Best of 2007: Triumph of the Little Guy

Because my plastic beer bottle is always half full, and because I'm from Cleveland, where blind optimism and hope are the only things that allow a person to continue watching sports, I refuse to see the Mitchell Report as the biggest sports moment of 2007.

Maybe it was, but I'd like to end the year smiling though, and not just because I've had 9 drinks to lessen the pain this coming Sunday when the Browns will surely find a way to not make the playoffs.

Thinking back on going to Browns games as a kid, I now understand why everyone else in the stands was completely, unapologetically wasted by halftime.

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. 

Sure, every season has its little guy. I'll never forget little Don Beebe vs. Leon Lett. Or the 2004 Red Sox stunning the smug and detrimentally complacent Yankees. Unfortunately, Boston's credibility in the Little Guy department has been severely damaged by the fact that whatever they were the day they beat the Yankees in 2004, they no longer are. Now they ARE the Yankees. Evil Empire, meet your clone. Go easy on it, New York. It spent so many years blaming you for its troubles that it isn't ready to admit that it has usurped your title as the Monster. Never thought I'd say this, but in the next go round I may root for the Yankees, as they may now be the lesser of two evils. But in 2007, at least for this Clevelander, backstage behind the curtain while the Yankees and the Red Sox took center stage and put on their usual game show spectacle of Who can spend more money?,  the little stray dog in Cleveland was having his day over and over again. 

My team, as the ignorant AL East fan will tell you, has no stars. Perhaps if we define stars as media darlings and nationwide fan favorites, this is true. But our little band of unknowns, groomed by our farm system rather than bought for a king's ransom after they were already proven playmakers, came together to form a team that wasn't propelled to the playoffs by one guy, or by a fat wallet, or by the allure of past success. No one stood out because no one wanted to. And the little guys who formed the little team, captured the division title no one outside Cleveland even remotely considered they might win. I'm pretty sure Detroit was the only place where they even entertained the possibility, and that's only because they had to consider how scared they should be of every team in their division (well, except Kansas City. Duh.).

Detroit's assessment clearly failed them because they weren't scared enough. Or maybe they were terrified and we were just better. But my money is on door number one. No one is scared of The Little Guy. So our secret weapon of being ourselves let us take the central playing their little game, in front of their little loyal crowd of fans. The Little Guy played by his own rules. The Little Guy was calling the shots. No one heard him because no one bothered to listen. 

The little Tribe did it with diving catches in the outfield and heroic snares of infield grounders, fittingly dubbed more "democratic" than strike outs by the fictional god of Little Guys, Crash Davis. The Tribe did it with headfirst dives into second and working the count, rather than giant home runs clubbed by a giant multi-million dollar power hitter knocking in other big money hulks waiting on the bases after receiving their fear-motivated intentional walks. They did it with a bullpen that held tight leads for 4+ innings 162 times, each guy doing his little part, rather than relying on big ticket fireballers ringing up complete games. Or their steroids ringing up complete games. Still a little fuzzy on how the credit is divided up. 

Finally the little Tribe slammed the door with a closer who scared us to death every time he threw by loading the bases as the potential winning run approached the plate, rather than with a flashy ringer paid millions to throw no more than 10 pitches which would blast past bewildered hitters at 100 miles an hour. They did it with smart baserunning and strategic sacrifices to move runners and procure one run at a time rather than collecting runs in heaps of 3 and 4  courtesy of clean up hitters going yard 40 or 50 times a season. Ironic that our season ended on a baserunning mistake. But, that’s Cleveland for you. Our heartache is always served up with a big side of shock, usually at first attributed to some nameless curse, ultimately shouldered by some player singled out as the goat extraordinaire so that we have someone whose picture we can throw darts at in the off-season. 

So of course as you know, my little guys ultimately did not triumph. I see the rebuttals to my whole argument now, the ultimate failure of our underdog squad in the face of the Boston Colossus. Our little ball didn't just get systematically beaten. The little guys had it in their mitts, and they choked in a way that only Cleveland teams can. And then they choked again. And again. Am I up to 3 yet? Who blows a 3-1 game lead in the ALCS? Maybe the 2004 Yankees would like to join my support group? Nah, I'm sure they don't want to cavort with us little guys. The logistics alone are a problem. What state is Cleveland in? Gotham is its own universe in which Cleveland is not even on the map. Besides, they don't need us. We cry in our beer and try to find someone who was actually alive a million years ago to tell us what it was like the last time Cleveland won a world series while they stare at all their championship rings. Their 3-1 choke was a mistake, an embarrassment. Ours was The End of The World for at least a week, and when the anger  subsided, it just made us shake our heads and admit that even though We Believed, more foolishly yet deeply than anyone else when the odds were stacked against us, in the back of our minds, we kind of knew this would happen. 

So I guess you can say that my memory of 2007 as the year of the triumph of the little guy is woefully inaccurate, as the little guy resumed his usual little guy routine. We fade back into the shadows at the end of the season, eclipsed by the Red Sox efforts to establish themselves as a dynasty, Scott Boras and A-Rod making a mockery of free agency, and the Clemens and Mitchell did-too, did-not finger pointing circus.

But that’s the thing about little guys. They appreciate little victories. 2007 was the year of the little guy on our little guy scale. The little Indians took the division. They dominated the heavily favored Yankees . With a little help from the bugs. At least that was the consensus in New York. I guess a gazillion dollar payroll comes with a free bag of sour grapes. I'm pretty sure those bugs didn't discriminate between teams, but if they did, well, consider them the avengers of Jeffrey Meier. 

The Tribe scared the daylights out of a Red Sox team that never gave the littlest thought to the possibility of being  backed into a corner by our little team. Our little ace (albeit inhabiting a big body) beat out golden boy Josh Beckett for the Cy Young. Our little centerfielder who gets about a quarter of the credit he deserves as a baseball tour-de-force won a gold glove. 

So the little guys had some big moments. In their quiet little way, of course. No one will remember any of it outside of Cleveland. We don't mind. The biggest sports moment for me and my fellow Indians fans was all the little moments when our little team had their little triumphs. And for little guys all over MLB, if no one else noticed, know that we did. Cinderella Colorado, we were pulling for you. Jim Leyland, while your Tigers have big guns, they also are sustained by little guy power.  I hate you because you're our biggest rival, but know that my hate is accompanied by respect. Hey over there in the NFL, for the Biggest Little Guy of them all, Brett Favre, there are no words. I guess when people are calling you washed up, you return to Little Guy status no matter your accomplishments. We Little Guys are honored to have you among us. 

So Cleveland fans, and other little guys out there, 2007 gave us our moment, even if no one else noticed. Doesn't bother me. Us little guys prefer to keep our little moment to our little selves. Maybe next year we'll win the World Series, and all you big guns will want to be Little Guys too. Bad news though. You can't buy Little Guy. Maybe if you look in Cleveland, you'll find some of your own. Quick, go now before you forget we exist again.  For your reference we are not, as Eastern Seaboard myth would have it, located in the middle of a cornfield. We are also not directly next to Cincinnati. Additionally, we took geography in elementary school. Our geography class required us to learn of the existence and even location of states regardless of whether we might someday buy a vacation home there. Don't worry, we'll send you directions.