Cleveland Indians: 26 players, 26 years at Jacobs Field

Jacobs Field became the home of the Cleveland Indians 26 years ago. With MLB rosters expanding to 26 men, here are the 26 players of the All-Jacobs Field Era team.

The Cleveland Indians had not lost to the Atlanta Braves or the Florida Marlins in the World Series yet. Jim Thome was a third baseman. Terry Francona had not begun his managerial career. Francisco Lindor was less than a year old.

These are just a few of the things that were true 26 years ago, when Jacobs Field opened its gates for the first time in 1994. Fast-forward to present day: the Indians have lost three Fall Classics–two of them in soul-stealing fashion. Thome is enshrined in Cooperstown. Francona is 91 victories away from becoming the Tribe’s all-time winningest skipper. Lindor is the face of the franchise. Jacobs Field isn’t even called Jacobs Field anymore, and hasn’t been for more than a decade. The time in between has flown faster than a home run off the bat of Albert Belle.

Among the other things that can be said of the last 26 years is that the Indians have enjoyed a great deal of success. The state of Cleveland baseball has hit its crests and trenches during this span, but the last two-and-a-half decades have been defined largely by competitive teams (with a few duds here and there) and a handful of dominant ones.

Cleveland has posted 17 winning seasons and made 11 playoff appearances since moving into Jacobs Field. This includes the strike-shortened ’94 season itself, in which the Indians finished one game back of the Chicago White Sox in the AL Central with a 66-47 record before play was suspended for the year. The world will never know what might’ve been had that season played out the string.

The championship that has evaded Cleveland since 1948 continues to dangle just out of reach, but the Indians and their fans have been lucky to see a long line of great players and managers pass through the organization since the beginning of the Jacobs Field era.

In 2020, MLB rosters will expand to 26 players, as opposed to the 25-man setup that the league has utilized for most of the last century. Naturally, the coinciding numbers inspired me to construct the All-Jacobs Field Era Team, picking 26 players from the last 26 years of Indians franchise history.

A few notes before we begin:

• The “Jacobs Field Era” technically ended in 2008, when the stadium was renamed after an insurance company. It’s the same building, with the same memories, and the same baseball team calling it home. Progressive Field is, and always will be, The Jake.
• A player who is selected does not need to have spent all or most of his career in Cleveland, but his time there has to have been memorable in some regard. Roberto Alomar comes to mind, as he only spent three years in Cleveland, but was an undeniably great and memorable player during that span.
• A player’s tenure in Cleveland has to include some of the best baseball of his career in order to qualify. For instance, Josh Donaldson is one of the best third basemen to suit up for the Indians in this time frame, but his extremely short-lived stint in Cleveland was nothing compared to what he’s done in other uniforms.
• A traditional roster that is meant to be used on the field would include an even balance between pitchers and position players, but the sheer volume of exceptional position players who have taken the field for the Indians since 1994 demands that we have a deeper bench than you’d normally see.

Lastly, this is based equally on statistics and personal opinion. There’d be no fun in basing this discussion entirely on numbers; at some points, my decision on a toss-up between two or three players will come down to who I remember more fondly, or who I think deserved more credit than they got. As a result, the players I’ve chosen are not necessarily who everyone else in the world would choose, and that’s okay. With the player pool we have to pick from, you’d almost have to try to field a bad team.

Let’s get started.

Outfield Bench

David Justice (1997-2000)

David Justice hit nearly one-third of his career home runs as a member of the Indians despite playing just three-and-a-half years there in a 14-year career. Justice’s best season in Cleveland happened to be the year the Indians went to the World Series in 1997.

Justice led the 1997 Indians in slugging (.596) and OPS (1.013), and trailed only Jim Thome in home runs (33). He finished fifth in MVP voting. Things would never be quite that great for Justice again in Cleveland, as he posted identical 21-homer, 88-RBI campaigns in 1998-99 before a resurgent 2000 season got him traded to the Yankees.

The fact that Justice is coming off the bench for this team should tell you all you need to know about the starting outfield.

Grady Sizemore (2004-11)

Oh, what could’ve been. In 2005, his first full season in the bigs, Grady Sizemore kicked off a four-year stretch of scoring at least 100 runs. He made three straight All-Star Games, finished at least top-12 in MVP voting, and won two Gold Gloves from 2006-08.

In all of his four full seasons with the Indians, Sizemore posted a bWAR of at least 5.5. He appeared in all 162 games in both 2006-07, and was the heart and soul of the team that nearly took down the Red Sox in the ’07 ALCS.

