TheSportsPredictor
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This week's SI cover story mirrors that of a Sporting News cover story done on 6/24/1996 about the Cleveland Indians influx of Latin-American players helping them to the top of the baseball heap. Here's the beginning of the SN story. Unfortunately I can't find a pic of the cover online, but I remember it as being almost the exact same as the current SI cover:
Los lideres. (Latin players on the Cleveland Indians)(Cover Story)
From: The Sporting News | Date: 6/24/1996 | Author: Winegardner, Mark
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The Cleveland Indians have become one of the elite teams in Major League Baseball thanks to a talented nucleus of Latin-American players. Prior to the Indians' success, there had been an unwritten rule among baseball executives that too many Latin players on one team would impede success.
The Indians had a news conference scheduled for March 23, 1993, and it was supposed to be a happy time. It was supposed to feature Carlos Baerga. It was supposed to be a watershed moment in franchise history, one in which people used words like "family" and "commitment," a moment that would set the tone for the franchise into the next century.
There was a news conference that day. It featured Baerga. It was a watershed moment in franchise history. Words like "family" and "commitment" were used, and the tone was set for the franchise into the next century. But the news conference wasn't about what it was supposed to be about, and it sure as hell wasn't a happy time.
The night before, a speedboat had slammed into a pier on a tiny Florida lake, killing Indians pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews and seriously injuring pitcher Bob Ojeda. It was Carlos Baerga, 24, who was chosen by his teammates to step forward as spokesman, in his second language, his eyes puffy, his then-unconvincing mustache twitching as he tried to control his sorrow to face the world.
The Indians, less than two years removed from being baseball's worst team, were also two years away from being its best. It was as dark a moment as anyone could have feared before as brilliant a dawn as anyone might have dared dream.
And the man at the microphone was an accountant's son from Levittown, Puerto Rico, a middle-class San Juan neighborhood of hastily built but sturdy homes, a neighborhood salted with playgrounds and ballparks. It was like growing up in America in the 1950s, with Dad at work, Mom at home and dawn-to-dusk pickup games on every diamond. That Baerga, a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, grown-up all-American boy, was the man chosen to be his team's lider - its leader - at its darkest hour was a defining moment in the embryonic dynasty that is the Indians.
Was that when it happened? Was that when the Indians were destined to become one of the few Latin-led clubs in major league history to put to rest ugly whispers that teams with too many Latin players can't draw fans, can't play as a team, can't win?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-18417492.html
Los lideres. (Latin players on the Cleveland Indians)(Cover Story)
From: The Sporting News | Date: 6/24/1996 | Author: Winegardner, Mark
Print Digg del.icio.us
The Cleveland Indians have become one of the elite teams in Major League Baseball thanks to a talented nucleus of Latin-American players. Prior to the Indians' success, there had been an unwritten rule among baseball executives that too many Latin players on one team would impede success.
The Indians had a news conference scheduled for March 23, 1993, and it was supposed to be a happy time. It was supposed to feature Carlos Baerga. It was supposed to be a watershed moment in franchise history, one in which people used words like "family" and "commitment," a moment that would set the tone for the franchise into the next century.
There was a news conference that day. It featured Baerga. It was a watershed moment in franchise history. Words like "family" and "commitment" were used, and the tone was set for the franchise into the next century. But the news conference wasn't about what it was supposed to be about, and it sure as hell wasn't a happy time.
The night before, a speedboat had slammed into a pier on a tiny Florida lake, killing Indians pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews and seriously injuring pitcher Bob Ojeda. It was Carlos Baerga, 24, who was chosen by his teammates to step forward as spokesman, in his second language, his eyes puffy, his then-unconvincing mustache twitching as he tried to control his sorrow to face the world.
The Indians, less than two years removed from being baseball's worst team, were also two years away from being its best. It was as dark a moment as anyone could have feared before as brilliant a dawn as anyone might have dared dream.
And the man at the microphone was an accountant's son from Levittown, Puerto Rico, a middle-class San Juan neighborhood of hastily built but sturdy homes, a neighborhood salted with playgrounds and ballparks. It was like growing up in America in the 1950s, with Dad at work, Mom at home and dawn-to-dusk pickup games on every diamond. That Baerga, a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, grown-up all-American boy, was the man chosen to be his team's lider - its leader - at its darkest hour was a defining moment in the embryonic dynasty that is the Indians.
Was that when it happened? Was that when the Indians were destined to become one of the few Latin-led clubs in major league history to put to rest ugly whispers that teams with too many Latin players can't draw fans, can't play as a team, can't win?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-18417492.html
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