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Tuesday December 17, 2024

And I Thought Woody Woodward Was Bad

Joe Posnanski's Rocky Colavito obit led me to a book he references, “The Curse of Rocky Colavito,” in which Cleveland sportswriter Terry Pluto details what went wrong with the late 1950s Cleveland Indians and why they sucked forever after. (The book was published in 1994, just before they became really, really good again, winning pennants in 1995 and 1997, albeit still without a title, and with a lot more heartache, Jose Mesa.) Here's what went wrong: GM Frank Lane. Known as “Trader Lane” or “Traitor Lane,” he's the guy who discarded the Indians' beloved right fielder.

Turns out it's worse than that. Trading Colavito wasn't the beginning, it was Lane's crescendo. This is the line in the book that stunned me:

In the spring of 1960, the only Tribe players left from the forty-man roster Lane had inherited two years earlier were [Herb] Score and Colavito.

How is that even possible? Forty guys in 2+ years?

The '57 squad wasn't great, admittedly. The year before they'd won 88 games and finished second (again) to the Yankees (again), and in '57 they finished under .500: 76-77, 6th of 8 teams. It didn't help that after the '56 season, manager Al Lopez, who was upset management had not supported his players from fan abuse, resigned, and was immediately hired by the Chicago White Sox, for whom he helped win a pennant in 1959. From 1949 to 1964, the NY Yankees won the pennant every single year—except for 1954 (Indians) and 1959 (White Sox). What do those two teams have in common? They were both managed by Al Lopez. So not necessarily the kind of guy you want to give up.

Lane was not the kind of guy you wanted to hire, but hired he was, for GM, in November 1957. He wasted no time in remaking the team in his image:

  • Nov. 1957, traded Early Wynn, who won the AL Cy Young two years later
  • June 1958, traded Roger Maris, who won the AL MVP in 1960 and '61, and broke Babe Ruth's homerun record in '61
  • April 1960, traded Norm Cash, who led the Majors in 1961 with a .361 average, a .487 OBP and a 1.148 OPS

And yes, he got some not-bad guys for these guys, but not Cy Young Award winners, not MVPs. Cleveland didn't get a Cy Young Award winner until Gaylord Perry in 1972. They haven't had a league MVP since.

Though the Colavito trade was the crescendo, the one that made all the noise like cymbals clanging, a day later Lane also got rid of Herb Score to finish his handiwork. He became a punchline:

Comedian Bob Hope, a minor investor in the Indians for years, summed up the mood well: “I'm afraid to go to Cleveland,” said Hope. “Frank Lane might trade me.”

Here's another paragraph that spoke to me:

The Cleveland papers were savaging Lane. Ownership was very nervous because attendance dropped from 1.5 million in 1959 to 950,985 in 1960. The Plain Dealer quoted a fan as saying, “With all the trades, I don't even know this club well enough to get sore at it.”

That's me and the Mariners. In the last few years, it's felt like Jerry Dipoto was making deals to make deals, and I didn't even know the club anymore. If it works, great. But the Mariners have made the postseason once in the last 20-odd years, and we keep going through different levels of boring and hitlessness, just with different rosters of players, so there's no one to hold onto. You get both failure and unfamiliarity. If your guys fail, you care. If strangers fail, why bother? 

I'm curious what the title of a similar Mariners book would be: “The Curse of ...”? My immediate thought is “The Curse of Edgar Martinez.” The Indians are cursed because they traded away a beloved player. The Mariners are cursed because they kept a beloved player here and away from World Series glory. But that's merely first thought. It doesn't quite feel right.

Posted at 09:13 AM on Tuesday December 17, 2024 in category Baseball