When Rajai Davis launched that missile that just barely eked its way over the left field wall, when I’d stopped hyperventilating and trying to call everyone in my contacts at once, I thought to myself, “This is it.”
I’d been so full of rage for much of Game 7 of the World Series, with the world so ready for a Cubs coronation the minute Dexter Fowler led off the game with a solo shot. So Davis’s blast that momentarily turned all of Cleveland into a throbbing mosh pit felt like it had to be foreshadowing a victory.
When the Cavaliers took Game 7 from the Warriors in the NBA Finals, there was a period of disbelief. Sometimes I try and place myself back into my body when LeBron executed one of the greatest blocks in NBA history, or when Kyrie Irving hit that dagger three over the unanimous MVP, and I can’t. All I remember is the realization that “Oh my god, we’re really going to win the entire thing” washing over me, and hugging my dad, and being showered in alcohol by the mass of Cleveland losing their damn minds before tears came when the gravity of the situation hit me.
Had the Cavs lost Game 7, the Indians blowing this World Series would have been devastating.
Things felt different that next morning. Not in a tangible way, but for weeks after it happened. Every time I came downtown I’d look at a street and immediately imagine it crammed with people like it was in the hours after the Cavs won, like some sort of championship PTSD. My entire life, the 52-year championship drought had hung over us like fever blanket. And on June 19, in the most epic of fashions, it was gone.
So when Davis tied the game in the eighth inning against Aroldis Chapman who possesses a “lmao you’ll never hit me” fastball, it brought me back. To Draymond Green’s suspension, and Kyrie and LeBron’s 40-point explosion in Game 5, and the Game 6 destruction, and that glorious Game 7. I was thinking about having two championship parades in one year and how I wouldn't believe it if someone told me a summer ago. I was ready to sprint to the nearest bar and pour a beer all over my head in celebration, to bask in this foreign sensation of Cleveland winning something all over again.
It didn’t happen. The Indians couldn’t walk off in the bottom of the ninth, and after a brief rain delay that allowed the Cubs’ Jason Heyward—who couldn’t hit an ostrich egg at this point—to morph into Al Pacino from Any Given Sunday during one of those cliché players only meetings, the murderers row of Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Ben Zobrist finally tuned into the Indians’ executioner everyone thought they would be.
I felt sort of numb when it ended. To go from Davis’s homer to a rain delay to the Cubs winning felt like I’d just gone on the most intense bender of my life. Coming down from it put me in a catatonic state. I wasn’t upset or mad. The Cubs are a juggernaut, winning 103 games in the regular season and the overwhelming favorites to win it all when the postseason began. All I could think about was the 2015 NBA Finals, when the Cavs pushed the Warriors to the brink without Irving or Kevin Love. The Indians got up 3-1 without Michael Brantley, their best player, or two of their best starting pitchers. The internet will get their “3-1 lead” jokes off, and that’s fine, but the Indians aren’t going anywhere (though hopefully Chief Wahoo is).
Had the Cavs lost Game 7, the Indians blowing this World Series would have been devastating. I’m not sure I would’ve left my house for weeks, instead I’d make a pillow fort and shovel Ben and Jerry’s into my mouth until I emerged a sun-starved monster. It would have ripped Cleveland fans apart.
But that’s the beauty of what the Cavs did. None of that matters anymore. There’s no stench of desperation around the city once the playoffs start. That one ring will have me in “whatever” mode for at least the next decade. So yeah, last night was tough. But it’s 2016, and Cleveland is still world champions.
