Why the Cleveland Indians *really* suck ;-) (long)
Ron Graham
Indians are due to "bad management," "mismanagement." For once, you
readers of rec.sport.baseball don't know the half of it. Here, for your
edification ;-), are some excerpts from the Cleveland Plain Dealer dated
08/04, in which the management was addressed.
Alva "Ted" Bonda cited ineffective work by previous owners,
of which he was one. [He was president and managing partner
from 1973 to 1979.]
Ironically, [George] Steinbrenner, a Cleveland native, was
part of a group that almost bought the Indians in the early
1970s. [...] In late 1971, Indians owner Vernon Stouffer
rejected an offer of more than $8 million from the Stein-
brenner group, then sold to a group headed by Nick Mileti for
an estimated $9 million in early 1972.
Gabe Paul, general manager and president of the Indians during
some of their darkest days, 1961-73 and 1978-84, [...] said
"If Steinbrenner had bought the team, I think they would have
been successful."
Stouffer, beset by financial problems, ordered a cutback on the
Indians' farm teams and scouts in 1971. [Hank Peters was with
the team at this time and advised *strongly* against this move.
"We cut back from 22 scouts to eight and dropped two farm clubs."]
The empty pockets continued under Mileti, fed by continued poor
performance on the field and poor attendance. [...] The Indians'
"good baseball men" made a lot of bad trades, but Paul said lack
of money was behind many of them. "When we sold Mudcat Grant we
did it so we didn't have to go to the partners for a cash call."
Bonda, however, said money was not a major problem during his
tenure. "We didn't pay our bills on time, [...] but we made our
payroll on time. [...] We signed [Wayne] Garland, and we offered
Catfish Hunter a contract comparable to what the Yankees gave him,
but he wanted to play in New York."
Let's see: three owners were examined in this article: Stouffer, Mileti,
and Bonda. Somewhere in there was also Steve O'Neill, who died and left
the team in trust - the trust did not consist of "baseball men," but
kept the team until a Cleveland-based buyer (namely, Richard and David
Jacobs) could be found. So there are *five* regimes of ownership under
which the team generally sucked (and let's face it, it sucks now too -
although Jacobs and Jacobs look like they may at least have a clue).
In short, to say the Tribe's problem is "bad management" is to understate
the problem in the *extreme*. What do you think the chances are that you
could pick five groups *at random* with interest and money enough to own
a baseball team, and see each lead the team into futility and oblivion?
The Plain Dealer denounces the theory of Colavito's Curse [tm], but I
wonder. Really, I do.
Bad luck certainly was a part of it. Pitcher Wayne Garland, the
Tribe's first major free-agent acquisition, suffered a torn
rotator cuff shortly after the Indians signed him to a 10-year
contract in 1977. An emotional breakdown in 1970 ended the
career of Tony Horton, a hard-hitting young first baseman. [...]
A broken leg ended the career of slugger Hawk Harrelson, who was
the AL RBI leader in 1968 but never played a full season for the
Indians after they acquired him from Boston in 1969 [for Sonny
Siebert, among others - ouch].
You can't blame bad luck for everything, but the Garland case clearly
made ownership gun-shy of free agents at that time. And bad trades,
as we have seen in the "worst trades" thread I started, can occasionally
beget even more bad trades (for damage control), which is what happened
in the case of Colavito.
Now - look at the managers:
Year W-L Finish Manager
60 76-78 4 Gordon/Dykes
61 78-83 5 Dykes
62 80-82 6 McGaha
63 79-83 5 Tebbetts
64 79-83 6 Tebbetts
65 87-75 5 Tebbetts
66 81-81 5 Tebbetts/Strickland
67 75-87 8 Adcock
68 86-75 3 Dark
69 62-99 6 Dark
70 76-86 5 Dark
71 60-102 6 Dark/Lipon
72 72-84 5 Aspromonte
73 71-91 6 Aspromonte
74 77-85 4 Aspromonte
75 79-80 4 FRobinson
76 81-78 4 FRobinson
77 71-90 5 FRobinson/Torborg
78 69-90 6 Torborg
79 81-80 6 Torborg/DGarcia
80 79-81 6 DGarcia
81 52-51 6 DGarcia
82 78-84 6 DGarcia
83 70-92 7 Ferraro/Corrales
84 75-87 6 Corrales
85 60-102 7 Corrales
86 84-78 5 Corrales
87 61-101 7 Corrales/Edwards
88 78-84 6 Edwards
89 73-89 6 Edwards/Hart
90 77-85 4 McNamara
91 33-68 7 McNamara/Hargrove
Over thirty years of futility, with 18 or 19 managers. Some of them
still have big-league jobs. Were they *all* dumb-heads when they
managed the Indians? Do you think you could assign a random team
19 managers over 31 years at random and do as poorly? I thought not.
This is a three-sigma situation here. And now you know.
Presented as a public service by RG
Ohio's State Motto: "Be Prepared to Stop."