Commentary: Jose Ramirez deserves way better than this from Guardians

The baseball team that doesn't try its hardest to win the World Series failed again this season to do so. No surprise there. Cleveland's baseball team is in the trying business, not the doing business. For the last 77 years, the Cleveland Indians/Guardians have failed to win the World Series. Worse yet: They have only played in six of them. That Cleveland's baseball team has gone that long World Series Champion-less borders on the ridiculous. The last time the Indians/Guardians won the World Series, Harry Truman was president. Truman was born in 1884. Jose Ramirez is 33. The 2025 Major League Baseball season could have been a rousing success for the Guardians. Instead, it was a rousing whatever. Oh, sure, there was that late season bit of Camelot, when The Men of Vogt ran down the streaking Tigers in making some noise that suggested that good times and great moments were on the way. But what seemed to be set up perfectly for a World Series-thirsty franchise turned into the same old, "Wait until next year" gruel that Guards fans have endured ad nauseum through the years. Somehow, some way, it always turns out the wrong way — even in years when the baseball gods seemed willing to at least come to the bargaining table for a little give and take with the little franchise that could but never quite does. If it is not an injury to a key player, it's an injury to a couple of other players that nobody expected. In Cleveland, in the middle of yet another potential stroke of good luck, the Bad Luck Demon shows up instead, and it's back to the drawing board for a fanbase steeling itself to have its abused hearts broken yet again. It's a Cleveland tradition, right? A Cleveland tradition triggered by ownership that never saw a fan base whose hearts could not be broken by the simple act of pernicious meddling. Yet another Cleveland tradition, right? Unfortunately, we have all been down this gruesome road before. You know, the road to nowhere. The road on which hope springs eternal, even if it never does. Indeed, it is, or so it seems, always a bad year to be a baseball fan in Cleveland, where hope springs eternal, but the team payroll refuses to climb aboard. No fan base anywhere consistently must deal with such heartless shenanigans. Ironically, it occurs most frequently with this franchise, where the fan base is consistently rewarded by being unrewarded, just when things seem to be perking up. When there is a light at the end of the tunnel, the luckless fan base can't find the tunnel. Only in Cleveland, right? When do the city's baseball fans and ticket-buying public get their share of the pie? When is the wait worth the weight? How much longer until we know? Ramirez isn't getting any younger, you know. If anyone has a beef, it's the team's best and most popular player — the only one on the roster who will one day be inducted into Cooperstown. Ramirez is coming off the best season of his glorious Hall of Fame-bound career, and this is the thanks he gets? This is what he gets after generously accepting an insulting low-ball contract, the kind that Francisco Lindor and others on that era's best Cleveland team chuckled at on their way out the door to free agency? But Ramirez stayed in Cleveland. Ramirez has had his greatest years in Cleveland. Ramirez led the next generation of Cleveland hardball stars, and this is what he gets in return (aside from a lowball contract)? Where is the fairness in that? Shouldn't the best player on the team, the leader of the team and perhaps even the best all-around player in either league be treated more fairly than that? The Great Jose Ramirez deserves more than that. Much more than that. He deserves a much better team around him — a team that he doesn't have to carry on his back 162 times per year. While the ballpark in Cleveland was getting festooned with empty bells and whistles, Ramirez was almost single-handedly carrying a spotty roster through a 162-game season. One more Ramirez probably would have been enough. But there was no chance of that happening. There were too many bells and whistles to be dispersed around the ballpark to include Ramirez in the party, even though he was the one throwing it on a nightly basis. This was the Cleveland season that could have been. The Guardians' season that should have been. The Cleveland baseball season we may never see again. Ramirez could have left with all the rest, but he chose to stay. He could have left with many more bags of money, but he chose to stay. Ramirez and some help could have led the charge for seasons we and he will never see. What a shame. Contact Jim Ingraham at Jingraham4@gmail.com.