Trares
October is half over, baseball’s playoffs are in full swing, and I’m in sports-fan heaven.
I owe much of my excitement to my Grandma Jerrie.
Baseball is my favorite sport, and the Cleveland Guardians are my favorite team. My grandmother is the biggest Cleveland baseball fan I know, and with our Guardians making a surprising postseason appearance, I know she’s relishing every Jose Ramirez hit and Shane Bieber strikeout.
Since she was a little girl, my grandma has been a fan of the hometown team. She remembers Cleveland’s last World Series-winning team from 1948, and all of the heartbreak that has come from the near misses over the years.
Both sides of my family grew up in the vicinity of Cleveland, and because of that, I’ve been a lifelong follower of its teams when it comes to sports. We sat around at my grandparents’ house when I was a boy, watching the Browns play in the 1986 and 1987 AFC Championship games.
In the summertime, they’d have Herb Score on the radio calling games for the woeful Indians teams of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Despite the results, year after year, I have happy memories of those times. There’s comfort in shared (sports) misery.
And while negativity is the de facto mindset of the Cleveland fan, my grandma never lost faith. She’d find joy in a scrappy play by a newly called-up rookie, or one last homer by an aging veteran.
There weren’t very many times when she’d miss an Indians game, either on the radio or on TV.
Even as I grew older, and was able to visit fewer times, Cleveland baseball would be a topic of conversation during our frequent phone calls. We’d catch up about our favorite players, rehash the best plays we saw and try to predict how the team would do in the coming weeks.
Many of my memories of my grandma involve Cleveland baseball. But my favorite came in 2007. Cleveland was back in the playoffs, squaring off against the Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant. My grandparents had come to visit, and we were all spending a weekend at the lake house.
That evening, we gathered around our antenna-fed TV to watch a fuzzy broadcast of the game. Boston had won Game 1, and Cleveland would need a victory to keep pace.
The game was a back-and-forth affair — Cleveland scored first, then the teams traded leads before Cleveland tied it in the sixth inning. And there it stayed for hours.
Most of the family went to bed. But my grandma and I stayed up, hoping to see a Cleveland victory. Through the eighth inning, the ninth inning, the 10th inning, it stayed tied. Finally, with 1 a.m. fast approaching, we both decided it was time for bed.
In the morning, we learned that Cleveland had pulled it out in the 11th inning. It was cause for celebration. That game sticks in my mind, not because of the result, but because of the time my grandma and I got to spend hanging on every play. The memory is priceless.
I haven’t been able to check in with Grandma Jerrie during this year’s playoffs, even if we spoke about our love for this year’s Guardians teams over the summer. But this playoff run has been the kind of baseball that she would love — full of hustle, unreal pitching and timely hits.
By the time this column runs, Cleveland may be nearing its final out in the playoffs. They’re facing the New York Yankees, so who knows how much longer the Guardians’ 2022 season lasts.
Still, with every pitch, I know I have a fellow fan cheering on our team.
