Manny Drives Cleveland Sport Writers to Despair

Cleveland sports writers must have had a late night. I'm sure more than one of them had their articles just about ready for the presses before Joe Borowski came to the mound and Manny Ramirez came up to bat.

They must have been readying headlines like, "Tribe Win Erases Pain of ALCS" or "This Year It's Our Turn."

After hearing boos all night from the Cleveland crowd, Manny had the last word with a towering shot. Then Cleveland Sports writers hit the delete button on their cheery articles and settled in to a late night slog of reporting doom and gloom.

The bitterness and despair are apparent in Cleveland Plain Dealer Bill Livingston's column, which he titled, "Ramirez continues the Cleveland Indian's Nightmare." I don't think that is the column that he was planning to write in the 8th. He ends it this way:

"The Indians, now into their Diamond Jubilee celebration of the 1948 World Series victory, have never had the national following of the Red Sox. Diamonds are forever. So is futility here.
The only time the Atlanta Braves won the World Series, it was against the Indians.

The first time a team went into the bottom of the ninth inning in the seventh game of the World Series and lost, it was the Indians.

The Indians went 41 years in the wilderness without sniffing the playoffs. Hah! We scoff at Moses!

After games like Monday, the Promised Land looks further away than the ball Ramirez hit off Joe Boo."

All is well that ends well. Go Sox!