Cleveland Indians: Back To The Future?

Cleveland Indians owner Larry Dolan just had a fire sale, and the natives are restless.

For the first time in over a century of major league baseball, a team has traded away two Cy Young winners in a row for prospects.

An All-Star catcher/first baseman is also gone, along with other starters. The fans are outraged, and many swear they will have nothing to do with the team as long as Dolan owns it.

This is another movie I've seen before, and Tribe fans, get ready for a long, cold winter of baseball futility.

For younger readers, it may seem as though the Indians have always been contenders, or at least respectable. This was not always the case. 

In fact, an entire generation knew a different Indians team.

From around 1960 through 1993, the Tribe was in perpetual Suck Zone. A record of .500 or better was an uncommon cause for celebration.

Underfunded owners and a stadium that was just too damn big (Cleveland Municipal Stadium, pictured above) along with completely inept management were the primary culprits.

If there was any talent in the farm system that blossomed in the majors, off it went to the Yankees to win championships in return for stiffs to fill out the roster.

The Tribe's own farm system was largely barren, as the team lacked the resources to scout and develop talent the way more competent organizations could. Thus, players best known as "Who's that?", and "Is this guy even still playing?" paraded through the locker room before they went away to pump gas or sell real estate.

Still, as the Indians' history dates back to 1902, hope sprung eternal in Cleveland on Opening Day. Municipal Stadium had a capacity of 74,420 for baseball, and given passable weather in early April, it would be filled to capacity for the opener.

The next day? The Indians would be lucky to see 7,442 in the stands.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Vernon Stouffer was the owner. His restaurant business begat a frozen-food empire that has burned many of the roofs of our mouths on his frozen pizzas late at night, but he did not have the capital to build a strong team.

His general manager was the infamous Gabe Paul, whose talent judgment was such that if he had a different job in a different time, William Hung would have won American Idol.

The 1989 film "Major League" was not far from the truth.

Back in a time when local broadcast stations carried team games, WJW-TV8 had an announcer, Harry Jones, who had obviously had a few nips while calling the games.

I'm not sure most of us would have done better when the cameras showed 5,000 people in the stands and the over/under on Indians' losses for any given season was usually 100.

David Ward, who wrote the script to "Major League," was a Clevelander who had also seen decades of pathetic baseball. He laughed all the way to the bank, but for the most part, the Indians and their fans didn't.

Stouffer was followed in ownership by Nick Mileti, Ted Bonda and F.J. "Steve" O'Neill, a lawyer, businessman and industrialist respectively, but none of them had the resources to bring the Tribe to respectabiltiy.

So, Tribe fans remembered forgettable players like Larvell Blanks and the infamous Bullpen from Hell of the 1980s, but they still kept the faith the best they could.

But, Municipal Stadium, which I still remember fondly, was part of the problem.

For the most part, the team sucked, drawing some crowds of under 2,000 for games. But, when the Tribe had a hot pitcher or looked like it was on a roll and the weather was good, the occasional "flash crowd" of 56,000 would show up, straining the Tribe's understaffed employees to accommodate the throng.

Fan, as part of "flash crowd," could not get tickets and get into his seat until halfway through the third inning, and it took another two innings to get a hot dog and a beverage. More often than not, the Indians lost the "flash crowd" games, as they were used to playing in relative solitude.

"Flash crowd" fans usually flashed their way back to the suburbs, not to return again.

Some years, the Indians drew fewer than a million fans.

Thus, the annual ritual began. Sometime after the Browns ended their season, there was a threat or speculation that the Indians would move. A generation that had known nothing but bad baseball greeted the threats with a collective yawn.

With inadequate capital and a nonproductive farm system, the futility continued.

Enter Dick Jacobs. In 1986, he paid O'Neill's estate $45 million for the franchise. Jacobs sunk money into the farm system, hired General Manager John Hart, and the team began a slow climb.

With then-MLB commissioner Fay Vincent adding to the ongoing threats to move the Tribe, a "sin tax" on alcohol and tobacco was narrowly passed in 1990 by Cuyahoga County voters, paving the way for what is now Progressive Field downtown.

In 1994, the Indians moved into Jacobs Field, the crowds streamed in, and by the time the players' association's strike aborted the season, the Indians were nipping at the heels of the White Sox for the Central Division title.

Tribe fans know the rest of the story. The 1995-99 seasons brought five consecutive playoff appearances under Jacobs' last years as owner, and a new generation of baseball fans knew the Indians as nothing but winners.

With a mediocre Cavaliers team and no Browns for three years, the Tribe posted a then-record 455 consecutive home-game sellouts, and the spinning turnstiles were virtually printing money. 

Jacobs, with his luxury boxes sold out, his tickets all sold and his revenue streams maxed, sold the Indians to Larry Dolan for $320 million in 2000.

Buy low, sell high.

Buy too high? Someone saw you coming.

With no new revenue to tap and more pressure to increase payroll, Dolan may have had no choice but to order new GM Mark Shapiro to blow up the team and start over in 2002. 

Attendance predictably dropped, but by 2005, the Tribe was back in contention. After an off-year in 2006, the 2007 Tribe cane within one game of making the World Series, losing the ALCS to the eventual champion Boston Red Sox.

But, attendance never rebounded to anywhere near 1999 levels.

After the latest Dolan fire sale, I project attendance for 2009 to come in at around 1.6 million. That's better than when 1.3 million was considered respectable at Municipal Stadium, but nowhere near the 3.5 million who walked in the gates of the Jake when Dolan bought the team in 2000.

Dolan also does not have the advantage of a new facility with a stronger economy Jacobs had. In the initial years of Jacobs Field, people would show up simply to marvel at the new facility, or to see and be seen there, as the first few years of the Jake were as much social event as baseball game.

Now, corporate luxury seating is a much tougher sell, as its would-be buyers are either cutting expenses or no longer exist.

While Dolan did cut a strong cable deal for a mid-sized market by starting the SportsTime Ohio channel for the primary purpose of making it the home of the Tribe games and selling stadium naming rights to Progressive Insurance, neither of those deals can possibly make up for the loss of attendance and concessions.

Finally, Dolan may be what we call "underwater." In this economy, more and more of us know that term, but here's Underwater 101:

Buy a new car with a respectable down payment? For about the first 18 to 24 months of your car loan, you are "underwater," meaning you owe more on your car than it's worth.

Before the Great Recession, real estate was largely immune from being underwater, as values rose. Buyers could get an entry-level house with nothing down on a subprime ARM that would adjust in three years, know they could not pay the ARM when it readjusted, put the "For Sale" sign up two years into the loan and walk away with a 20 percent gain in value.

Now, a home in a respectable suburb of Cleveland that sold for $220,000 in 2005 may only be worth $185,000 now. Even without a subprime ARM and a traditional down payment, you could still be underwater.

Now, the once-beloved Indians franchise is reviled with the latest trades.

On the open market in this economy in a state with an unemployment rate of 11.2 percent, it's highly doubtful the Cleveland Indians would fetch $320 million in 2009.

Since Dolan bought the team, we've been through two market meltdowns, the Tech Bust and the Great Recession.

Larry Dolan is probably underwater, and thus, the moves were made.

For Indians fans, so are your hopes.