?” I hear faintly on the TV. “AYE AYE CAPTAIN” I hear more distinctly, this time aided by some of the fans in attendance. Outfielder Oscar Gonzalez steps to the plate. He uses the Spongebob Squarepants theme song as his walkup because, in his words, baseball is a game for kids and the kids love Spongebob.
The camera briefly cuts to a couple of fans with Spongebob themed signs and one fan who is wearing a full body Spongebob Squarepants costume with his head sticking out the top. It cuts back to Gonzalez, who digs in.
Corey Kluber, pitching for the visiting Tampa Bay Devil Rays, summits the 10” mound as the shadows continue their slow engulfing of the field. If you didn’t know it was the 15th inning you would never guess this game started at noon.
Kluber winds up.
He misses down and away. 1–0.
“We used to go see Bob Feller pitch in 1949. We’d go down to the stadium and a ticket would be a nickel.”
“A nickel?” I inquire. Usually I try to talk with him more, but when my attention is divided I just pick a word he said and say it back like a question. It’s an easy way to keep him talking.
“A nickel. We used to pack sandwiches and-“
Crack
My eyes never left the screen but my mental focus shifts back to it.
“Swing and a high fly ball!” The commentator exclaims.
“Go go!” My voice and body both rise in excitement.
“Left field! Way back!”
“GO!” I scream, and my voice finally gives in after basically yelling all day.
“BALLGAME! GONZALEZ WALKS IT OFF AND SENDS THE GUARDIANS TO THE DIVISIONAL ROUND!”
“YES” I scream. Surely everyone on the other side of these paper-thin hospice walls heard me, but I don’t care.
The grown man wearing the Spongebob costume reappears on our screen. He obviously isn’t wired for sound but it’s very obvious from reading his lips that he is screaming ‘OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!’
The tv cuts back to Kluber walking back to the dugout as an astonished Devil Ray’s ball boy stares ahead, mouth agape. My heart aches for just a moment. A former Guardian, Kluber had earned two Cy Young awards and the nickname “Klubot” for his stoic demeanor in his time in Cleveland. Cleveland baseball has an immense pedigree of pitching excellence (the aforementioned Feller, Bob Lemon, Cy Young, Satchel Paige, CC Sabathia, and Cliff Lee to name a few) and Kluber’s 2017 season for the team ranks among the best-ever for them. He was also a member of the 2016 team that came so very close to championship immortality. I hate that it had to be him to give up the homer.
Our feed cuts back to Gonzalez as he rounds third and approaches the celebratory mob of players and my spirit is lifted once again. I look back to my side.
“Bob, they won! They’re going to the next round! They’re gonna play the Yankees.”
I see a small smile break across his face for the first time in what feels like forever.
“That’s good,” he says. “Can you fix my pillow?”
Bob passed away a few months after that game. Those last few months were all a blur to me and I’m sure to him as well. In truth I don’t know how mentally present he was in those months, but I like to think he remembered that day. I like to think his last memory of Cleveland baseball was that agonizing, tense, exhausting, series-winning triumph on a chilly October afternoon.
I think it’s fair to say fans were skeptical when the Cleveland Indians changed their name to the Cleveland Guardians in 2022. While there were plenty who didn’t support any sort of name change out of a misguided (and racially insensitive) sense of pride, even many of those that supported a name change (myself included) weren’t totally sold on the choice of the name “Guardians” and the various art-deco inspired aesthetic changes that came with the rebranding, but none of that matters. Professional sports fandom is one of the few remaining common threads in America. If you love sports it’s almost certainly because someone you love loves sports and every time you watch your favorite team play you are, deep in your heart, watching it with the people you love. The city loves the Cleveland Guardians because people we love loved the Indians.
Of course, the winning last year didn’t hurt.
At the start of the 2022 campaign the newly-named Guardians were picked by many to be basement-dwellers both in their division and the league at large. In many analysts’ eyes despite the new name the Guards were playing an outdated style of baseball. The modern game of baseball relies so heavily on power swings, which was something the team lacked instead opting to play “small ball” by prioritizing putting runners in scoring position and hitting balls into the field of play rather than swinging for the fences. The march of progress left the name “Indians” behind and last year experts thought it would leave the Guardians behind as a team that would be obsolete upon arrival. Instead, the Guardians pieced together a division-winning season that even included a first-round playoff victory, something that not even the most die-hard of Cleveland fans expected.
As we enter the 2023 season the tables have now turned, with the same experts that forecasted doom and gloom for Cleveland last season now picking the team to repeat atop the division and perhaps even improve with the addition of first baseman and offensive weapon Josh Bell coupled with the retaining of almost every starter. While raised expectations can leave more room for underperformance they also generate excitement. All the uncertainty over last year’s name change has been washed away, and the city is abuzz. When the Guardians take the field for their home opener this year it will be in front of a sell-out crowd for the 29th year in a row, a streak that extends back through seasons that featured pennant-winning teams. The city is just as hungry for baseball as it was all those years ago.
The Cleveland Guardians are here.
Long live Cleveland baseball.