Our Tribe: A Baseball Memoir

This is a fantastic book for any Indians fan who grew up watching games at the old Stadium. It's for all of us who grew up rooting for a sad team who had never won anything before and was never likely to do so in the future. It helps us to remember those days when the important thing wasn't how good the team was or if they had a chance at the Series, but rather spending time with our fathers watching the game. Maybe, just maybe, this book will help us to remember what is really important once again.

This book is as much a story about a son and his relationship with his father as it is about baseball, and tells each of those stories wonderfully. For basball fans it is an entertaining history of the Cleveland Indians and is full of colorful players, managers, and even owners. From the perspective of this one baseball team, the reader has a ring side seat on how much our country, society, and professional sports have changed and grown over the last 75 plus years. Just from the standpoint of the baseball Terry Puto is as good as Ken Burns or George Will.But the story within the story is really about the author and his father. That relationship is one that is full of joy and sadness, wonderful memories and yet regrets. The author comes to better understand and appreciate his father after a stroke makes it impossible to talk to his father. In a cruel irony, when the time came that the author was ready and wanted to share stories and talk to his father, he was not able to.All fathers and sons should read this book.A final comment on Terry Pluto's writing style. I have read three of Mr Pluto's books and appreciate the way he writes in a clean, no non-sense style and yet fills his books with so much detail and color.

If you went to the baseball game with your Father, this book will strike a chord in your heart. Beside reactivating some old memories (fortunately they become better with time), this book also illustrates why Indians fans are Indians fans, by birth-right. We are fans becouse most of us were born near Cleveland and went to the stadium with our dad's, neighborhood friends, college friends, clients, and yes our kids. This book reminds you why Indians fans are so special. We didn't pick the Indians, they were given to us. In a day where the team was yours for life. When every spring you got excited at the chance that a miracle just might happen this year. When you didn't dare like the Yankees even if it seamed to be an easy way out to happiness. Being an Indians is more valuable than that. Thanks Terry.

If you're reading this, you or someone you know is a fan of the Cleveland Indians. As if he's nodding to another person wearing Chief Wahoo, Pluto's book is by a Tribe fan, about the Tribe and Tribe fans, for Tribe fans. Old-timers will remember the exuberance of the Cleveland teams of the '40's through the mid-50's, while for younger readers, it is a good primer on the old names and places you've only heard about in passing. ANY Tribe fan will enjoy this book; it's not just about our Indians, but it is all about our Indians. You'll see what I mean when you read it. The real reason this book exists is as a salute to Pluto's father, and it is a touching, poignant, and entertaining read. I think we all can remember Game Seven, and the other agonies of seasons gone by. It's great to read a well-written book that reflects our feelings about the Indians.

Pluto's book captures the essence of what it has been like to root for a real loser for so many years, then to be rewarded with a great team for the mid and late 90s. He rightfully dismisses the foolish crying of Red Sox fans, who at least had good teams, good players, and a modicum of hope. Pluto is extremely touching when he writes about how his dad introduced him to the game and how the game held their relationship together, especially in his dad's last years. As for the baseball, he is so right when he notes that real Tribe fans, when the team was 2 outs from a world title in '97, had real doubts even about the POSSIBILITY of the team coming out on top....which they did not! We'll get 'em this year, however.