Detroit and Cleveland should hate each other. Maybe this MLB postseason series will help.
CLEVELAND — As the drone flies, Cleveland and Detroit are separated by 90 miles, or 30 miles less than the distance between Detroit and Battle Creek. Ninety minutes in the car, if you’re plotting. Though if you plotted the shortest route from “The D” to the “The 'Land,” you’d get wet.
Maybe it’s the Great Lake (Erie) between these cities that has kept their sports teams — and fans — from proper rivalry over the years. Because let’s be serious, these two sports towns with similar history and vibe, not to mention proximity, ought to despise the other.
Or maybe it’s that one must drive around the lake to get from here to there, or there to here, making the cities feel further apart than they are. Which is odd, considering how simiilarly aligned each place is in temperament, appearance and roots.
Detroit is vaster and more populous, and older — we can thank the French for that in 1701. Yet Cleveland is hardly Las Vegas; Moses Cleaveland (yes, that's correct) founded the city in 1796.
Cleveland built railroads and manufactured steel and iron. Detroit built stoves and eventually built cars, no doubt relying on steel and iron from across the Lake.
Each is home to iconic musicians and a 1970s manufacturing downturn. Each has taken a turn as the nation’s punchline. The cities are brothers, sisters or at least cousins, and if not for the random decision-making of team owners, might be the kind of sports rivals their shared history suggests they should be.
Which brings us to the ALDS that begins Saturday at Progressive Field. For the first time in their shared history, the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians will meet in the postseason.
This is astonishing. More so because the Tigers have played the Guardians more than any other team, and the Guardians have played the Tigers more than any other team.
Some 2,326 meetings in all — that’s a lot of games, by my count.
Could this series — finally — be the start of a beautifully antagonistic relationship?
Who better to answer than Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, who said this when asked Friday:
“For us, this will be the best commute in my playoff history ... it's a 15-20 minute flight over the lake. So that'll be unique. I also think (that you have) two organizations that are (built) from within. Detroit is a city that’s built around grit. We say that all the time because we live it. Cleveland, obviously, a very good city, very proud of their sports teams, including the Guardians, who have been really good at getting to the playoffs and being in the playoffs and not too far removed from the World Series.”
Notice the first thing he mentioned was distance. Or rather, the time of commute. For anyone who has flown from city to city, the shortness of the trip is always surprising.
It shouldn’t be, of course, we know how close the cities are — in theory. But that physical closeness is buried in the subconscious because sports haven’t truly linked our teams in decades.
Things might have been different if the Browns hadn't been placed in the AFC after the NFL-AFL merger in 1970. Before the change, the Lions and the Browns met routinely, and played for the NFL championship four times in the 1950s.
The Lions won three of those games, giving “The 'Land” plenty of reason to hate its neighbor to the (slight) north. Imagine if the teams played each other twice every fall, here and there, as the Lions play the Bears, Packers and Vikings?
Instead, the Browns get two dates with the Steelers, and Pittsburgh, which is 134 miles southeast of Cleveland, though admittedly similar in its blue-collar history, became this city’s modern — and most heated — rival.
There have been other blips of contempt between Detroit and Cleveland’s sports teams. Rick Mahorn, the Bad Boys’ famed enforcer, once elbowed Cavaliers point guard Mark Price and gave him a concussion. The All-Star guard missed two games in March 1989 and wasn’t quite the same when he returned.
The Cavaliers were the class of the Eastern Conference during that regular season but fell behind the Pistons after the incident and lost to the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the playoffs when Michael Jordan hit “The Shot.”
The Cavaliers faded quickly the next few seasons, and the Pistons went on to win two titles. A generation later, LeBron James upset a fading Detroit squad when he scored 25 straight in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals.
The teams met two more times in later years, each a sweep by Cleveland, each when the Cavaliers were clear favorites, and the Pistons were hardly title contenders. In other words, there wasn’t enough at stake.
As rivalries go, the timing undermined everything. The "Goin’ to Work" crew were aging, James was young and emerging, and their paths never crossed at the height of either team’s dominance.
Equal stakes are essential to developing rivalries. If one side dominates the other, where is the fun — and chance to hate — in that?
And that makes the beginning of this series especially tantalizing for the Tigers and the Guardians and what a taut, tight ALDS might offer for a couple of near-twin cities who deserve the chance to loathe each other.
Like Hinch said Friday, this is “two proud cities in a great part of the country, more so in the summer than the winter. I'm glad (for) this natural rivalry of young teams. You're going to see packed stadiums on both sides. It's good for baseball.”
It’s good for Detroit and Cleveland, too. It’s been a long time coming.
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