For those of little faith, those who doubted the impact of The Bean (I wrote about it in the Blog a few days ago), here are a couple photos. Is this not worth a six-hour drive to Chicago?



Time for a sampling from the mailbox and online comments:
Richard Platt of Fairborn relates a rather obvious fact after reading what I wrote about the Indians in Friday’s Beacon Journal: The Indians have a maddening habit of being good one year, bad the next. Here’s the record:
2004 - 80-82
2005 - 93-69
2006 - 78-84
2007 - 96-66
“It would seem this trend has carried over to this year and another bad season has arrived. I believe it only confirms my opinion about the Indians' roster. They are simply a bunch of average to below average players. Good organizations with good players are usually consistent in winning from year to year. Their wins/losses will vary some from year to year, but they will at least have two consecutive winning seasons,” Mr. Platt wrote.
Interesting. Me, it harkens me back to spring training when I was talking to Mark Shapiro and posed the question who would save it Joe Borowski ever struggled. He said Rafael Betancourt, but it was a bit of an unknown. I asked if he was nervous about the bullpen, and he said he is always nervous about a bullpen because its nature is to be up and down from year to year. That fact held true in 2006, when the bullpen did the team in. And that fact has held true this year, as the bullpen has struggled, which when combined with the struggling offense has produced a 24-29 start.
I also must give credit where it’s due – it was Mr. Platt who suggested to me that the Indians need to win 60 percent of their remaining games to win 90 this year. It was a good point that led to Friday’s column.
The first online comment on that column stated: “The only number that is important is games back. It doesn't matter how many wins you get if you win the division. There is nothing special about 90 wins. Everyone starts the playoffs 0-0. It would be nice to see them play some good baseball though.” This came from Bubba in Akron. And he’s right. As much angst as there is about and within the Indians these days, Bubba is right. All that matters are games behind, and right now the deficit is manageable. As long as the Indians start to play real baseball, they can get back into things.There's just this matter of playing real baseball.
A very intelligent and insightful woman named Bernadette wrote about my thoughts on LeBron James and the team’s offense. She said: “Believe it or not, there is a community out there that understands that while Lebron James is an excellent ball player, he should use better judgment in utilizing his teammates. I've also noticed how his team mates defer to him and witnessed how he openly rebukes them if he's dissatisfied with their game performance. I, however, never see his teammates show any negative emotion toward Lebron when he makes a bad play, miss an easy layup or uses bad judgment during the course of a game. Office politics, no doubt. It should be stressed by the coaching staff and management, that there is no I in TEAM.”
Very true. But it does seem odd criticizing a guy who is such a great team player for not being a team player. LeBron does play team basketball; he just has to realize that there are times when the best thing for him and the team is continue to run the offense and get a good shot from the offense. That being said, I still want him to be on my team, and to stay with the Cavs his entire career.
Finally, Andy Harris of Akron wrote that I should stop calling LeBron James the best player in the league.
“Don't confuse ‘most physically talented’ with best. Unless and until LeBron improves his game to the point that he can consistently be a threat from 15 feet away from the basket and out, he is most definitely not the best player in the NBA. Players like Jordan and even a guy like Karl Malone, who was comparable to LeBron size-wise, were much better shooters than LeBron. Yes, he's young and definitely has a chance to be the best player in the NBA…..someday, just not now. Because of his erratic outside shooting, teams can still back off of him and pack the lane, thus making it difficult or even impossible to drive and score consistently. Players such as Kobe Bryant have a much more well-rounded game and are several steps ahead of LeBron at this point. To continually tout him as the game's best player reeks of blatant homer-ism.”
Well first of all, I don’t watch the Simpsons. Second, I stand by it. I don’t think another player in the league could have done with the Cavs what LeBron did this year. And he did it through a lot of team injuries and holdouts. LeBron needs championships to complete his career, but that will come with a better team. Right now, I stand by it.