THE 1954 CLEVELAND INDIANS

Our most recent contribution to this blog dealt with one Whitey Prokop, who failed to come through on promises made by the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper sportwriters that he’d soon be setting the world on fire as a Notre Dame gridiron ace. That particular journalistic shemozzle occurred in the early 1940s. Then, roughly a decade later, the local press gentry pulled off a similarly overzealous blunder.

There’s no question but that the 1954 Cleveland Indians were a fine ball club. Although the hitting power wasn’t overly sensational, the team had been blessed with one of the most potent pitching staffs in history. The hurling corps of Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Mike Garcia, and Herb Score as starters, along with two bullpen stalwarts in Don Mossi and Ray Narleske, proved way too much for all the American League rivals, including the mighty New York Yankees.

It was those very Bronx Bombers who’d held the regular season record of 110 victories ever since 1927. While the Indians were in the process of clinching the 1954 pennant, and getting progressively closer to that figure, the Cleveland sports pundits began tossing “greatest baseball team of all time” accolades their way. When the dust finally cleared, the ending total of 111 wins confirmed such point in their vacant home city minds. They proudly shouted by way of printed copy that the Indians had surpassed every other club in diamond annals, basing their case strictly on a less-than-truly-meaningful statistic.

For any readers who may not readily recall the 1954 World Series, the underdog New York Giants gave the Tribe a dowsing, then a thumping, followed by a clobbering, and lastly a whupping, to wind up the October classic four-zip in the National League’s favor.

Due to some unexplainable reason, the local papers suddenly forgot to affix that all-time greatest label any longer, while seeming most reluctant even to admit having used it in the first place. Once again, they’d gone overboard, as do so many journalists worldwide virtually every day of the week.