Written by Brian McPeek

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It’s interesting how a day can change everything. On Friday morning the Indians were coming off a thrilling, comeback win over the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander and the Browns were starting training camp with fans dreaming of what Brandon Weeden and Trent Richardson may mean to the team going forward. Less than 24 hours later the Indians were on their way to wasting all the good that came from Thursday and the Browns story changed from one of ‘good vibrations’ that arrive here every year when we get to this part of the calendar to ‘Good riddance, Randy’.

It’s the Weekend Wrap.

Never Happy

You know the only thing I care about in terms of who owns the sports teams I care about? That they have deep pockets and are willing to reach down to the bottom of those pockets.

That’s it.

My only pre-requisite for who owns the Browns, Cavs and Indians is that they have a ton of money and aren’t afraid to spend it.

After that you’re at the mercy of ego and genetics.

I don’t think Randy Lerner was either a good owner or a bad owner. He spent a boatload of money on the Browns. A lot of it even on guys who still work for the team as opposed to those guys he’s still paying to not come to work. He may not have spent it smartly but he spent it.

Many people here in town will tell you it’s because he didn’t care, wasn’t involved and never wanted the team to begin with.

I have no idea to what extent that’s true. I do know he wasn’t Daniel Snyder or Jerry Jones, or even Art Modell, for that matter, in terms of how ‘hands on’ he was with the team. I also know that doesn’t mean shit. Last time I looked Daniel Snyder had won nothing. Last I looked Randy Lerner had as many Super Bowl titles as Snyder, Modell and his far more interested and engaged father, Al Lerner.

I also recall the same people burying Lerner today because they can also praised him for his deep pockets, willingness to spend and his hiring of Mike Holmgren. “Finally”, they said. “Finally we have an owner who’s turning over the team to a real football guy who actually coached and built really good teams”.

That’s what the people burying Lerner today said yesterday about Lerner.

The bottom line is this is it’s ridiculous to bitch about Lerner and hold out hope for the new guy in the process when you have no idea about him, and Lerner had already demonstrated the willingness to spend tons of money on the franchise.

There are plenty of problems with billionaires regardless of which one you get. The people who would douse Lerner with pitch and strike a match to him apparently aren’t fond of owners who never worked too many difficult days in their lives and who inherited all they have in life from their old man.

Apparently they prefer the ‘self-made’ billionaire (though there is rarely actually such a creature) who built a business and knows everything about everything because they did build a business (in a completely different environment and industry than NFL football) and who demonstrate their arrogance and ingenuity by putting shitty teams on their fields. A brilliant and self-made asbestos lawyer like Peter Angelos is the same guy responsible for the hapless Orioles stumbling around in the dark for the last 10-15 years. Jeff Loria of the Marlins and James Dolan of the Knicks are embarrassingly bad and appear to be a lot more ‘engaged’ in their franchises than Randy Lerner was.

Nope, it’s a crapshoot after tons and tons of money. You need to pray all that money buys solid counsel and manifests itself in results on the field (and Lerner’s did not), but if your guy doesn’t have or won’t spend ridiculous coin the plane is never getting off the ground to begin with (see: Dolan, Larry/Paul). 

Where I'd urge caution is to those who espouse the notion that things certainly can't get worse than Lerner. I can think of a way things could get worse. In fact, it was because of that way of things getting worse that Al Lerner, after greasing the very skids  of  'worse', donned the white hat to bring a team back to Cleveland.

Randy Lerner may have been disengaged, disinterested and separated from a lot of money by people who had their own interests more at heart than his, but he did the one thing that an owner absolutely has to do, at a minimum,  to potentially compete and to hopefully win: he spent a ton of money. History and the fans here won’t treat him kindly in terms of his ownership legacy and titles, but he joins a rich and proud tradition of guys in this town who that can be said about.

Randy won us as many championships as Dick Jacobs did or Dan Gilbert has.

Let’s hope the next owner spends even more money than the Lerner’s did but that he does it with a lot more sense and a lot more success.

Buzz Kill

I went down to Progressive Field Thursday night after three days working in Charlotte and after getting off a plane an hour before. And when the long, long day of travel and a ballgame was over I was thrilled that I kept the plans made with my oldest daughter and watched the Tribe stunningly come back against Justin Verlander and beat the Tigers in one of the best games of the season.

Hell, it may have been the best game I’ve sat there and watched in the last ten years. It was shocking, it was thrilling, it was exhilarating and it was a moment that many of us who watched believed that the Indians 2012 season had turned around.

It was that big.

And then Friday and Saturday happened.

Against the freaking Twins.

Did I mention Sunday? No? Maybe I tried to drink it away.

So much for seminal moments and springboards to greatness. The Indians had their asses handed to them 11-0 Friday and 12-5 Saturday against a team that might not win the International League title. Then that team just went out Sunday and swep the Tribe out of the weekend.  In the span of 24 hours the Indians lost all the momentum and positivity in the clubhouse and in the fan base that Thursday had bought them. 48 hours later and people were simply back to being disgusted. Less than 72 hours later and people have completely forgotten Thursday happened and are back to apathetic, which is actually worse than disgusted.

That’s the nature of this team though. That’s the way we’ve all agreed they’re going to be this season. There aren’t likely to be any seminal moments that flip the switch and see the Indians come to life with a 10-game winning streak or by winning 26 of their last 40 games.

They’re probably not capable of it offensively and not consistent enough with their pitching, even with a few breaks, to put that kind of run together.

Now what? Now we wait until Tuesday afternoon and see if the Indians sell Shin-Soo Choo at the same point in his free agency clock that they sold Victor Martinez. Now we wait and see if Chris Perez draws enough interest and can bring enough of a haul to warrant dealing him too. Now we see if any other vets have any value whatsoever and can be unloaded like Austin Kearns was for Zach McAllister two seasons ago. The course should be clearer two days from now. It'll probably be all too familiar as well.

What this does all prove is that the age of reason is NOT 45 years and 8 months. That’s how old I am and I still don’t know well enough to see through an emotional win like last Thursday for what it is rather than for what I hoped it to be.

By the way, maybe the best part of the night Thursday was my daughter Danielle (wearing her Bullpen Mafia t-shirt) turning to me and a couple people around us in the top of the 8^th inning and saying, “This inning is huge, because if Vinnie can get the side in order here then (Chris) Perez gets the 9^th inning and never has to face the top of the order or Miggy Cabrera”.

That was a proud moment as I watched guys around me look at her, look at the scoreboard for the Tigers’ lineup, look at her, nod, and then look at me. She may go on to great things in life and give her mother and me plenty of wonderful grandchildren, but more importantly than all of that, I’m raising an actual baseball fan here. One who knows the game and understands the nuances better than many of my friends and most of the people in the park.

That’s it for this week, folks. An abbreviated Wrap is the best I can offer after a week of travel as well as a spur of the moment (albeit 17 hour door-to-door) trip to Cedar point with my three daughters and two of their friends. That’s five teenage girls in a Silverado and in a crowded park all day long. You’ll excuse for being tired to the core and in need of a day throwing lures and bait to some fish on a quiet pier. 

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