Sizemore played with reckless abandon, a quality that endeared him to fans but also helped shorten his career. Following 2008, he’d never play a full season again–in Cleveland or anywhere else. Injuries cost Sizemore 276 of a possible 486 games from 2009-11, and after that, he didn’t even step on a major league field again until 2014.

Any career adversely affected by injury is devastating, but Sizemore’s is especially tragic. He was just 26 when his troubles began in 2009, and he was on a trajectory toward being one of the all-time greatest players in franchise history–if not the single-greatest center fielder.

Infield Bench

Omar Vizquel (1994-2004)

Considering Omar Vizquel is a fringe Cooperstown candidate, it might be controversial to list him as a bench player on his own team. Allow this to serve as a bit of foreshadowing as to who the starting shortstop is…

Vizquel was a true Cleveland lifer, spending 11 seasons with the Tribe and winning a Gold Glove in eight of them–consecutively. Vizquel’s reign as the best defensive shortstop in the AL spanned nine years in total, with the first of those coming in Seattle the year before he came to Cleveland.

Offensively, Vizquel left plenty to be desired. He smacked just 60 home runs in 11 years and posted an OPS above .800 just once. But those of us who watched him play know that anything he did to produce runs was secondary to what he did to prevent the other team from scoring them–especially with the cast of power bats around him.

Forget about the last 26 years; Vizquel was a centerpiece in one of the most dominant stretches of Indians baseball ever.

Matt Williams (1997)

Matt Williams played just one season with the Indians, but it was well worth the short-lived union. Williams’ 1997 campaign–in which he launched 32 home runs and led the team in RBI, helped propel the team to the World Series. Williams also won a Gold Glove in 1997 for his defensive ability at third base, one of four in his career.

But it was the World Series itself in which Williams made his mark in Indians lore. Williams was an absolute force in the seven-game Fall Classic, slashing .385/.515/.538 with eight runs scored and three driven in.

Any time a team with a seven-decade championship drought comes as close to winning the whole thing as that 1997 Indians team did, it is going to stand out in your memory. Williams earns a tip of the cap here for the part he played.

Carlos Santana (2010-17, 2019-Present)

Carlos Santana is nearing “most underrated player in franchise history” territory. While the catcher-turned-third-baseman-turned-DH-turned-first baseman–who has also taken a couple of flies in the outfield–has never been regarded as one of the Indians’ best all-time players, his consistency throughout a long career in Cleveland has carried the team through thick and thin.

Santana began his ascension before the current version of the Indians started coming into its own, helping build the foundation for the club as we know it today. He has never posted an on-base percentage below .351 in eight full seasons with the Tribe, and he’s coming off the best year of his career at the improbable age of 33.

He spent the 2018 season with the Phillies despite establishing himself as a cornerstone of the 2016-17 Indians teams that dominated the American League. Thanks to a trade last winter that brought him back to Cleveland, we can forget that Santana ever left in the first place.

Backup Catcher

Sandy Alomar Jr. (1990-2000)

By far the best season of Sandy Alomar Jr.’s career was 1997 (are we noticing a theme here?), when he hit 21 home runs and finished with an even .900 OPS. Alomar was a six-time All-Star, with all such seasons coming in an Indians uniform.

Detracting from Alomar’s case as an all-time Indians great is that he missed an exorbitant number of games due to injury throughout his career. But he did provide the Indians with two of their most heart-stopping moments of the ’97 run.

The first of these was a game-tying home run off of Mariano Rivera (of all people) in the eighth inning of ALDS Game 4. The second came in the ALCS, when Alomar drove in Manny Ramirez on a walk-off single to win Game 4. He also slashed .367/.406/.600 in the World Series that year.

Now it’s on to the next phase of our roster construction, in which we’ll name our starting rotation and hire a manager. Spoiler: four of these six decisions are as easy as it gets.

Managerial Candidates

Mike Hargrove, Charlie Manuel, Terry Francona

I don’t know what kind of cruel masochism is at play when I have to decide between Charlie Manuel and Terry Francona as the manager of this Indians team. I would run through a thousand brick walls for either one of them if I were a professional baseball player. In fact, I’ll run through a brick wall for either one of them anyway. The city of Cleveland is lucky to have had (and still have) them.

