Tales from the Tribe Dugout – Russell Schneider

Often times, we focus on the statistical side of the game, because that is the easiest to analyze, but it isn’t the reason we watch the game. That is more anecdotal as the stories of the seasons and the players are much more enthralling than their base numbers. The long form versions of those stories can be found in player biographies and historical books, but in Tales from the Tribe Dugout by the Plain Dealer’s Russell Schneider, you get quick tellings of some of the best stories in Indians history.

For this book (which was published in 2002), Scheider talked to players from every era from the 1940’s, like Mel Harder, Larry Doby and Lou Boudreau, through the early 2000’s with players and personnel like Roberto Alomar, Bob DiBiasio and Larry Dolan. Almost all the stories are told from the perspective of players involved in their own words, although a few, like that of Nap Lajoie, are told based on historical information.

I’m not going to ruin any individual stories, but will say that some are significantly more interesting than others. Some of the more recent players seem to have been only included for their names as their is little excitement in the short sections devoted to the Alomar brothers, Omar Vizquel and others from the 1990’s teams. This is also possibly because these players were still active at the time and they didn’t want to speak “out of school” about their contemporaries. The players from the 1970’s and earlier were much more open and provide some of the most intriguing stories in the book. While the teams may not have been great, they were filled with interesting characters and Schneider allows them to tell their most memorable stories.

In addition to the players interviewed, Schneider also talked to Indians employees around the team and often these were even better stories than those by the players themselves. Many wouldn’t think of asking someone like umpire room attendant, Jack (listed as John) Efta, but then you would miss his amusing tale about manager Mike Hargrove.

Another reason this book is great for Indians fans is that it makes the team history more relateable. Tribe fans today know the stories about Trevor Bauer, Jason Kipnis and Cliff Lee, but if you started watching within the last twenty years, you probably don’t know the stories of Sam McDowell and Tito Francona (who has a great story about when his son signed his original contract). For some reason, many baseball fans tend to care only about the seasons they followed directly, but books like Tales from the Tribe allow them to learn more about the years before beyond what can be seen on baseball-reference.com.

If there is a drawback to this particular book it is that it is too simple. In order to get so many different stories out there, much of the detail that would probably have been interesting has been left out. If anything, a few players probably would have been better off left out or saved for the sequel (and there is a sequel) in exchange for a few of these other stories being more fleshed out. As it is, it is probably more readable for the fans who don’t have an extreme depth of knowledge about the team already. If you had never heard of a player mentioned and don’t care about his story, you don’t have to worry about reading about him for too long no matter who it is. Of course, if you’re already reading this book I’d recommend reading all of the entries as often the player being discussed is not the one doing the discussing.