Ok, Cleveland, You Win, You’ve Been More Pitiful

Baseball fans here thought it was cute, endearing even, all that sound and fury that has been blasting out of the Kingdome lately. How sweet, those standing, feverish ovations on two-strike counts. And those little “Refuse To Lose” flashcards. Very touching.

Indian fans even offered fatherly smiles when they learned that a Seattle newspaper devoted two full pages of “Talkin’ Baseball” that gave detailed explanations of the strike zone, the batter’s box and a no-hitter.

But all that heated Mariner hoopla was fine and dandy only when the M’s were using their big broom last weekend on this steel town’s arch enemy, the New York Yankees.

Now the cuteness of Seattle fans has worn off in Cleveland. Thursday, in the papers, on the sports talk shows, everywhere you went, the Indian faithful - and there are plenty of them here on the banks of Lake Erie - had nothing but scorn for Seattle fans.

“Do you guys have to scream your lungs out on every damn pitch? It’s sick, all that squealing going on,” said Gary Truman, sipping a lunch-hour beer at Fagan’s, a popular pub pressed alongside the Cuyahoga River.

“All this talk about not having a contender in 19 years. Cry me a river, buddy, we haven’t been to the Big Dance in 41 years,” said Bruce Chapman, a marketing executive at the city’s new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Indian fans called WKNR, the city’s top sports radio station, with top-10 lists of reasons to hate Mariner fans. A couple of callers cited Randy Johnson’s long hair as their reason to eschew Seattle.Dirck devoted his entire column Thursday to a little light-hearted Seattle-bashing. At least, he claimed he was kidding.

“What really frosts me is that the vast majority of those front-runners have been Mariner fans for maybe a week and a half,” wrote Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Joe Dirck wrote. “Of course, Seattle hardly has the sports tradition Cleveland has. We can trace our roots to people like Jesse Owens, Bob Feller, Otto Graham, Jim Brown.

“Who do they have to brag about in the Pacific Northwest? Tonya Harding?”

Rude welcome

Several Mariner fans who arrived late Thursday said they were somewhat taken aback by the grouchy Indian fans they confronted after landing at Hopkins International Airport.

“I had one guy tell me at the airport that we don’t know (expletive) about baseball and that we didn’t draw flies to the Dome until we got hot. He was like really mad,” said Lisa King, who was checking into a downtown hotel.

“I think I’m going to have to take this shirt off,” said King’s friend, Laura Jamieson, referring to her M’s division-champion T-shirt.

M’s like Jake

The Mariners aren’t intimidated by Jacobs Field. In fact, they love the Indians’ new stadium.

“That’s just a great place to play,” right fielder Jay Buhner said.

“It’s awesome going in there,” Buhner said. “The place is always packed and the fans are really into it. It’s a fun setting, and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.”

A standing-room only throng awaits throughout the weekend, but the Mariners are accustomed to that sort of thing after playing their last five postseason games in front of frenzied crowds at the Kingdome.

“With the noise level, I don’t know if either team has a true home-field advantage,” said Buhner, who hit five home runs against the Indians in the regular season and one Wednesday off Jose Mesa in Game 2. “We’re both used to the situation.”

The Indians didn’t have to worry about excess noise at Cleveland Stadium, the mere mention of which causes Buhner to shudder two years after the Indians’ move across town.

“I’m just happy we’re not playing in that place,” he said of the Stadium. “That was terrible, man, just terrible. It was always drizzling, and there was a nice aroma to the stadium. There were about 10,000 people in the stands, and it looked like about 1,000 in that place.

“Then there was that guy with the tom-tom. He could have been on the other side of Lake Erie and you could have heard that drum going.”