Our Tribe

A son, a father, a baseball team . . . This remarkable baseball memoir will touch the heart of any baseball fan who has ever shared a love for the game with a parent or child.

Award-winning sportswriter Terry Pluto (The Curse of Rocky Colavito) tells the story of a son and a father and the relationship they shared through their resilient devotion to one particularly frustrating baseball team, the Cleveland Indians (who always seemed to need just one more run to win).

The story includes the joys and struggles of growing older together, of coping with a sick parent, and, finally, of burying the man who indelibly shaped his son’s life. It also includes a lively history of the Cleveland Indians franchise, full of personal recollections about remarkable players and memorable moments from seasons past.

For so many people, baseball remains an important bridge across generations, sometimes the only topic of conversation when all other topics seem threatening. Absorbing his father’s love for the game, and their team, Pluto grew to understand and respect the often distant man who allowed himself few pleasures besides baseball in a life built around laboring to provide for his family. This book celebrates our ability to make that connection through baseball.

It is a heartfelt, memorable tale.

In 1997, the Cleveland Indians came within two outs of winning the World Series. Instead, they blew a 2-0 lead in the ninth and lost 3-2 to the Florida Marlins in twelve innings. Yet another heartbreak for Tribe fans. Sportswriter Terry Pluto was in the press box, covering the game for the Akron Beacon Journal. Hundreds of miles away his father, a lifelong Indians fan, lay suffering -- both from the disappointment of the game he was watching and from the pain of the stroke that had debilitated him four years earlier. As their Indians frittered away the lead, both Plutos, despite their physical distance, were thinking the same thing: The Indians always need one more run. Indeed, the Indians have frustrated their loyal fans for generations. In Our Tribe, Pluto tells the story of this team -- from the glory days of Boudreau and Feller to those of Belle and Ramirez (and the many mediocre decades in between) -- based on tales his father told him, what they watched together from the grandstands of the Stadium, and what he saw up close as a sportswriter. He also tells the story of a life shared by father and son through their resilient devotion to one particularly vexing baseball team -- the joys and struggles of growing older together, of coping with a sick parent, and, finally, of burying the man who indelibly shaped his son's life. For so many people, baseball remains an important bridge across generations, sometimes the only topic of conversation when other topics seem threatening. Absorbing his father's love for the game, and their team, Pluto grew to understand and respect the often distant man who allowed himself few pleasures besides baseball in a life built around laboring to provide for his family. A son, a father, a baseball team ... a timeless connection. A heartfelt, memorable tale.

Terry Pluto is a sports columnist for The Plain Dealer. He has twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation’s top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is a nine-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than 50 state and local writing awards. In 2005 he was inducted into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame. He is the author of 23 books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito (selected by the New York Times as one of the five notable sports books of 1989), and Loose Balls, which was ranked number 13 on Sports Illustrated’s list of the top 100 sports books of all time. He was called “Perhaps the best American writer of sports books,” by the Chicago Tribune in 1997. He lives in Akron, Ohio.