What, exactly, happened to the Tribe?

[RPrepublic]

Originally Posted by Rich4eagle

What happened was that Dick Jacobs bought the team and hired a brilliant GM. His name was John Hart. He built the Indians into a powerhouse in the 90's. Jacobs Field sold out for like seven years. The Tribe was always in the playoffs and in two World Series one of which a better team beat them the Braves and one of which an inferior team beat them the Marlins. Mike Hargrove the manager lost that world series.

In comes Dolan of NY and Cablevision who buys the team from Jacobs. He tells Hart the rules are to cut the 100 million Salary to way less. Hart understands when this small market team a powerhouse starts cutting and selling the star players it will not be long before they are a small market team that has no firepower.

Hart decides to retire. Mark Shapiro gets the got the slash and burn the Thome's, Ramirez's, and Vizquels. BOOM, season ticket sales plummet by 25,000. Now, bleeding, Shapiro slashes and burns Martinez, Lee, Sabathia and others.

And here we sinking fast to nowhere. And that is what happened to the Indians. A cheap idiot bought the team and Shapiro sucks up and we are where are! Not to mention they fired Charley Manuel to go dufus as manager.

Bottom Line the Indians sold out and coming back will be massively challenging!

Yeah ive always felt that Baseball is one of those if you build it they will come kinda things. If the dolans just spent the money to retain good players and build a good team than they would be like the Cavs selling out every night. In this day and age there really is no "small market" the market place is literally worldwide and all you have to do is provide a valuable product. I would love to watch baseball more but honestly i can only watch one semi crappy team and put my heart and soul in it and thats the Browns. It really sucks having my in laws be from Maine and i go over there after church and its Red Sox Celtics and Patriots. I just want one good team and now the cavs are going down the shitter!!