Flying Tomahawks

An absolute disastrous 9th inning by Indian defenders allowed the Redbirds to avoid the sweep. As promotional seat cushions rained on the field, one could sense that the breaking point had been reached for the Tribe. Eric Wedge’s post-game press conference proved it.

This is about as emotional as we’ve ever seen Eric Wedge:
"It was a total defensive collapse. It was an embarrassing end to what could have potentially been a big game for us. That's a play he's got to make. We gave [the game] back a [heck] of a lot easier than we took it from them. You've got to want the ball to come to you. You want it to come to you every pitch. If you don't, you shouldn't be out there."

With that ugliness out of the way, it’s time for some tomahawks:

• As Cy Slapnicka noted in the comments section, the maturation of Grady Sizemore, the hitter, is coming along nicely. At this point, he’s on pace for 30 HR’s and 26 SB. Did someone say 30-30 Club? The last (and only) Tribe player to join the club is Joe Carter, who achieved the feat in 1987.
  
• I see probably 3-5 commercials for Sonic (the fast-food restaurant) a week. As amusing as I find them, I’m baffled as to where there’s a Sonic. They’re nowhere in Northeast Ohio, so what kind of use of advertising dollars is that? I’ve posed the question to friends all over the country and everyone has the same response, “Yeah, I’ve seen the commercials; but I’ve never seen a Sonic.”
  
• I’ve been thinking about this renaming of Jacobs Field (naming rights are up after this season), and this is what I’ve got. How about Continental Airlines (Hopkins is a hub) buys the rights and call the ballpark, The Reservation? Get it, reservations for plane tickets, playing up the Indian angle? It might not be politically correct, but it’s time for the Indians to both embrace and flaunt the fact that they’re the Indians or just remove all other remnants of the Chief.
  
• Speaking of the team being named the Indians, did you know that when the Cleveland baseball team joined what is now the American League in 1901, they were called the Blues or Bluebirds until 1903? At that point the team was renamed the Naps to honor Nap Lajoie, their best player and manager. After Lajoie retired, the Cleveland baseball writers were asked to come up with a new name for the team. It was decided that they would be called the Indians, because one of the earlier incarnations of the team had a player that was a Native American and the team was referred to by opposing teams as the Indians, possibly derogatorily. When the name change was announced in the paper, the first mention of the Native American, Louis Sockalexis, didn’t appear until page 8 of the paper. The first time an Indian appears as a logo isn’t until 1928. I’m not trying to discount the significance of Sockalexis in the whole process, but it seems to me that the name selection was a pretty arbitrary process and the team could just have easily been renamed the Blues, Bluebirds, Spiders, or Bronchos (all names that they had gone by).
  What would I like to have those sportswriters call the club? How about the Barons? The old logo for the Hockey team (played in the AHL) is one of those logos and names that would be cool today, in a nostalgic sort of way. The way that the Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees, and Giants are timeless sports nicknames, the Indians never really caught on. Maybe it was the team’s ineptitude or maybe because Cleveland never had the market share. Indians just never had the panache for me.
  
• The actress from those Mercury commercials is on the new SPIKE show “Blade” with (get this) a rapper from Onyx playing Blade. Yes, the same Onyx that came out with “Slam” about 10 years ago. Where’s he been in the interim? But back to the girl, rarely has a commercial spokeswoman gotten noticed (think the Noxzema girl before she became Dylan McKay’s girlfriend on 90210 or the Doritos girl before she married A.C. Slater in real life), but I think this girl might be entering that stratosphere. Nothing too fancy about her, just nice.
  

Off to the shores of the Ohio River to catch the Tribe on Saturday night and hang with some buddies in Cincinnati. I’ll be representing the Tribe, but it won’t be pretty. People in Cincinnati think that Cleveland is their big rival, oblivious to the fact that the Reds/Bengals aren’t even on our radar screen.