Despite a bitter end to ’11, the Tribe has a real chance in 2012

I’ve been accused of being pretty negative lately regarding the Indians. Maybe I have gone a little bit overboard, but can you blame me? Since July 20th when the Tribe last had a piece of the AL Central Crag, the Indians have won about a third of their games. While I knew 30-15 was just too good to be true to hold up the rest of the season, I was hoping the Tribe could play .500 ball from that point on, which would have had them on track for 88-74 or 89-73, which I believed at the time would have been enough to narrowly win the division. A 22-5 run later by the Tigers, and I was proven wrong. Nevertheless, I think it’s easy to forget some of the strides that this young Tribe bunch truly made when they were expected to jockey with the Royals for fourth place rather than with the White Sox for second after spending months in first place. This is an attempt to recall some of those things. I think the first thing to recognize is to see how deeply and repetitively the injury ...