Book Review: "Our Tribe"

As a lifelong Indians fan, thought living all but six years of that life away from the Cleveland area, I never really knew anything about Terry Pluto until I recently read "The Curse of Rocky Colavito" (which you might read about here).  After I read that book I sent it to my oldest brother.  He and I had our birth into sports fandom in our youth back in Bedford, Ohio, on the outskirts of Cleveland.  We would lie in bed listening to Pete Franklin talk sports, or Joe Taite telling us what was happening in an Indians or Cavalier's game.  Neither of us has very foul language, though we really liked Pete Franklin.  We also don't have official "I hate the Yankee" hankies.  Ah, well.

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  

When I sent that book to my older brother, he pointed out a few other books which Pluto had written.  Finding that they were primarily Cleveland-based, I dug into it a bit and reserved some at my local library.  The first to show up was "Our Tribe", a heart-warming story of not only Mr. Pluto's youthful sports fandom, but of the connection with his dad that it created in his youth, as well as the vibrancy that it brought between he and his aging, stroke-victim father in their later years.  

This isn't just another sports book.  Mr. Pluto demonstrates, by his own relationship with his father, some of the beauty of the connections that can happen between fathers and sons in connection with sports, and how those relationships can be kept enduring through those same events and commonalities.  Obviously such relationships can be kept enduring through other means, but "Our Tribe" shows it specifically in the connection that is made by being fans of a particular team for a lifetime.  Together.

A delightful read (even for this grown male who also, like Terry Pluto, cried when Jose Mesa blew it in game 7 of 1997).