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My hometown of Cleveland, OH is finally a winner … a recent Forbes article named it the number one most miserable city, edging out last year’s reining champion, Stockton, CA.

Hoping to continue Cleveland’s championship year in 2010, the Cavaliers traded local favorite Zydrunas Ilgauskas (who’s spent his entire 12-year career with the Cavs) to Washington for Antawn Jamison. Let’s hope it was the right decision and the Cavs can finally bring home an NBA title this year! We’ll miss you Big Z!

On another Cleveland-related note, only one month left until my brother and I head back to Arizona for our annual Indians Spring Training trip!

It’s early October, that wonderful time of year when temperatures (supposedly) get cooler and we have that wonderful confluence of the baseball, football, basketball, and hockey seasons. Well, it’s usually wonderful, except:

• even with the franchise’s second best season, the Rays missed out on the post-season
• the Indians’ season (and the Eric Wedge era) is mercifully over
• the Browns are 0-4
• the Buccaneers are also 0-4

I got a pair of free tickets to the Lightning home opener tonight so I took my daughter, hoping to get a lift from a hockey home ice win. The appearance Dwight Howard dropping the ceremonial puck was a not-so-nice reminder of how the Orlando Magic knocked the Cavs out of the playoffs last spring.

We left at 6 minutes to go in the third period with the Bolts holding the lead over the New Jersey Devils 3-2 (thanks to 2 goals in the first 5 minutes of the period). As we listened to the last minute of the game on the radio driving out of downtown Tampa, we couldn’t believe our ears as the Devils tied the game with 0.3 seconds to go! The Lightning ended up losing the shootout, which gives them a disappointing 0-1-2 start. *sigh*

Maybe Lebron and Shaq will give me something to believe in …

P.S. Props to my new sister-in-law for pointing me to waitingfornextyear.com!

So last week was a hard week to be an Indians fan.

First, on Monday, they traded Ryan Garko to the Giants. Then it was Ben Francisco and Cy Young winner Cliff Lee being sent to Philadelphia.

Cleveland is the first team to trade incumbent Cy Youngs in consecutive seasons, according to STATS LLC.

How’s that for a stat? Then, the icing on the cake, the final nail in the coffin, on Saturday they gave up Victor Martinez to, of all teams, the Red Sox (does anyone remember Manny Ramirez, or Coco Crisp?)! All of these trades were for “prospects.” Ugh! Maybe these new names are the future stars, but you need a few seasoned, tested players on the team too!

How much longer is this team going to be in a “rebuilding” mode? They effectively just started over. This quote summed it up the best for me:

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Indians’ 2009 season is pretty much a total loss. It’s the automobile lying on its side in the intersection, glass and broken metal scattered everywhere following the accident, the car, totaled, waiting to be loaded onto a flatbed truck to transport it to the junkyard where it will be stripped for parts.

That’s really too bad … it’s hard to believe I was in Goodyear just four short months ago watching a team that seemed to have a lot of promise for a good season. *sigh* I guess that’s the beauty and magic of spring training.

Well, at least football training camp has started … maybe I can get a little excited about the Browns or the Bucs? Hrm …

It was Beach Week at Progessive Field, which turned out to be a little ironic since the temperature at game time Saturday night was in the low 60s and the wind blowing in from Lake Erie was downright chilly. Thank goodness the rain held off!

Despite that, and the Indians’ 3-1 loss to the Mariners, I still had a good time out last night with my brother and the rest of the groomsmen from the bridal party. We even got his name on the scoreboard in the fourth inning wishing him congratulations.

Hard to believe my little brother’s wedding is only two months away (I’m sure it’s hard for him to believe too!).

I’m waiting in the Tampa airport for my flight to Cleveland this weekend for my little brother’s wedding shower and bachelor party.

We’re going to see the Indians and Mariners baseball game tomorrow night. I can’t remember the last time I went to a game at Jacob’s, er, Progressive Field. I don’t think I’ve been back there since we moved to Florida, so it must be at least 8 years. Wow.

I’m really looking forward to it (and seeing my brother, of course). Should be a fun weekend.

Side note: ya gotta love wikipedia. I’m surprise this hasn’t been changed yet:

… it was changed to Progressive Field prior to opening day 2008 so that Indians owner Larry Dolan can get more money to put in his pocket and not spend on resigning players or signing free agents.

Holy cow … the Cleveland Cavaliers have acquired Shaquille O’Neal from the Phoenix Suns for Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic! Could that be the final part of the equation that will resolve into an NBA championship for the Cavs next year? I hope so!

Arrrrgh!

With the Cleveland Cavaliers kicking off the next round of the NBA playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks tonight, I got an e-mail from my sister with a link to this article on MSNBC.