And that’s without even mentioning Mike Hargrove, who skippered the team to five straight winning seasons and two World Series appearances between 1995-99. Hargrove was let go by the Indians after a 97-win season in 1999, a fate that always struck me as a little harsh considering the run of success the team had been enjoying with him at the helm.

You can call me a prisoner of the moment, but I’ll lean toward Francona here.  As much of a joy as Manuel would be to play for, it wasn’t until he presided over the Phillies’ dugout that his greatness as a manager truly shined through. Francona has the highest winning percentage of any Indians manager since 1956, and could take over the franchise lead for wins by the end of this upcoming season.

At the end of the day, if I could play baseball for any manager who has ever held the title, I’d take Francona a million times out of a million. I don’t imagine the players I’ve selected would voice any objections.

Starting Rotation

Corey Kluber (2011-19)

You can arrange the starting rotation in any order you’d like, but I’m going with Corey Kluber as my Opening Day ace. Kluber is the only Indians pitcher in this era or any other to win two Cy Young awards, and he gets bonus points for putting the team on his back and nearly carrying it to a championship in 2016.

Kluber ranks third in franchise history with 1,461 strikeouts, behind two guys who are unlikely to be caught any time soon in Bob Feller and Sam McDowell. Both of his Cy Young campaigns landed him inside the top 20 for highest WAR by an Indians pitcher in a single season (2014: 8.3; 2017: 8.1). Before Kluber, the last Indians pitcher to earn an eight-win season was Gaylord Perry in 1974.

The numbers and accolades speak for themselves. Kluber is an all-time Indians great, and number 28 should be retired.

CC Sabathia (2001-08)

CC Sabathia will be remembered more for his role in the Yankees’ 2009 World Series run, a stretch in which he earned ALCS MVP honors, but it all started in Cleveland. Sabathia anchored the Indians’ rotation for the better part of a decade before being traded to Milwaukee in the summer of 2008.

The year prior, he won his only Cy Young award. Sabathia’s 2007 campaign catapulted the Indians to a tie for the best record in the American League, a season that ended one win shy of a World Series berth. Sabathia largely came undone in the playoffs that year, especially in the ALCS against the Red Sox, when he got lit up to the tune of a 10.45 ERA in two starts.

Dependability was a huge part of what made Sabathia so important to the Indians during his time there. He logged at least 180 innings in each full season he pitched for Cleveland, including his age-20 campaign in 2001.

Cliff Lee (2002-09)

Continuing with our theme of great Cleveland pitchers who won Cy Young awards and were eventually traded, Cliff Lee’s 2008 season was a revelation. The unassuming lefty went 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA that year on an otherwise mediocre team.

What made Lee’s breakout all the more impressive was how badly he struggled in 2007, a season in which he was actually demoted to the minors for his lack of performance.

Lee was traded to Philadelphia in 2009 after a first half in which he followed up on his Cy Young campaign with a 3.14 ERA in 22 starts. The Indians had shipped off the incumbent Cy Young winner at back-to-back trade deadlines.

Bartolo Colon (1997-2002)

Of course, Lee would never have played for the Indians if not for the 2002 trade of Bartolo Colon. Colon debuted for the Tribe in 1997, but he began to come into his own in his second season.

Colon averaged just over 4.5 bWAR from 1998-2001; he ranks 18th all-time in club history with a mark of 22.7. In the 1998 postseason, Colon surrendered just two runs in 14 2/3 innings. He was similarly impressive in the 2001 ALDS, when he gave up three earned runs across the same number of innings in two starts.

Like Sabathia after him, Colon was an innings-eating workhorse. He logged at least 200 frames in three of his four full seasons with Cleveland, and came up just shy of that mark with 188 innings in 2000.

He was on pace for his best season in an Indians uniform in 2002, posting a 2.55 ERA and 4.7 bWAR in just 16 starts, before he was traded to the Montreal Expos for a haul that included Lee, Sizemore, and Brandon Phillips. Colon would go on to win a Cy Young with the Angels in 2005.

Charles Nagy (1990-2002)

For the fifth and final member of our rotation, we could go in any of a number of directions. Carlos Carrasco received serious consideration here, and it pains me to leave him out. I decided to tip my hat to Charles Nagy, who was a cornerstone of the pitching staff during the heyday of the Mike Hargrove era.

Nagy put up a respectable rookie debut in 1991, but he emerged as the pitcher the Indians would rely on for the rest of the decade in his second full season. In 1992, Nagy posted a 2.96 ERA in a career-high 252 innings, was selected to his first All-Star team, and finished seventh in Cy Young voting.

