For some reason, I'm about a week behind on this. Last Friday's Flashmob Fridays was all about Harvey Pekar and his new book Harvey Pekar's Cleveland. As Pekar chronicles the history of the city, for every success there is an equal or greater failing that the city experiences. His recounting of the 1948 World Series at the beginning of the book perfectly introduces this pattern. They won in 1948 but the Indians would go on to lose the 1954 World Series. It would take them another 40 years to reach the World Series but they lost twice during the 1990s and haven’t been back since. “For me,” Pekar writes, “the 1954 World Series was a turning point. I always looked at the Indians as an up-and-coming team. But now they seemed to be rotten to the core with success… A few years later, that’s how I viewed Cleveland: rotten.” You can read my, Alan David Doane, Christopher Allen, Roger Green and Johanna Draper Carlson's essays here. This book is actually due out in a month or two. If you've never read any Harvey Pekar, it's actually a fascinating look at the man and the city. You can see a lot
