Ouch..

as of right now I can't really comment on the Tribe, but for the time being I will let Terry Pluto take over..

Welcome to club, new Cleveland fans
By Terry Pluto

CLEVELAND - Now, you can teach your children about what it means to be a Cleveland sports fan.

You don't have to go into those old horror stories about ``The Drive,'' ``The Fumble,'' ``The Shot.'' You don't need to dredge up Jose Mesa and Game 7 of the 1997 World Series. You can just point to this weekend, and how being a Cleveland sports fan means having your heart broken.

Only, this was a little different.

No one expected the Indians to enter the final weekend of the season with 93 victories and a legitimate chance to make the playoffs. No one imagined that they'd have baseball's best record in the final two months of the season. No one thought that they'd finish this season winning only one of the final six home games.

Not when they returned to Jacobs Field with a 92-64 record and leading the wild-card race.

This was one of the best Indian summers in years, full of surprise endings, emerging stars, and a very likeable group of players overachieving. That remains the truth, despite losing 3-1 to the Chicago White Sox on Sunday.

If you're a real Tribe fan, your head tells you all that.

But your heart still aches.

It aches because the Indians finished the season with six home games, and all they needed to do was win three to at least force a one-game playoff for a ticket to the postseason. Four wins meant the postseason.

They won one game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a talented but young team with a lame duck manager.

They won none against the White Sox, who had clinched the American League Central Division and were resting many of their regular players.

They sent fans home shaking their heads, not so much angry as sad.

So why does your heart ache today?

Because you know the window of opportunity doesn't open often around here, and it was just slammed on your fingers.

Opportunity wasted

That's what it felt like Sunday at Jacobs Field.

Heartache.

It was a sellout crowd of 41,034. There were fans on their feet every time the Indians had a runner on base, every time a pitcher needed a big out. The bleachers were packed with fans waving white towels. There was a huge sign reading I BELIEVE.

They certainly wanted to believe, especially in this final six days of the season.

Did they ever want to believe.

A wonderful weekend of baseball, this should have been...

Every game a sellout. Every day nearly cloudless. Every game-time temperature in the 70s. Ideal weather for the end of the baseball season, remarkable for Cleveland in early October.

If ever something special was about to happen to the Indians and their fans, this seemed to be it, the curtain being lifted on some serious October baseball.

Instead, the Tribe's heavily promoted Hunt for October ended with them shooting themselves in the foot.

Suddenly it was a frightening flashback to April and early May when the Indians couldn't hit and couldn't win at home. They pitched well, but that wasn't enough.

They lost these last three games by scores of 3-2, 4-3 and 3-1.

It was the same game, over and over.

Get behind, stay behind.

The Indians led for only four of the 30 innings this weekend, and that was by a 1-0 count.

That's why by the seventh inning of Sunday's game, those waving white towels began to look like surrender flags. The cheers seemed loud but forced, sort of like urging your kid to win a marathon yet knowing she needs knee surgery.

Out with a whimper

Three hours after the game began, the Indians were down to their three final outs.

Due up were Ben Broussard, Aaron Boone and Casey Blake, the killer B's who have done that so often to the Tribe lineup this season. All three are streak hitters, all three were in slumps for much of the final four weeks.

Broussard hit a non-threatening fly ball.

Boone walked, which is rare for him.

Blake struck out, not all that unusual.

Then Grady Sizemore grounded out to end game.

And the season.

It's not meant just to bash these guys, but the bottom of the lineup is the team's weakness, and it haunted them Sunday.

There was more.

Every player felt pressure. Every hitter seemed anxious. None of them really delivered.

As Coco Crispsaid, ``We kept waiting for a big inning, we had so many lately.''

This was a team that hit 50 homers in September, but only one this weekend. In their final 30 innings, they scored more than one run just once -- that was two runs in the seventh inning on Saturday.

``We gave ourselves a chance,'' Tribe Manager Eric Wedge said.

But it still hurts.

The bad, good, and ugly

This was such a strange season.

There was a slow start, the Indians not even moving beyond .500 to say until the middle of June. On July 30, they were only 54-51, seemingly just dreaming about the playoffs.

No one really believing it, except the management and players.

Then they began to win and win and win.

The fans seemed to resist them, not wanting to be disappointed. For most of the summer, they had baseball's fourth-lowest attendance. Fans still moaned about losing Omar Vizquel, Jim Thome and other favorites from the recent past.

They knew their team had the fifth-lowest payroll in baseball and complained about the owner being cheap.

But the Indians kept winning.

And they began believing.

When postseason tickets became available, they sold out in one day. They sold out the three games against Chicago, doubling their season sellout total from three to six.

When he managed the Tribe in the middle 1970s, Frank Robinson joked that Indian Fever was a 24-hour disease.

This weekend, it was hot.

Then the bats went cold.

When the game was over, many of the fans stood and applauded for the team. Then they were allowed on the field to walk around the bases. Many of them stayed to do just that.

As they did, the song Don't Be Cruel was on the public address system.

Most of the fans weren't, they just seemed sad, like they knew something like this would happen. Like it always seems to happen to their favorite teams.

You know the Indians are headed in the right direction, that there really is reason for hope about next year and to feel good about this one.

But right now, it might just hurt a little too much to think about that.