After missing most of the 1993 season, he settled in as a horse on the mound for the next several years. From 1994-99, Nagy logged at least 169 innings every year and finished over the 200-mark four times (he was headed for a fifth before the strike in 1994). His 1996 campaign yielded a career-best 6.6 bWAR.

Nagy struggled in both the 1995 and 1997 World Series, posting identical 6.43 ERAs in each. He also surrendered the series-clinching walk-off single to Edgar Renteria in ’97, though it was a blown save that put him in that position to begin with.

The wheels started to come off for Nagy after 1999; he would never again reach even 100 innings in a season over the final four years of his career. All the ups and downs taken into account, Nagy deserves a fair share of recognition for his role on some of the best Indians teams of the last 70-plus years.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for if you’ve read this far: the All-Jacobs Field Era starting lineup.

Starting Lineup

1. Kenny Lofton – CF (1992-96, 1998-2001, 2007)

Kenny Lofton is in his own realm as a player who spent three different stints with the Indians over the course of his career. The most lucrative of these from an individual standpoint was his first, from 1992-96. During this span, Lofton finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 1992, won four consecutive Gold Gloves, made three straight All-Star teams, and finished top-15 in MVP voting three times.

Lofton missed out on the second of two Indians World Series runs in 1997, a year he spent with the Braves before returning to Cleveland in 1998.

Lofton was the quintessential leadoff hitter, averaging a .375 on-base percentage in an Indians uniform; a mark that would be even higher if not for a relatively down 2001 season and the 196 plate appearances he recorded at the age of 40 in 2007. (Even in those years, he reached base at clips of .322 and .344, respectively).

Lofton’s most notable statistical accomplishment with the Indians was on the base paths. Lofton holds all of the Tribe’s top three spots for stolen bases in a single season, and six of the top 10. His 452 steals in an Indians uniform are nearly 200 more than Omar Vizquel, who is second on that list with 279.

No matter how many players wear the number seven on the backs of their jerseys for the Tribe in the future, it will always feel like it should be Lofton’s to keep.

2. Francisco Lindor – SS (2015-Present)

The only man who could unseat Vizquel for the right to start at shortstop on this team, Francisco Lindor needs no introduction. Lindor already ranks 20th among Indians position players in career bWAR at 28.6, and he’s not even out of his arbitration years yet.

Lindor finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2015, and has made the All-Star game each year since. He has two Gold Gloves to his credit, and it stands to reason he’ll finish with many more than that.

FanSided

The young superstar has authored some of the most memorable moments in recent Indians history, from his majestic grand slam in Game 2 of the 2017 ALDS to his exuberant sprint around the bases after blasting a two-run bomb in his home country of Puerto Rico in 2018.

Even more than his statistical, on-field contributions, it is his contagiously joyous personality that has helped him permanently engrave his name in the history of the Indians. Lindor is widely regarded as the best shortstop in baseball today; however long his tenure in Cleveland, he will have a case for the greatest shortstop to ever wear an Indians uniform when it’s all said and done.

3. Roberto Alomar – 2B (1999-01)

Roberto Alomar reminds us of a time when future Cooperstown inductees made it a point to come to Cleveland during the prime of their careers, which is decidedly not the case in present day. Alomar was already on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory when he joined the Indians in 1999, and he continued to be one of the league’s best players upon donning the red, white, and navy blue.

The second baseman won a Gold Glove in each of his three seasons with the Tribe, and finished top-four in MVP voting twice. Alomar and Vizquel–who also won the Gold Glove in each of the former’s three years in Cleveland–teamed up to give the Indians one of the most defensively gifted middle infields in baseball history.

Alomar also put up better offensive numbers in Cleveland than he did anywhere else. His three-year batter’s box resume includes a .323/.405/.515 slash line and well over 100 runs per season. His career-high 138 runs scored in 1999 are the second-most in a single season in franchise history.

The Indians never made it past the first round of the playoffs with Alomar on the roster, but he carried more than his fair share of the load in 1999, when he slashed .368/.409/.579 with four doubles, four runs scored, and three driven in against Boston in the ALDS.

The fact that Alomar was so great, for so long, for several different teams may preclude him from being remembered primarily as an Indian. But make no mistake: for a fleeting moment in history, he was one of the best players to ever take the field in Cleveland.

