A city of fumbled chances

CLEVELAND. — This is a sports town that lives with the thought of whys, what-ifs and what-might-have-beens.

What if Browns running back Ernest Byner hadn’t fumbled with a minute left in the 1988 AFC title game against the Denver Broncos? What if he had scored the game-tying touchdown and the Browns went on to win the championship game and go to the Super Bowl?

What might have been if Michael Jordan hadn’t hit that last-second shot over Craig Ehlo to beat the Cavaliers in the first round of the 1989 NBA playoffs?

What if Broncos quarterback John Elway hadn’t driven his team down the field 98 yards with little more than five minutes left in the 1987 AFC Championship, tying the game with a touchdown pass to Mark Jackson with 37 seconds left, sending the game into overtime, which Denver won 23-20?

Now, with the Indians’ return to the postseason, this question resurfaces: Why didn’t those great Cleveland Indians teams of the 1990s have at least one World Series title to show for all that talent? (Though, after last night’s 7-1 loss to the Red Sox in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series cut the Indians’ lead to 3-2, fans might be wondering, What might not be?)

From 1994, when the American League Central was created, to 2001, the Indians won six division titles. They were one game out of first during the 1994 strike-shortened season and finished second in 2000. In a particular four-year period — from 1994 through 1997 — they won two AL pennants and might have been the most talented team in the game.

They certainly had one of the most talented lineups for much of that time; an All-Star at seemingly every position — Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga, Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Sandy Alomar, Omar Vizquel, and a supporting cast of characters who were in and out of the picture that included Eddie Murray, David Justice, Matt Williams and Roberto Alomar.

During the 1995 season, which started late because of a strike, the Indians won 100 games and lost just 44. They scored 840 runs — 29 more runs than this current Indians squad scored in 18 more games. They led the league in nearly every offensive category in 1994 and 1995 and were among the top three in nearly all of them — runs, hits, home runs, batting average — over that four-year span from 1994 through 1997.

“You look at those lineups and you think, my goodness, they were so impressive,” former Toronto manager and baseball analyst Buck Martinez said. “Baerga, Manny, Vizquel. [First baseman] Paul Sorrento was a good hitter. Sandy Alomar. It was a very good team.”

While Cleveland’s pitching was not as overpowering, it was effective, with a young Charles Nagy, veterans like Dennis Martinez and Orel Hershiser, and a solid bullpen of Paul Assenmacher, Eric Plunk and closer Jose Mesa. Those Indians teams won 351 games from 1994 to 1997, the most in the AL. That led to two World Series trips, in 1995 against the Atlanta Braves and in 1997 against the Florida Marlins. Cleveland lost both times, in six games to a stalwart Braves pitching staff and in seven games to an upstart Marlins team, on a ground ball by Edgar Renteria up the middle in the 11th inning.

“It puts it in perspective as to how difficult it is to win a world championship,” Buck Martinez said. “Look at the 1954 team here, it won 111 games, and got swept in four games by the Giants. You wonder how they could lose like that with the pitching they had, with Early Wynn and Mike Garcia and Bob Lemon. It shows you how much has to fall your way.”

The Indians did not return to the Series again, winning the division in 1998 and 1999 and one more time in 2001, before breaking up the high-payroll team and rebuilding it with young prospects like Victor Martinez and Grady Sizemore that are now the team’s core.

That those powerful Indians teams did not come away with at least one World Series championship remains one of the what-might-have-been questions that haunts Cleveland sports fans.

“People here to this day say we should have beat the Marlins, we should have done more,” said former Indians outfielder Rick Manning, now a television analyst for Cleveland games. “Those teams were outstanding. They pretty much had an All-Star team. But they just didn’t have that number one starter that you need in a series.”

Manning sees a parallel with this current Indians team — not necessarily as powerful but molded in the same way, developed at the minor league level.

“Those Indians teams from that era grew up together, a lot like this team here,” said Manning, who played on just two winning Indians teams from 1975 to 1983. “You could see it three years ago when these kids came up together and started playing together, and it’s been falling into place. It’s been fun to watch. I have watched it through a few decades.”

It has been painful, too, for those fans who can’t forget about The Drive, The Shot, The Fumble … and Edgar Renteria.

Then again, the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing. And for a franchise that was once such a model for failure it was fodder for the baseball film, “Major League,” missed opportunities are better than no opportunities.