Requiem for a contender -- the Indians surprised and delighted with a season much better than most expected.
This requiem for a contender follows days of clouds and a steady wind announcing the approach of autumn. Detroit came, saw, and conquered. The Indians' season of surprise is over, except for the dry mathematics.
And except for its pride. It never lost that.
This is not a requiem for a heavyweight because the Indians are not in that economic class. Still, the Tribe contended, and that is a lot.
They were outweighed in the pocket book, outpaid on the field, outbid for the glamour free agents. They could have been reduced, with the glorious 1990s still a memory that formed expectations for their young fans, to one of the "flyover" teams that are there because the Yankees have to play someone when they are not playing the Red Sox -- Kansas City, maybe, or Minnesota this year, after it quit being the model for success on a shoestring.
This Indians team couldn't win slugfests, the way the teams in the '90s did. It did not have an All-Star at every position, as was then the case. This team danced and jabbed, it worked the ropes, sometimes it dazzled with its speed.
In the end, despite pitching of such quality as to deserve mention with the best in franchise history, the Tribe lost because the team had only fitful power and even spotty contact hitting. The power, however, was apportioned in pungent pinches, like powerful spices in a stew. Two walk-off grand slams? Really?
Power rested with surprising Asdrubal Cabrera, Carlos Santana and Travis Hafner, the latter only when he was healthy, in-between two times on the disabled list. The front office thought it might put the genie back in the bottle with Jim Thome, but for all the sweet auld lang syne ovations, he seems near the end of the line.
But the Tribe put up the good fight, it thrilled and excited, and if no one really wants to hear that after waiting since 1948 for a victory parade, it still is a lot better than was expected.
Even the most rabid critics of the Dolan family's ownership could not deny how sweet it was to get their hair tousled by the gales off the lake during meaningful baseball games in September. Only the truest of true believers saw this coming.
It was a year when the Indians were back, however briefly, in the hearts and minds of the sports fans here. A case might be made that, even before failing to catch a Detroit team with a payroll that was almost $55 million higher, that the Tribe had not been away all that long.
One game from the World Series in 2007; beating the Yankees in the postseason in 2007; extending the '07 World Champion Red Sox and the '01 Mariners, a team that won 116 games, to the limit in playoff series; elimination on the last day of the regular season in 2000 and 2005 -- the always beloved Browns, with their two winning seasons in the past 12, should have such a track record.
The season reminded us of how interesting good baseball could be. Whether it was watching Josh Tomlin change speeds and location in stamping out quality starts like a machine, or wondering how Justin Masterson could not help but scream, "What's the use?" with such puny run support, the Indians were a topic of discussion at office watercoolers around the city.
One of the great nicknames also arose, the Bullpen Mafia, albeit one spoiled by the Borowskian excesses of the last "hit man," closer Chris Perez, who as often as not made our nerves dance as he fired uncertainly at the plate and winged us in our self-control as we fretted and fumed.
The Indians won 17 games with walk-off theatrics (including on a single, a walk, a hit batter and the two grand slams). They won 22 times in their last at-bat, including a game-winning bunt on the first big-league pitch Ezequiel Carrera saw.
What was obvious was that, with a chance to win, the Indians certainly tried. They made a smart, cheap addition in Kosuke Fukudome who paid bigger dividends than expected; brought Thome back; and called up the best prospects from Columbus in Lonnie Chisenhall and Jason Kipnis. They shipped out their pitching future in Drew Pomeranz and Alex Smith to get the second biggest name -- behind Carlos Beltran -- at the trade deadline in Ubaldo Jimenez, and for longer than a rental.
It is obvious now, with the unsettled situation with Tomlin, with Carlos Carrasco's absence for next season after Tommy John surgery, and with Mitch Talbot's performance plunge, that Jimenez has to be good.
Still, with only a normal semblance of health for a majority of the players among Hafner, Grady Sizemore, Tomlin, Carrasco, Michael Brantley, Shin-Soo Choo and Kipnis, things might have been different.
Kipnis, for his part, injured his hamstring while stretching to avoid injuring his hamstring. There, in a nutshell, you had the sigh that ended a fine season without the bang it deserved.
Matt LaPorta is scheduled to rejoin the Indians today in Chicago.
