Customer Reviews

The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Cleveland Indians are as much a hard luck team as the storied Boston Red Sox or the Chicago Cubs; they just don't get as much media attention. They were one of the best teams in the American League during the latter 1940s and 1950s, winning a World Series in 1948 and a pennant in 1954, but the last pennant race that they really participated in was in 1959. That is, until the 1990s when the team took several division titles and two pennants, 1995 and 1997, but lost in the World Series.

Author Terry Pluto contends that the demise of the Indians on the field can be traced to the April 1960 trade of slugger Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn. It wasn't a particularly good trade; Colavito was a ball-crushing slugger and a fan favorite but Kuenn was a batting champion who specialized in flares to the gap. For more than thirty years thereafter the Indians were pretty awful. The team did poorly on the field, which prompted fans to stay away from the games, which put the team into the red, which prompted the team's ownership to sell or trade its best players and to forego investment in its farm system, which led to even poorer performance on the field, and the continuation of a downward spiral.

There are an enormous number of bumbling incidents in the history of this baseball team, all detailed in excruciating detail by Pluto. Take the example of Rick Manning's contract. Before the beginning of the 1978 season the team sent him a contract offer 25 percent less than he was paid in 1977, despite the restriction in the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement against cutting a player's salary more than 20 percent. It was a mistake, pure and simple, but emblematic of the team's slipshod management. Rather than allow him to become a free agent, the Indians resigned Manning to a five year, $2.5 million contract instead of $75,000 for a one year contract. It was stupid. So was letting Jim Bibby get away in 1978 by failing to pay him a $10,000 merit bonus he had earned during the 1977 season for making 30 starts. This incident became legendary and some of the players even wrote a little ditty about it:
"Pack up all my gear and dough
Here I go
Ho, ho, ho
Bye, bye, Bibby.
No one here understands me,
Look at the late check they tried to hand me...
Bye, bye, Bibby" (p. 196).

Then there was the June 1974 ten-cent beer night in which drunken fans rioted, went after members of both teams playing that night, and forced a forfeit. That was a disaster, but at least no one was seriously injured. What a screwy attempt at a promotion! What did the team's leadership think would happen? It ranks as one of the all time worst episodes in the history of Major League Baseball. Then there was the team's one foray into the free agent market. The Indians signed Wayne Garland to a ten year, $2.3 million contract in 1977 and Garland injured his arm in his first spring raining game. He never recovered. Then there were ridiculous trades: notably a 1965 trade to reacquire Rocky Colavito, but they had to give up both Tommie Agee (who went on to star with the New York Mets during their championship season in 1969) and Tommy John (who won 286 games after departing Cleveland).

The real curse of the Indians has nothing to do with Rocky Colavito. It has everything to do with incompetent management. Terry Pluto indicts Gabe Paul for most of the mismanagement. He served as general manager and/or owner of the Indians for more than 20 of the 30+ years that the Indians were horrendous. His supporting casts of buffoons includes general managers Frank Lane-known to all by his nickname of Trader because he loved to make deals to move players and almost all of them were Indian losses-and Phil Seghi. Perhaps the epitome of ineptitude was when the dignitary scheduled to throw out the first pitch at an Indians game couldn't make it and was replaced by Bozo the clown. The irony is striking.

Terry Pluto ends his book with a review of movement of the Indians from doormats to dominators of the American League. That really began when Dave and Dick Jacobs bought the team and infused it both with new leadership, who knew what they were doing, and the cash necessary to succeed.

"The Curse of Rocky Colavito" is an interesting and informative book. It does not seek any universal truths, but it does entertain and offer some insight. For Indians fans it will be painful, but perhaps cathartic.

Failure on the baseball field may not be enjoyable for a team's fans. But it can often produce some funny, poignant literature. Terry Pluto's "The Curse of Rocky Colavito" is a great example of the genre. Pluto is well-qualified to offer this tale of the Tribe from the mid-50s to the mid-90s. He grew up as a fan, then covered the team as a professional sportswriter. (Cliff Johnson once told him, "I've been ripped by better writers than you.") Anyone who watched as Herb Score was injured, Rocky Colavito was traded, and the team settle into a long era of mediocrity, will no doubt find a special resonance in these pages. Who can forget the immortal Jack Kralick, Joe Azcue or Chico Salmon? Or in more recent times, Super Joe Charboneau? Pluto has a wonderful gift for finding the humor or pathos in the story of the Tribe in this era. It's a worthwhile read for anyone who enjoys good baseball yarns.--William C. Hall

Cleveland Indians fans of today don't know how good they have it (or maybe they do, and that's why they're such big fans!) Regardless of how long you've been an Indian fan (25 years, myself) you'll love this book. It was the first time I'd ever heard of many of the stories in the book -- the section on Rick Manning and Dennis Eckersley was particularly eye-opening.

