Here is the email I sent to Scott prior to our podcast this week.
Indians year in review. The team was maddening. They finished great. They actually made the playoffs. They got shut out in the playoffs.
Do you need a short-hand "good" or "bad" rating for the season? I'm curious if your son had a take on whether it was a good or bad season and how that conversation went. I still just talk "at" my three year old about sports so I told him that they made the playoffs and that it was a good year. Maybe next year they can have an even better one. I imagine the 14-year-old sports fan opinion is a bit more nuanced.
Speaking of nuance, the Browns won to make it three wins in a row, but the biggest reason (other than the defense) for making it three in a row tears his ACL. I worked really hard to enjoy the win, but in the end, the feeling of gloom rose to the top. I never imagined it would happen when he was named starter, but I looked forward to watching Brian Hoyer play.
I did a podcast with Sam Allard and Brian Windhorst last week and we talked about how the Mike Brown story should probably be much bigger in Cleveland. Because Brown was here once and people mark his exit as the same time frame as "The Decision," Mike Brown has largely been labeled a failure. Windhorst told me that he doesn't necessarily think that's fair and that Mike Brown's resume should have made his hiring in Cleveland a bigger deal.
At the time, I thought Mike Brown should have been fired after the Orlando series, if I'm being perfectly honest. Maybe I was crazy, but it seemed to me that even though he won coach of the year that year he had coached badly against Orlando and even in the sweep of the Hawks before it.
Maybe I'm too fickle though. I said the same thing about Eric Wedge when he won Manager of the Year in 2007. Later on in 2010 I said that those two coaching awards were some of the worst things that happened to the respective franchises because it made those two coaches untouchable. Am I nuts to have put Eric Wedge and Mike Brown in the same category?
Lastly, I truly am excited to have Mike Brown back. That being the case, it occurs to me this is the most excited I've been about all the coaches of the respective Cleveland sports teams in a long time and maybe ever. It's hard to think we'll look back and regret Terry Francona. I think there's a good chance that Chud and his staff are the real deal. Am I jumping the gun? If so, how much?
