Man Without A Team

The sun is out, the skies are blue and we’re deep into Spring Training. But I live here in Mudville, and there is no joy in baseball 2025.

‘Twas not always thus. There was a time (more like 70 times) in my life that this was my favorite time of the year. Although it was cold, snowy and miserable in Cleveland, I was getting three daily dispatches from Tucson, Arizona, mis-informing me about the Tribe’s prospects for the coming season.

I say “mis-informing” because the updates were supplied by the dishonest liar sportswriters at the Cleveland Press, the Cleveland News and The Plain Dealer. Every morning and twice in the afternoon the writers covering the Cleveland Indians were fabricating accounts of how sharp the team was looking, how healthy all the injured players from last year were now feeling, how much improved the starting pitching, and how the Easter Bunny would be batting cleanup.

Beware Yankees, and the six other teams in the American League! The Tribe will soon be printing tickets for the 1957 World Series.

And every year the Indians would have a couple strong weeks surrounded by a couple dreadful months and by mid-June someone in the bleachers would hold up a sheet of cardboard with “WAIT TIL NEXT YEAR” scrawled on it, and the 2500 fans in attendance trudged out of Municipal Stadium in the sixth inning.

Same thing next year, but being nine years old I swallowed sportswriter bait again, and like every season, I bet my older brother a dollar the Tribe would be AL champs come September. I think I still owe him $12.

So what? Twelve bucks is worth about 60 cents in 2025.

Some segue back to the present, huh? But if we’re here in 2025 we’re also in Mudville, where joy is spread thin as pepperoni slices on a Little Caesar Pizza.

Come now and hear my sad laments, my piercing wails and my bitter vows to wreak doom, destruction, and rain toads upon the evil lords of baseball. I’ve been the Indians’ most devoted fan yet after 70-plus years of loyalty I was forced to watch the team name wokified into “Guardians” and Chief Wahoo lynched in downtown Public Square.

A few years earlier the massive, majestic cathedral known as Municipal Stadium was abandoned so the team’s front office droolers could install a fashionable new “retro style” mallpark, a cheesy replica of the game’s old baseball parks. (Note: Municipal Stadium was built in 1928.)

Having the Tribe snatched away I took solace where I could. I sighed, fell in with the Oakland A’s, and 15 minutes later they announced the team was moving to Las Vegas.

Major League Baseball has probably treated other fans even worse than me, and I would like to meet those people. I would like to compare stories, share the grief, plot the revenge, and figure out how to make huge swarms of big fat living toads come raining from the skies and onto the heads of everyone responsible for not taking me out to the ballgame this season.

RFK Jr., RECONSIDERED

If the Dems could do it over again, and if the Dems had been honest with the public, and if the Dems had acknowledged Moribund Joe was one of only two professional Democrats in the country who could not defeat Trump in 2024, and if the Dems had instead picked RFK Jr to head the ticket a whole lot of people would have voted for him.

Maybe even me.

What other candidate could have combined so fresh a face with such legendary lineage? Robert Kennedy Jr. had it all. If he’d been nominated the Democrats and media allies would have airbrushed his warts and downplayed the stuff about how he’d eaten his grandchildren and believed wibbly waves from Venus cured cancer. He most likely would have won.

But the Dems went with Biden until they went with Harris, and in between they demonized Kennedy to the point he dumped the Dems, jumped the ship and is now running the nation’s health department.

Eeek!

Well, it turns out he does think polka dots from Venus produce cancer in humans, his grandchildren have been missing since the early ‘90s, and (I’m not making this one up) he believes Vitamin A can cure measles.

So vaccines are out and multi-vitamins are in? I will now join my liberal friends and move to Canada, unless Canada is now Northern North Dakota.

I have heart issues and would prefer Doctor Robert not limit my medical options to Eye of Newt, twice daily, and weekly blood lettings via strategically placed leeches.

Y’know, kinda like “My Body, Myself!” but with stents instead of ovaries.

(Tom Hine produces these weekly columns even when stranded in North Carolina with his wife, dog and imaginary assistant, TWK. Write him at General Delivery, Winnipeg, North North Dakota.)