Best of 2007: Triumph of the Little Guy

So I'll remember 2007s Biggest Moment, or rather collection of moments, as the Triumph of The Little Guy.

Yes, this is a baseball-centric piece. Apologies to those of you who feel that the juicing and all that accompanies that has destroyed its right to be called a sport and has turned it into some sort of Frankenstein held together by duct tape and ace bandages comprised of a circus side show, the WWF, and a bad reality show. I would agree with you, but that foolish optimism ingrained in this Clevelander means I can easily sweep this under the same rug I where I'm keeping Ernest Byner. 

Yes, this is also a Cleveland-centric piece. Apologies to those of you who forgot we existed. I would be mad, but I'm used to it (Does Cleveland have a basketball team? No dummy, Lebron exists in a basketball vacuum, and we just keep him inside the arena and watch him run around by himself. The Indians don't have any real stars! Yeah, you'll not do well in the trivia game where they ask who won the Cy Young in 2007. In 20 years when Sizemore gets inducted to the Hall of Fame, ask someone to define "5 tool player" for you. Why don't the browns have a mascot? They do. Maybe they don't want the dog on their helmet because then you opposing fans would realize who threw all those beer bottles at you from the end zone.). Give Pittsburgh some credit, at least they hate us enough to know we're there. But I digress.

The Little Guy who had his day in 2007 was not confined to Cleveland, to be fair. And I support all underdogs and dark horses. I must mention the Mitchell report, so that I can explain why the Little Guy of 2007 was to me something bigger than your average specimen. I'm sorry for those who were excited by my first paragraph at the prospect that I would be the first person talking about sports in the last 3 months not to say "steroids". However, the report itself is not my focus. Rather, 2007 is the first year in I can't tell you how long that I felt like the underdogs, the scrappers, and the Little Guys had their day. 

So the big oafs on steroids got busted. Or maybe just embarrassed. It didn't matter. The last few seasons have been dominated by monster home runs and power pitching. Not so this year. Before George Mitchell outed the Inflatables and presented hard evidence for the branding of Bonds and Clemens with the Scarlett Letter of the asterisk, the little guy was already running the show. This season's big moment was 162 games of virtually undetectable moments in which games were finally being won by slap singles, steals, legging out the triple, diving catches, and pitchers hitting their spots, occasionally punctuated with a line drive barely-cleared-the-wall home run by some scrawny little outfielder or second baseman that elicits the typical response from the booth of "I wonder what HE ate for breakfast?" The satisfaction of being able to respond with "Not Steroids" affords me a little smile thanking the universe for giving back to those who haven't violated its principles, the same little smile that goes with "Bonds indicted for perjury" scrolling across the bottom of my TV screen. 

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