4. Manny Ramirez – RF (1993-2000)

I believe there’s a case to be made for Manny Ramirez as the most underrated right-handed hitter of all time. Ramirez put together some absolutely ludicrous seasons in an Indians uniform, and though his connection to the Steroid Era casts doubt on the legitimacy of his career as a whole, the noise on that front didn’t begin until well after he had left Cleveland.

Ramirez holds the highest single-season OPS in franchise history, a mark of 1.154 which he posted in 2000. That record followed an equally impressive 1999 campaign in which he posted the fourth-highest OPS ever among Indians players with a mark of 1.105. No Indians player has a higher career slugging percentage or OPS than Ramirez during their tenure in Cleveland.

His 165 runs batted in during the 1999 season are the most in a single season by any player in baseball history since before the second World War.

Ramirez ended his career in Cleveland by finishing top-six in MVP voting (and as high as third) in each of his final three seasons. He would then go on to win two world championships as a member of the Red Sox, and was crowned MVP of the 2004 World Series.

As his career wound down, Ramirez became less celebrated for his accomplishments on the field and more scrutinized for his seemingly endless string of antics off of it. But before all that, he was a blossoming superstar making a name for himself at Jacobs Field.

5. Jim Thome – 1B (1991-2002, 2011)

Those who lived through Jim Thome’s time in Cleveland aren’t in need of any reminders of what a privilege it was to be graced with him for so many years. He was a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. He holds the Indians’ franchise record for home runs, both in a single season and all-time. His 337 career bombs in an Indians uniform are just a shade under 100 more than second place on that list, Albert Belle.

Thome’s career on-base percentage from 1991-2002 was .414, which is a ridiculous clip to maintain over the course of 5,723 plate appearances, and the highest of any Indians hitter since before the Great Depression. As likely as he was to send a poorly located pitch screaming 120 feet over the right field fence, he was just as likely to take his walks and swat base hits.

Amplifying Thome’s legacy in Cleveland, and as a baseball player in general, is that he never fell under suspicion of cheating the game. Thome came of age during one of the most scandalous periods in baseball history, but managed to get himself a plaque in Cooperstown without turning to the illegal advantages used by so many of his peers.

His number, 25, is retired by the Indians and there’s a bronze statue in his likeness beyond the center field wall in his old home park. There may be others who deserve similar honors in Cleveland, but none deserve them definitively more than Thome.

6. Albert Belle – LF (1989-96)

Before we continue, I would like you to put yourself in the shoes of an opposing pitcher who just clawed his way through the first five hitters in this lineup only to see Albert Belle stomping to the plate out of the six-hole. And, by the way, if you get frustrated because the first five guys all went yard and you decide you’re going to take some liberties with your pitch location, Belle is going to charge the mound and dropkick you into center field.

Belle wasn’t the most likable guy by any stretch of the imagination. He was, by all accounts, a difficult person to be around in a clubhouse, both for his teammates and the media. He’s also had some questionable run-ins with the law since leaving the game of baseball. Having acknowledged his abrasive personality, let’s focus on what he did on the field, because there aren’t many players who can claim to have been as dominant as Belle was, for as long as Belle was.

From 1992-96, Belle launched at least 30 homers and drove in at least 100 runs every year–a trend he kept up for three more years even after leaving Cleveland. He finished second or third in MVP voting each year from 1994-96. He holds the second- and fourth-highest single-season home run totals in Indians history, with 50 in 1995 and 48 in 1996. Only Thome hit more during his Indians career than Belle.

As intimidating a slugger as Belle was, he didn’t sacrifice a great deal in pure hitting ability. Belle struck out in just 15.9% of his career plate appearances with the Indians, and posted a cumulative slash line of .295/.369/.580. He came within mere decimal points of winning a batting title in 1994 with a .357 average.

Considering the modern-day plate approach of selling out for home runs at the expense of other positive outcomes, it would be refreshing to see more hitters with Belle’s skill set in 2020. His career ended abruptly due to a hip issue in 2000, and he never got into the Hall of Fame.

7. Victor Martinez – C (2002-09)

Sandy Alomar Jr. would’ve been a natural choice here if he hadn’t been injured so often, or at least put up more consistently dependable offensive numbers on a year-to-year basis. Instead, we’re going with one of the more reliable bats to come through Cleveland since the turn of the century.

Victor Martinez was never the most adept defensive catcher, but there is no question who the Indians’ best hitting backstop has been over the last 26 years. Martinez slashed .297/.369/.463 and racked up 19.3 bWAR in his Indians career before getting traded to the Red Sox in the summer of 2009.