Terry Pluto, one of the best sports columnists in the nation, is the writer of this hilarious look at the years of Indian mediocrity. He has sections on Herb Score, the old Stadium and how as a beat writer during the 1980s he dreaded coming to work everyday.

If you're an Indians fan you must have this book, if you're a baseball fan, I still recommend it highly.

Terry sums up perfectly what it's like to be a sports fan in Northeast Ohio since 1955. The talent we've had is incredible, the results even more incredible in that not much good has ever come of it. It will bring back tons of bittersweet memories.

This book brought back some fond and also bittersweet memories. It is a "must read" for anyone who suffered along with the author and anyone else who dared to root for this group of hapless,yet lovable "has beens" and "never weres".I thouroughly loved every page!

I became a Terry Pluto fan after reading his books about the ABA and the early NBA. Thus, I ordered this book sight-unseen and not even being a fan of the Cleveland Indians. I just assumed Pluto would make this book fun to read. Thankfully, I was right - what a wonderful baseball book and humorous-yet-touching account of the ups-and-downs (mostly downs) of the Cleveland Indians during the bad decades of the 1960s to about 1994.

As I write this, though, I can't get over the irony. I just finished the book and then I read about Herb Score dying. While this book talks about numerous people, Herb Score gets a decent amount of "ink" and comes across as the nicest person ever to be associated - at least in this time period - with the Indians. Pluto is brutal with a number of people in this book but can't find one bad word to say about Score. Who could?

The author is not so nice when it comes to General Manager Frank "Trader" Lane, or owner Gabe Paul, or several ballplayers, several managers. general managers and team announcers. That's part of what makes this book so readable; Pluto's frankness. He describes exactly how and why Lane is such a despised figure in Cleveland Indians history and why some of these other guys were bad news to Indian fans.

Pluto's accounts of another nice guy, Rocky Colavito (the day Lane traded him officially ruined Cleveland, he asserts, hence the humorous title of the book) are very good, too, but most memorable are the short stories about guys like Tony Horton, "Mudcat" Grant, Sam McDowell, Frank Robinson, Andre Thornton, Joe Charbonneau, Dennis Eckersley and Rick Manning and Pete Frankin to name a few.

One doesn't have to be a diehard Cleveland Indians fan to really be entertained by this book. I loved it, and was sorry when I came to the last page. I've discovered what folks in Ohio already know: Terry Pluto is a great sportswriter.

I agree 100% with everything Roger Launius said - curses are not curses, unless you have inept managers and even more inept front offices - the Indians had players just as good as anyone else, and their pitching in the late Sixties was among the best in the game - what killed the Indians' chances were inept front office people like Frank Lane and Gabe Paul, people who were far more interested in promoting themselves and bettering themselves than their teams - oh and let's not forget how Hank Greenberg in the Fifties didn't help things either, running off players like Aparicio due to his stinginess - people like Gabe Paul were just happy to have a team to run.

The corresponding "curses" of the Red Sox and the Cubs were/are also due to inept management and inept front offices - people who jockey for position to appear in the news or for control of the team, like what happened with the Red Sox with the LeRoux-Sullivan(?) rift - people who are more concerned with their own egos than the team - maybe the Cubs need to quit promoting venerable Wrigley Field, etc. and get more serious about fielding an actual winning team.

I read this book many years ago - I'm hoping that Pluto wrote this book as an exercise in folly.

Terry Pluto wrote two of my favorite sports books, "Loose Balls" and "Our Tribe", this one makes three. Reading this will be great entertainment for the casual or die-hard Indians fan. Those who don't fit those two classifications will probably enjoy it also.

A wonderful trip down memory lane, as I appear to be a contemporary of Terry Pluto in that I really relate to the Indians troubles from the mid-60's to their resurgence in 1995. As a youngster growing up, my favorite Indian was Sam McDowell and it was exciting and at the same time troubling to read how his personal problems affected his amazing potential. I, like Pluto, became a Tribe fan by listening to my father and went through all the frustration of watching a team that just did not appear to want to win...we were just happy if they were not in last place by July 4th every year! Pluto brought back many memories when he went into discussions like the Ken Harrelson trade, the deal that brought Gaylord Perry to Cleveland, the Dennis Eckersley era where my then favorite player George Hendrick prospered (and this is my only somewhat selfish critique of the book in that Hendrick is barely mentioned), the Wayne Garland fiasco and Len Barker's perfect game. These are all milestones for Tribe fans in an otherwise desulatory period of baseball watching. The purchase of the team by the Jacobs brothers and the day-to-day general management from Hank Peters and John Hart sets the stage for his next book on the Tribe's wonderful 1995 season where they finally put it all together. (Just a side note from a frustrated fan...if the Indians had played the 1995 World Series against the Braves in June of that year, we'd have smoked them!!!). In summary, this is an excellent book for the average baseball fan and a must-read for any Tribe fan who can remember the frustrations of the 60's and 70's. Go Tribe!