Cleveland Guardians

In 2022, Cleveland’s baseball franchise began searching for a new moniker to replace the name that the team had held since 1915, the Cleveland Indians, which had been criticized for years for being culturally insensitive to Native Americans. One wonders why they did not examine the city’s own back catalog of baseball team names a bit more closely before deciding. Who wouldn’t want to watch the Cleveland Bluebirds, or Napoleons, Buckeyes, Infants, Spiders, or Senators. For a poetic option, there could be none better than the Cleveland Lake Shores. And surely no one could fail to enjoy sitting in their seat in a stadium manned by a team called the Cleveland Furniture Makers. Alas, the 2022 franchise went with the Cleveland Guardians and that is what the name that they are known by today. Nevertheless, a name is just a name, and a Cleveland team by any other name would still be the MLB team with the single longest active World Series drought, dating back 75 years (and counting) to 1948. In the grand tradition of baseball curses, Cleveland’s version (the Curse of Rocky Colavito) is not really common knowledge, but their contribution to the city’s legacy of futility* in professional sports was widely discussed until 2016, when LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers brought the NBA Championship home, the city’s first victory in 52 years. The Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), however, had a promising start in their early years, climbing steadily up the ranks of the American League until they finished 1st in 1920 and beat the Brooklyn Robins (later the Brooklyn Dodgers, then the Los Angeles Dodgers) to win Cleveland’s first-ever modern World Series. They would be back in the World Series again in 1948 to take on the Boston Braves (now the Atlanta Braves), surviving a nervy Game Six in Boston to win 4-3 and avoid a Game Seven decider in hostile territory. The years that would follow would be grim to say the least. After one more World Series foray in 1954 was brutally stomped down by the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants) in a four game sweep (mostly remembered for Willie Mays’ incredible over the head catch), Cleveland embarked on over three decades of abject, humiliating failure, rarely seeing the .500 mark and finishing many seasons dead last. A trade that angered many fans in 1990, sending Joe Carter away for two unknown youngsters, Sandy Alomar Jr. and Carlos Baerga, actually proved to be the spark that fans in Cleveland had so long awaited, with All-Stars like Manny Ramirez and Albert Belle joining the team in subsequent years to power the franchise not only to a 100-44 record that got them to the playoffs for the first time ever but all the way to the 1995 World Series, where they would face the Braves, the team they had beaten in their last World Series win, way back in 1948. History seemed in the offing, but these Braves, now of Atlanta, were in no mood to suffer the same fate as their predecessors, handing Cleveland a 4-2 series loss with a nail-biting 1-0 win in Game Six. Cleveland would come back stronger two years later, beating both the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles en route to the 1997 World Series against an upstart expansion team, the Florida Marlins (now the Miami Marlins). The teams traded games to set up a Game Seven decider in Miami, where close to 70,000 fans watched through clasped hands as the action carried on into the tenth and then eleventh inning. Marlins shortstop Edgar Rentería hit a single just over Cleveland’s pitcher Charles Nagy’s glove, who touched the ball but couldn’t field it, driving in the winning run, sending Miami into delirious celebrations while breaking hearts in Cleveland. Fans of the team in the 1990s must have been wondering if they had missed their chance for good when the team faded a bit in the early 2000s, but they found themselves back in the World Series in 2016 against a team with a history of losing much longer than theirs, the Chicago Cubs, not-so-proud owners of the record for the longest World Series drought in history, 107 years at the time. With two teams battling not only one another but history itself, victory was never going to come easily to either, and this World Series duly went as down to the wire as a Series can probably ever go. With Cleveland up three games to one, the Cubs stormed back to level the series to force a Game Seven, albeit in Cleveland. The game went to extra innings, with the Cubs scoring two in the top of the tenth before Cleveland pulled one back in the bottom of the inning. But one run was all they could muster, and so it ended up being the Cubs celebrating the end of history, handing the unwanted mantle of the longest active drought to Cleveland as they did. Whether now, as the Cleveland Guardians, the team can finally chase away their many ghosts at last will be well worth watching in the years to come. 

Cleveland Guardians Rivalries

The Cleveland Guardians have a friendly state rivalry with their National League Ohio neighbors, the Cincinnati Reds. Until interleague play began in 1997, the teams contested a yearly exhibition game known as the Ohio Cup for several years. Their annual season meetings are now known as the Buckeye Series or Battle of Ohio. The Guardians also have a local rivalry with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Tigers, as well as a historic rivalry with the Chicago White Sox. Tickets to such popular games can be scarce, so be sure to check out TicketX, where you can find the most affordable tickets to all the best Cleveland Guardians games.

*The Cleveland sports curse allegedly affected the Cleveland Browns, Cavaliers, and Guardians (and a short-lived NHL franchise called the Barons) for 52 years between 1964, when the Browns won their last NFL championship (albeit prior to the Super Bowl’s existence), and 2016, when the Cavs won the NBA Championship. If the Guardians (Indians) had won the World Series in 2016, they could have broken the curse along with their NBA brethren. They did not, however, and so for the Browns and the Guardians, the curse lives on, for now.