A review by ashkitty93
Glory Days in Tribe Town: The Cleveland Indians and Jacobs Field 1994-1997 by Terry Pluto, Tom Hamilton

4.0

3.5 stars

And in case anyone cares, the paperback actually has 333 pages.

Ideally, this would be a five-star book. Grammatical errors unfortunately litter it, which my inner English major cannot seem to ignore. It's also written rather choppily, and repeats itself from chapter to chapter, as if it assumes you only pick it up to read a specific chapter and then you're done. But if you're reading it the whole way through, it gets a little repetitive. My favorite chapters were the ones about building the new ballpark, and the hope that it brought, and the players' chapters -- Omar, Kenny, Jim Thome. It gets 3.5 stars because this was my team.

I was eight years old in 1995 and ten in 1997. I grew up with a poster of Kenny Lofton on my wall alongside the NSYNC and Backstreet Boys posters. I got to go to a baseball camp one summer and field grounders from Omar Vizquel. I remember drawing up my own sign for the 1997 World Series, as if I were actually going to the game, and held onto it as we sat there watching everything unfold. (It said "Hook the Marlins", if I remember properly.) I'm sitting here listening to the Tribe duke it out with the Yankees in the 16th inning as I type this, and I've been crying since I finished the book ten minutes ago. For what could have been, I suppose, for what almost was and what really should have been, in 1997. But also because I recognize how truly incredible it was to grow up in that decade, believing we really had magic.

Now to find out what hoops I have to jump through to get Tom Hamilton to sign this for me.

update: Cleveland beat the Yankees. It's 12:30 and wayyyy past my bedtime.