Because of his hitting ability, the writing was always on the wall for Martinez to transition into a first baseman/DH hybrid before long. He served as the Indians’ primary catcher from 2004-07, and then injuries befell him and dampened his final years in Cleveland. After 2010, his one full season in Boston, his days as a full-time catcher were over.

In addition to being one of the better pure hitters on this roster, Martinez was also lights-out at the plate when it mattered most: in the 2007 postseason. Martinez slashed .318/.388/.500 between the ALDS and ALCS that year, with two home runs, two doubles, six runs, and seven driven in.

The same level of hitting prowess that landed Martinez on the map, he would maintain well into the twilight of his career with the Tigers.

8. Travis Hafner – DH (2003-12)

I considered Edwin Encarnacion and David Justice for this honor. In reality, both were (or still are, in Encarnacion’s case) better career players than Travis Hafner. But Hafner played for the Indians for longer than both Encarnacion and Justice combined, and at his best, was one of the most prominent designated hitters in the league.

From 2004-07, Hafner averaged just under 32 homers per season and over 100 runs driven in. In 2006, Hafner became the only Tribe player not named Thome, Belle, or Ramirez to hit at least 40 home runs in a season since 1959. (Jose Ramirez just missed joining him on this list in 2018.)

Hafner’s best seasons were 2005-06, in which he finished fifth and eighth, respectively, in MVP voting. He eclipsed the 1.000 OPS threshold in both seasons; his 1.097 mark in 2006 ranks fifth all-time in a single season in club history.

Hafner didn’t do much in his lone playoff appearance, accumulating just eight hits in 50 plate appearances in October 2007. After the 2007 season, Hafner struggled to stay on the field for much of the rest of his time in Cleveland. He only played in 100 games once from 2008-12, and he finished his career with the Yankees in 2013.

Hafner’s tenure with the Indians isn’t what you would classify as magical, but he provided the club with some thump in the middle of the order during what turned out to be some dark years in contrast to the winning ways that immediately preceded and followed his prime. Look, I’m lifting him for a pinch-hitter in a big spot, but he gave the Indians what he could for 10 years. Let’s allow the man his due, shall we?

9. Jose Ramirez – 3B (2013-Present)

Jose Ramirez rounds out our batting order and defensive alignment by way of being the longest-tenured standout third baseman in Cleveland since 1994, but let’s not pretend he wouldn’t have a strong case to start for this team anyway.

Though Travis Fryman was a fine addition to the team in the late 90’s, he spent the bulk of his career in Detroit and missed over a full season’s worth of games in his five-year stint with the Indians. Fryman did win his only career Gold Glove in Cleveland in 2000, but his inability to stay on the field–in addition to the fact that Ramirez is the superior hitter–keeps him just outside the conversation.

Ramirez’s 56 doubles in 2017 were the third-most in franchise history, and the most by any Indians hitter since 1926. He finished third in MVP voting that year, as well as in 2018, when he clubbed 39 home runs. He may have a few years to go before solidifying his place among all-time Tribe greats, but he is on the right path.

Perhaps the most endearing thing about Ramirez is that he came out of nowhere. He was once a utility infielder before planting himself as a fixture in the heart of Cleveland’s 2016 World Series lineup, and his metamorphosis hasn’t stopped since (though it did take a disconcerting sabbatical for the entire first half of the 2019 season).

Like Lindor, his teammate on the left side of the current Indians infield, Ramirez is as easy a personality to root for as he is a player. Simultaneously unassuming and beaming with quiet swagger, Ramirez puts his heart, soul, and every last inch of his five-foot-nine frame into the game of baseball. He is truly a joy to watch, as was (or is) every player on this list.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey through the past, a journey that included some of the most iconic players in the history of Cleveland sports. Among the fun parts about putting this roster together has been looking back and remembering where I was in my own life at various points throughout the last 26 years of Indians baseball.

Those of us who treasure the Indians have all witnessed each generation of the franchise at different points in our lives, from different points of view. I was just a kid in the mid-90’s. I latched onto those players and that team, and I never let go. Twenty years later, I had developed enough existential dread to wonder whether 2016 was the universe’s way of telling me I’m never going to see the Indians win a World Series.

To those of you who are older than me, I hope the next 26 years bring you the championship you have waited so long for–the one you deserve. To the younger generation who might just be developing its love for the Cleveland Indians, buckle up. We might be here for awhile.