How Hillary Clinton Cost The Cleveland Indians The 2016 World Series

Today is Tuesday November 5, Election Day. 2016, unlike 2019, was a Presidential Election year. My favorite baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, happened to be in the World Series that year. November 2, 2016 was the day of Game 7. The Indians had dropped two straight games after taking a commanding 3-1 series lead over the Chicago Cubs. I say commanding, but we all know it is the most dangerous lead in sports as we learned a few months earlier in June when the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals. As Cleveland fans we were riding a high like never before. We had a swagger, we were a little cocky, and no one could say anything about it. LeBron and the boys were showing up to the home playoff games and when they couldn't make it or when the Tribe was on the road they had the game on in the locker room. Do you guys remember this from a Chris Fedor article on Cleveland.com?

"The Cavaliers were watching Game 4 of the ALCS in the locker room Tuesday night, prior to their preseason finale at Value City Arena in Columbus."

I even remember a story from the Cavs locker room when the media was in there interviewing and the Indians game was on. I forget who it was, but they acknowledged the game and said, "It's Miller Time," as Andrew Miller made his way in from the bullpen. As a Cleveland sports fan that had experienced nothing but disappointment for 18 years to all of a sudden living in a world where my teams would capture two titles in the span of four months. I began thinking to myself, is this heaven? No, it's Cleveland.

The 3-1 jokes that flooded Cleveland sports Twitter after the NBA Finals eventually came back to bite us. The Indians lost the World Series to the Cubs in 7 games after being up 3-1.

Game 7 started out very depressing, a Cubs lead off home run, and through 4.5 innings Chicago was up 5-1. Then the unthinkable happened in the bottom of the 8th. The Indians were down 6-3 with Aroldis Chapman on the mound for Chicago. That year his average fastball velocity was just under 101 MPH. After Brandon Guyer ripped a double to make it 6-4, Rajai Davis stepped to the plate. The ensuing at bat featured seven pitches, four with two strikes, and two of those four coming in at over 100 MPH. On the seventh pitch Rajai, who kept choking up on his bat, I swear by the end he was gripping the barrel, launched a pitch that was down and in over the wall and into the left field home run porch. Indians 6, Cubs 6.

The night of game 7 Hillary Clinton was speaking at Arizona State University. She was set up on the intramural fields that were just steps away from my dorm room. In our room we didn't have cable, so I had to rely on streaming all the games. I know what you may be thinking, why wouldn't you go somewhere with cable? Well, that just wasn't an option. The Indians had made it that far with me watching in my room and I wasn't about to change it up. I swear I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious. If you look at the picture below and look straight out into the distance you will see my dorm building, Hassayampa. The same dorm where James Harden said he became a man. Count down six windows from the top and you can probably see me sulking or going crazy in my room. It truly depends on what inning the game was in when this photo was taken.

So why and how is this Hillary Clinton's fault? You may think it's not and you probably think I'm crazy, well I'm not and here's why. The game went into extra innings, but before the top of the 10th there was a rain delay. Just as the broadcast was returning from commercial my wifi went out. Perhaps it was Hillary's private servers being overloaded as Bill was deleting her emails. This was the last clip I saw before the connection was lost.

I couldn't believe there was a rain delay. The entire series featured beautiful weather. The high that night in Cleveland was 77 degrees, and there was no rain in the forecast. The Cubs are a storied franchise with many Hollywood elites and powerful figures as fans. Some notables are Vince Vaughn, Bill Murray, Jim Belushi, and you guessed it...HILLARY CLINTON. Look at what I found..

There wasn't suppose to be rain in Cleveland that night. The Indians had gained momentum and Hillary wasn't going to let Cleveland, who hosted the Republican National Convention earlier that summer, win the World Series. Her first move was to cut out my wifi, then she made it rain. How did she make it rain? I'm not sure, but she probably called up Al Gore and he made it happen. My next move was to get myself in front of a TV, I couldn't just sit in my room and miss the rest of the game. I remembered some of my friends were watching the game at a sports bar in Tempe, Devil's Advocate. According to Apple Maps, the walk would take 17 minutes. How long was the rain delay? 17 minutes...interesting. I'm in full on Alex Jones conspiracy mode at this point. I took advantage of those 17 minutes and took off. I was wearing my Kenny Lofton jersey, and it felt like I was running as hard as he was when he scored on a wild pitch from second base against the Mariners in the 1995 ALCS. I made it to Devil's with the top of the 10th just getting started. It's like they were waiting for me to arrive, sit down, and then they were ready to rip my heart out by scoring two runs in that inning. Hilary and her Cubs were toying with me. It was like the Truman Show and I was the subject. The whole thing was just a social experiment. The Indians scored one in their half of the 10th, but it wasn't enough. The Cubs were World Series Champions.

Indians fans claim the rain delay killed the momentum and cost them the game. Cubs fans say the baseball gods blessed them with that rain delay. Both fan bases are wrong. Without Hillary Clinton speaking at Arizona State I would have been in my lucky spot for the entire game. The Indians would have won, and the Cubs would still be the lovable losers with a 111 year and counting World Series drought.

Election Day in 2016 was November 8, almost a week after game 7. Was I going to vote for Hilary before game 7? Probably not, but it's way more fun to say I voted the other way out of spite. Let's just go with that.