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The Indians Tried to Get Jobu to Save Yan Gomes, Jobu Said "Fuck You"

Indians teammates made a sacrifice to Jobu to help the slumping Yan Gomes and he got injured the next day.
"I'm pissed off now, Jobu. Look, I go to you. I stick up for you. You no help me now? I say 'Fuck you, Jobu.' I do it myself -- Pedro Cerrano in "Major League."

The Cleveland Indians came into Monday with the best record in the American League, along with a healthy lead in the AL Central. And yet, they were taking no chances over the weekend at Target Field. In a team effort to wake the bat of slumping Yan Gomes (.165/.198/.313), the players put on a clubhouse exorcism/sacrifice to the baseball gods. The ceremony, which Jason Kipnis filmed on Instagram, came complete with a chicken carcass and a blessing read by Mike Napoli. Other players wore capes, blew noisemakers and shook tambourines. Gomes wore a white robe and knelt at an altar while holding a bouquet of flowers and a baseball bat.

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It ended with Gomes, who came in hitting .163, chopping the whole fryer with a cleaver to the cheers of hopeful teammates. The scene looked like something out of the "Major League" franchise, when the fictional Indians players would try to change their luck with the help of Jobu, Pedro Cerrano's voodoo god.

The Indians already turned to Jobu earlier in the season, making a shrine to him in their home clubhouse at Progressive Field. Embracing the team's fictional past might seem silly, but that's also a good reason for doing so. Why not take it a step further to help out Gomes?

"Chop" goes the bad luck -- right? Nope!

The next day, Gomes managed to raise his batting average with a double, but disaster struck in his second at-bat. After hitting a grounder to third, Gomes tripped and fell running to first base and dislocated his shoulder. He might miss the rest of the season. The Gomes news came shortly after the Indians announced that pitcher Tommy Hunter fractured a vertebrae protecting a child during a fall.

"I thought the sacrifice was supposed to be a good thing," Gomes said. "But I got a hit and we got a win. That's plenty."

That's a great attitude to have, in spite of overwhelming evidence that the universe is out to get the Indians.

Sure, they reached the World Series as recently as 1997 (and in 1995) but they lost both times. Overall, the Albert Belle-Jim Thome—Kenny Lofton-Alomar brothers teams of the era fell repeatedly short of big expectations. Before the 90s, the Tribe hadn't reached the World Series since 1954, and hasn't won it since '48. The franchise's only other championship came in 1920. Basically, the team is most noted for Ten Cent Beer Night and having a racist logo on their uniforms.

Now that the Red Sox have won the World Series a few times in the typical fan's lifetime, no franchise in Major League Baseball gets inundated with more talk about curses than the Chicago Cubs. But the Indians continue to give them a run.