Bob Madden sighs. He wants to believe. Oh, does he want to believe — to believe deep inside his body where feelings like these have only caused him four decades of heartbreak.

Madden, a longtime Cleveland sports fan, frets about whether he should expose himself to more of it.

“You wanna be optimistic, but you’re afraid to go there,” he says. “It’s hard to explain.”

Not for people who have Cleveland roots. For they share Madden’s sentiments. They worry about investing too much emotional capital in LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Yeah, fans hear the hype; it surrounds them. This time, a Cleveland team won’t break their hearts. This time, a Cleveland team will bring home a championship. This time …

The Browns, the Indians, the Cavaliers … I’ve been waiting for over 30 years to see one of my hometown teams win a championship.

Since I moved to the Tampa Bay area in 2001 I’ve seen the Bucs win the Super Bowl, the Lightning win the Stanley Cup, and the Storm win the Arena Bowl. Even the Rays got oh-so-close to winning the World Series last year which would have completed the sweep. But none of those victories were as thrilling as it will be to see one of my Cleveland teams finally bring a trophy home.

Despite LeBron’s anti-Cleveland attitude that really annoys me, he’s still our best hope for bringing this thing home. After that, he can go do whatever he wants …

GO CAVS!!

We wanted to get to the park early today so we got up and went over to Native New Yorker hoping for a good breakfast. Unfortunately, unlike the actual city that never sleeps, the restaurant  didn’t open until lunchtime. So we headed north to Surprise (yes, that’s a city) to check out the Texas Rangers/Kansas City Royals training facility, hoping to find a local breakfast place along the way.

So we kept driving saying “we’ll grab something at the next place” and soon we were back in Goodyear and hungry. Based on our good experience yesterday, we went back to the Paradise Bakery before driving to the ballpark.

I have a pattern of not being on time for baseball games so this was the first time that not only was I on time, I was there before the park opened! We arrived at the Goodyear Ballpark just after 10am and went into the Team Shop to pick up some souvenier t-shirts. This way we were able to put our purchases back in the car as we had a nice close parking spot. The gates opened at 11 and we hung out watching them ready the field for the game. My brother also got some of the Indians players to sign a baseball. Bob Feller was also in attendance.

The game was shaping up to be a good one, with the Indians ahead 3-1 going into the 8th inning, but then everything broke down and the Dodgers scored 5 runs in the 8th and 9th innings, winning the game 4-6. This was the first sellout at the Goodyear Ballpark, with 10,749 attending! It was the longest game we had been to while we’ve been out here as well, at 3 hours and 15 minutes.

On the way back to the hotel we swung past Camelback Ranch, the new home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox that is also celebrating its inaugural season. A lot of these new parks in the Cactus League are shared by two teams, something you don’t really see in the Grapefruit League stadiums back home.

We drove back to the hotel to clean up and relax a bit before heading out to dinner. It being our last night in Arizona, and wanting to celebrate our first trip to the Cactus League, we went to Rustler’s Rooste in the hills of Tempe, a local cowboy steakhouse complete with a live bull, live country western music, and really good food (“beef and brew with a view”).

We had to wait just over an hour (even with call-ahead seating!) but it was worth it. The steaks were fantastic and the atmosphere was as western as you could get. No, we did not try the rattlesnake.

We got home late and need to get up in about 5 hours to get to the airport for our flights home. It went by fast, but it was a blast …

This morning we had breakfast at the Paradise Bakery and Cafe and then drove over to Camelback Mountain. We hiked up the Cholla Trail and saw some spectacular views of Scottsdale and the surrounding areas.

We didn’t make it all the way to the summit, but stopped at trail marker #17 before heading back down (we weren’t really prepared for hiking: no water, I was wearing sandals, etc.).

From Camelback we drove directly to Goodyear and the brand new Goodyear Ballpark, the new Cactus League home of the Cleveland Indians (soon to be joined next year by the Cincinnati Reds). The new stadium is very nice (compared to the slowly deteriorating old Chain of Lakes Park back in Winterhaven) and the nearby training facilities look impressive.

It was a close game, but the Tribe beat the Oakland A’s 7-6 (and during the game, the Dayton Flyers beat the West Virginia Mountaineers 68-60 in the first round of the NCAA tournament! They move on to play Kansas on Sunday. Go Flyers!).

After a brief respite back at the hotel, we drove up AZ-101 again and took some photos in the Peoria Sports Complex, spring home of the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres.

Needing something healthy to eat, we had dinner at Souper Salad near the Arrowhead Towne Center and then it was back to hotel. We retired for the evening after a dip in the pool (brr!) and the spa (ahh!).