Friday, July 31, 2009

Our Victor

While the rational side of me wants to come to grips as quickly as possible with the idea that Victor Martinez is no longer a member of the Cleveland Indians, the emotional strings are a little longer than that. With that in mind (and having a good number of these things on the hard drive from pieces throughout the years), I thought I would put together a proper farewell to Vic.

Obviously, much more to come on this and everything else that has happened in the past week; but before we get into that, perhaps it may be best to simply sit back and appreciate Victor for what he meant to this team, this organization, and to us as fans.

He donned the tools of ignorance to go into battle for the Indians...


The good times were often and plenty...


His personality and his passion endeared him to us as we watched him grow into an All-Star we could all be proud of...



His tenacity and leadership endured through injury to give us joy...




In the magic of 2007, he put us on his back for the highest of highs...




As well as living through and sharing our pain through the lowest of lows...



Through his emotion, you felt like you were cheering for much more than laundry...




He is, after all, Victor...
Farewell, Mi Capitan...you will be missed.

10 comments:

Learning to Swim said...

Thank you. And thank you Victor.

rodells said...

Nice.

Can't wait to wear my Vic shirt to the games I unfortunately have tickets for in August.

Steve said...

Having moved from Ohio in 1996, this is one more nail in the coffin called a "Cleveland Indian's Fan" for me, let alone the "MLB in general" coffin. I can't take it anymore.

Cy Slapnicka said...

its been so long, i almost forgot about all his high fives. man, i'm gonna miss those. especially if i have to see him do it with pappelbon.

btw, is there that little interest in wood? even if we eat part of the contract? seems like that woulda been a nice piece to have unloaded, even if we pay half his salary this year and next. an expensive closer seems like an extravagance given the events of the past few days.

Spills said...

Going to miss this guy.

Rockdawg said...

If you cannot afford to run a professional sports team, then you have no business owning one. Losing Cliff was tough, but seeing Vic cry at his press conference made me want to blow up Dolan's house. Dan Gilbert for mayor.

Anonymous said...

A day after Lee's deal I came to grips with why it made sense (Lee pretty much said he would test free agency)

But a day after Martinez and I'm still mad. I'm with Rockdawg (I don't know about the whole blowing things up approach) seeing Martinez wearing shades to hide if red, teary eyes and how he had to explain to his son that they were not Indians any more really pissed me off. This was clearly about nothing other than money. At the All-star game he says he wants to retire as an Indian, three weeks later he's playing for that in New England. I think Shapiro would trade his wife if it would save on payroll and he got some injury-prone prospect in return.

Did Shapiro even try to sign him to extension (forgive my ignorance on his contract situation)

I'm so sick of hearing that this is how small-market teams have to operate. That only goes so far to explain things. At some point your just being cheap.

dieseldave said...

why couldnt we trade halfner and wood and anyone else making over $10 an hour? Than we could have really saved some $$$$$

Cy Slapnicka said...

"This was clearly about nothing other than money....At some point your just being cheap."

I hate to break it to you, but the Dolan's are running a business. They may not be running it very effectively from a win loss standpoint, but their goal is to make money...or at best, not lose money.

The sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll stop making statements such as the above.

When you boil it down, you are rooting for very highly paid employees of a company that have very little accountability that happen to seem like really cool people.

Unknown said...

Is his belt unbuckled in the All Star Game picture?