I really wanted to like Cleveland. Penny says she felt the same way.

Cleveland is one of our local teams, at least what we can call local (since we don't actually live in a city). We live in West Virginia, on the Ohio River. We're two-and-a-half hours from Pittsburgh and Cleveland, a little more than three from Cincinnati. We, therefore, call Cleveland accessible. So, it would be nice to love going to an Indians game.

Here are some other reasons we want to be Indians fans:

• The Indians are a nice story: a historically underachieving franchise in a challenging market. But they've had enough good years in the past few decades to always be taken seriously.
• The Indians have made a lot of right investments/moves during the past couple of years, including adding Terry Francona as manager. The guy seems to make good things happen, and, from the outside looking in, also seems to be a good guy.
• One of our (Parkersburg, West Virginia) hometown heroes is Nick Swisher, even though my former employer, The Associated Press, occasionally refers to him as an Ohio native. Just not true; he is from Parkersburg. ... Perhaps Nick, a former Ohio State player, perpetuates the "Ohio thing" when he trots in from a home run and makes the symbolic "O" arm motion, which he did during this game. ... (Now I know what you might be thinking. Nick thinks of Ohio as a superior territory to West Virginia. But it couldn't be that.)
• Drew Carey said "Cleveland Rocks." I want to believe Drew. But he knows places that I don't. .... MORE ... http://scoreboardsweep.blogspot.com/