Fifteen Years Ago...

The 1994 baseball strike began this exact day, 15 years ago. On that day, I was devastated (even though people saw it coming) - for the first time in my life the Indians were in the running, just one game behind Chicago. Of course, my heartbreak is nothing to the former (and continuing) fans of the Montreal Expos, who were baseball's best team that year and who never recovered from the strike.

It's been a weird 15 years - the Indians' heartbreaks in 1995 and 1997, the agony of Yankee hegemony returning, a recent spate of unlikely World Series Champions (Boston and the Chisox back-to-back, with more than 80 years of championship drought; the Marlins [ugh], twice [UGH]), and of course, the steroids era's rise and fall, for better (it did help bring fans back) and worse (look where we are now, with all the talk of "asterisks" and the shadow over those years). It all certainly makes one look back and wonder what the future of baseball holds. Hopefully, strikes or lockouts are not a part of that future....