Cleveland Vintage Blog — Sports

Is it possible for someone’s tale to be both inspirational and tragic at the same time? The short answer is, of course, yes; history is full of many such examples. And to Cleveland baseball fans, Ray Chapman fits this bill. Chapman was a shortstop who started his career in 1912 with the then-Cleveland Naps. By all accounts, Chapman was an excellent defensive player, a well-above-average hitter and considered the best bunter in the game at the time. To back up that statement is the fact that to this day Chapman holds the single-season record for sacrifice bunts in a season at...

Back in 2014, I was a freelancer writing for a variety of publications. That spring, I was in Arizona to cover spring training mainly for the Associated Press, but I was pitching other story ideas around and Sports on Earth (RIP) agreed to pick up an interview I had with Jim Thome.  Thome's playing career ended after the 2012 season (it will never not be weird seeing him in a Baltimore Orioles uniform), and it felt then — and still does now to some extent — that the baseball world simply did not appreciate what he accomplished on the field....

As I watch the snow falling down in buckets, and the estimated snow totals continuing to rise to as high as 13 inches throughout Northeast Ohio, I find myself daydreaming of an alternate universe. No, not of a universe without snow. It's integral here. It's Sunday as well in this alternate universe, and it's the morning of the AFC Championship Game. In this universe — because there are infinite universes, I'm 99 percent sure this is possible in at least one of them — the Cleveland Browns are not only playing in the game, but they are hosting it. That's...

Nick Mileti’s vision for building "The Palace on the Prairie" - The Richfield Coliseum - was two-fold. He aimed to build one of the largest indoor seating capacity facilities in the country - 20,273 for basketball and 18,544 for hockey - while at the same time increasing the fan base potential for both his Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Crusaders, strategically placing his arena between Cleveland and Akron at the Route 303 exit off Interstate 271. Initially, the vision worked beautifully. From the very first event, a concert by none other than Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, on October 26th,...

Our headline may suggest a little bias on our part as to the direction of the piece, but we truly feel that Nick Mileti single-handedly revived interest in the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), secured an NBA franchise for the city, and even kept hockey afloat with his acquisition of the AHL Cleveland Barons as well as establishing one of the original WHA franchises in the Cleveland Crusaders. And that's not all. Mileti was also such an innovator that he envisioned out in the middle of nowhere, at the exit of Route 303 off Interstate 271, what would become the Richfield...