Pandemonium at Progressive
A meditation on the Cleveland Guardians, fandom, and "playing the game the right way."
On Sunday, I was standing in my backyard—a half-mowed lawn before me—when I let go of the gas to pay attention. The day before, the Cleveland Guardians had secured a spot in this year’s Major league playoffs when CJ Kayfus took a 95 mile an hour fastball to his right bicep, driving the winning run in to score. And less than an hour prior, the Tigers couldn’t put enough runs on the board to beat the Boston Red Sox. The result: A miracle. Cleveland had won the division.
Let’s back up: Cleveland wasn’t supposed to be good this year, and they damn sure weren’t supposed to make the playoffs. They’ve been middling for large stretches of the season; woeful for others. But I’d half expected that. If baseball players are superstitious, their fans may be even more so. It’s an odd-year, and our current curse meant it was destined to be one where we went home early. The team had traded two All-Stars in the off-season. It dealt its former Cy-Young winner, who had struck out 20 batters in two appearances before he blew out his elbow, at the trade deadline. They lost a generational relief pitcher—and an up-and-coming starter—to gambling accusations mid-way through the season. Carlos Santana, a Cleveland legend, was brought in to replace a player who’d hit 30 baseballs clean out of the park last year, and offered good cover, but was released as the season’s prospects looked dead.
As the season wore on, prediction models confirmed what fans felt in their hearts: There wasn’t much of a path to the postseason. By July Cleveland was more than 15 games out of first place in its division, the American League Central. Worse, by the time September rolled around, they had just a two percent chance of making the playoffs in any capacity. Then, as Tom Hamilton, the voice of Cleveland baseball who was inducted into the National Hall of Fame at Cooperstown this summer, put it: the “improbable, implausible, impossible,” happened.
Cleveland won 18 of its next 22 games. The Detroit Tigers, who led the division for most of the season, suffered a collapse of historical significance. And as I stood in my backyard in Virginia listening to a raucous Progressive Field in Cleveland six hours away, the Guardians had broken new baseball ground. But the fire still burned in their bellies. With one more victory, Cleveland could win the division outright.
“How about the way they’re playing this 10th inning out,” Hamilton said. I’d taken my headphones off and turned the volume up on my phone. “They’ve already clinched the Central division title. Champagne awaits. Another celebration. And yet, they’re trying to finish it with a win.”
There’s a lot of shorthand in baseball—the sort of jargon in every profession which becomes a barrier to entry. They’re often aphorisms. One that I’ve appreciated while watching the Guardians—particularly in the Terry Francona and, now, Stephen Vogt managerial eras—is: Play the game the right way. It’s easy to define, hard to do. Playing the game the right way means running hard to first every time a ball is hit into play. It means keeping your head up when you’re on the bases, and keeping the defense honest. Laying down a bunt or punching a ball as far as possible into the outfield grass when a man is at third and you have an out to give. It’s about getting someone on base, getting them over, and getting them home.
Playing the game the right way is both a principle and a practice. Like anything we would hope to be good at—writing, parenting, friendship, democracy—the principle is easy to follow intellectually, but much more difficult to live out, especially when things get hard. The easy way out–glossing over fundamentals–would be, well, easier. But the right way is about discipline. Sure, it won’t always be perfect, but on the grand balance, there is always the chance of success if the process is right.
Over the years, I’ve watched the Guardians—whether along one of the base lines with my family or at home on my couch—practice the principle. I’ve watched on days when players have taken fastballs that glanced off the bottom of their bats and richocheted off the top of their feet, and on days when catchers take the thud of an overzealous swing’s follow-through to the face-mask. I’ve watched during frigid spring home games that turn into the dog days of summer. One hundred and sixty-two games is a slog, and without commitment to the craft, it can easily go haywire. But even when Cleveland’s pitch-callers were collectively getting one hit every ten times they come to the plate, I could always count on them to prepare well and play hard for every out. It’s why, earlier this year, at Nationals Park, I bought seats not far behind the visitors dugout and got there a bit early to watch the Guardians warm-up. And it was why when other teams were getting tired down the stretch, Cleveland had just started hitting its stride.
None of this means I expected to see what occurred in the month of September, and certainly not what I saw when my lawnmower sat quiet and still.
Brayan Rocchio was supposed to have a breakout season this year. There’s no need to bore anyone with the stats; all one needs to know is that in last year’s postseason, Rocchio performed so well that it felt like we’d reincarnated Omar Vizquel and gave him Derek Jeter’s bat. The Venezuelan shortstop’s playoff exploits earned him the nickname Rocctober. Most Cleveland fans held out hope that it would be his turning point.
It wasn’t. Baseball doesn’t work like that.
