“Donnie…I’m telling you…it is IMPOSSIBLE!,” I said on our morning chat.
“John…have some faith! All the way with LBJ and then the Indians are going to win the World Series,” he replied.
We’d been talking about the Cavs winning the NBA championship throughout the playoffs. He is an avid LeBron fan…who isn’t...and had been making this prediction all season long. I would constantly remind him that no team in Cleveland had won a championship since 1964, which meant around 150 straight seasons when you included all three Cleveland sports teams.
“There’s too much stress after all these years. If a team gets close…a key player will have a meltdown. Don’t you remember ’97?” I asked.
Donnie and I had gone to games six and seven in Florida in 1997 to see what we hoped would be the end of the championship drought if the Indians could defeat the Florida Marlins. Instead, with a lead in the ninth inning of game seven and the Indians only two outs from the championship, Jose Mesa gave up the tying run and eventually we lost in the 11th inning. Heartbreaking.
“And if we did win, don’t you realize the earth would spin off its axis and we’d all be doomed to another ice age or something?”
He wasn’t buying it, and neither was LeBron James last night as the Cavs did the impossible, becoming the first team in NBA history to come back from a 3-1 deficit to clinch the title. I will admit to tears of joy and more importantly, new found hope that the Indians CAN win a World Series in my lifetime. Thanks, Cavs. Go Tribe!
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