The beginning of the season saw routine ground-balls slip through Rocchio’s grasp, and throws any college player might make to first base miss the mark. His plate appearances weren’t much better; he was batting .165 before he was sent down to the minor leagues in May. When he came back to the big league club for the last three months of the season, though, he was reborn—and had the second highest batting average on the team behind its talismanic leader destined for the Hall of Fame in Jose Ramirez.
Still, his inability to cement his place in the team early in the season—and a mid-year position change from shortstop to second base—meant that he was still viewed as an incomplete interim replacement by a lot of fans. He was sandwiched between the past and the future. He held the position which was vacated by an all-star platinum glove winning defender, Andres Gimenez, and destined to be filled by Travis Bazzana, the Australian dynamo who was selected first overall in last year’s draft.
On Sunday, with two men on base in the bottom of the 10th inning, Rocchio had a chance to make everyone remember who he had been at the end of last year. Bo Naylor, who had his own struggles at the plate this year before turning it around in September, hit a two-bagger up the middle to cut the Texas Rangers’ lead to two runs. Then Petey Halpin—the speedy late season call-up—drew a walk. Rocchio quickly collected two strikes before the third pitch of the at-bat was spiked in the ground. Texas’s catcher ripped the ball from the dirt like he was taking a marble from a closing hand. Then Rocchio clacked the next pitch out of play towards the visitors dugout to keep the at-bat alive.
Sometimes you can sense the presence of magic in baseball: Those times when the broadcast booth gets a little quieter as a pitcher has seven strikes in row and is on the verge of an immaculate inning. The tension that builds around a stadium when the bases are loaded in a big moment. Other times, it sneaks up on you.
“The one-two pitch” Hamilton called as the Rangers relief pitcher, in his third inning of work, wound up to deliver. Then, as I watched a 96 mile an hour fastball get disciplined, my jaw dropped. “Swung on and blasted! Deep to right, down the line, off the pole!”, Hamilton cried out in his signature inflection. Game over. Pandemonium at Progressive Field.
I was jolted back into reality. I realized I was standing in my backyard and was not, in fact, among the throngs hugging and screaming in the stadium. I’d thrown my hat across the yard. My hands were raised in the air in celebration. I wasn’t yelling as much as I was stunned to silence. I’ve seen the arguments that there need to be more fair-weather fans; I think they’re bunk. There is a high that can only be experienced by feeling the lows too. At that point, I wasn’t even watching the broadcast, I was just letting Hamilton’s poetry and the roar of the crowd cut through the still of a late afternoon.
I can remember a handful of times in the last few years that I’ve felt this same emotion: Spongebob’s walk-off in the bottom of the 15th in 2022; Lane Thomas’ or David Fry’s or Big Christmas’s monster home runs last season. It’s an unadulterated joy amid the muck and mire. Short of winning a World Series—and I can be forgiven for the comparison because Cleveland’s last was before my dad’s lifetime—it does not get any better than clinching the division in front of your fans on a go home and get dinner ready dinger. The heroes have different names, but the joy is just the same.
Champagne indeed flowed in the locker room because the team hadn’t just won the division intellectually, but had done so on the field. Their win put them one game ahead of Detroit. They did it the right way. The radio broadcast team of Jim Rosenhaus and Hamilton made their way to the locker room where goggled players had doused the floor and each other in bubbly. They pulled Austin Hedges to the side for a chat. Hedges is destined to be a manager someday. He’s one of the best defensive catchers in the league and makes up for a sub-par batting average with a larger than life locker room presence. Calling him a captain seems sacrilege based upon how his teammates and managers talk about him. Next to Ramirez, he is one of team’s generals. And he always makes for a great interview.
Rosenhaus asked Hedges what keeps a team motivated when there’s nothing left to play for–when victory is already won. Statistically, they’d secured the division before the game was over. But in a moment of sagacity, Hedges argued that there’s always something to play for. There were ups-and-downs this year, but the notions of a turning point in the season had been overblown, he suggested. The wins came heavy in the last few weeks, he argued, but that was the result of the work throughout the season—mixed, of course, with the blessings of baseball’s deities. And the gods don’t like when the fans are disrespected. The fans deserved to see the division won on the field. That an absolute tank delivered the victory was just whipped cream and a cherry.
After I’d sprinted into the house to show my wife and daughters the hit—and texted my parents in elation—I tuned back in to see Jose Ramirez plant a championship flag on the field along the third base line as the celebrations rolled on. (It would be a mighty-fine image for his statue one day.) It made me think of Hamilton’s sign off as Rocchio rounded the bases. “The Cleveland Guardians, walk it off in style,” he said. The style is the result of the substance.
I don’t know how much magic is left in this year, and if I’m honest, I don’t care. I’m going to ride the highs and lows with the knowledge that there’s always a chance that the alchemy will be right and the sparks will fly.