March 9

Mark Shapiro answered his phone. "I'm fine, don't worry," he said. "Look at the bright side. Look at the way (Danys) Baez and (Jaret) Wright threw."

It had been a rough few days in his first week of spring training games as Indians general manager. On Wednesday, Robby Alomar had come back to Winter Haven, Fla., with the Mets and called Shapiro "a liar," claiming that the GM had promised Alomar he would not be traded. That came two days after the cornerstone of the deal with the Mets, Alex Escobar, had blown out his knee making a spectacular catch and would be out for the season.

Since The Jake opened in 1994, Cleveland fans have been used to DeMille-like spectacles for teams, with a lot of runs and thunder and personality, from Albert Belle to Juan Gonzalez to Alomar. That era ended. Dick Jacobs creatively exhausted every revenue stream, then sold the team to Larry Dolan, and as the stars got older, they went three years without winning a playoff series. John Hart left as GM and resurfaced in Texas, and Shapiro ascended to the GM position knowing that he had to reconstruct the nature of the franchise.

	The Indians are rebuilding around pitchers like Bartolo Colon, who won 14 games last season.

"I'd be the last one to claim that there is a grand master plan," Shapiro says. "But what we have in abundance in this organization right now is quality young pitching." Hence the retooling not around boppers, but around Bartolo Colon, C.C. Sabathia and Baez in an overall scheme of "building a team, not collecting talent." There was a need to pare payroll; right now, the $82 million is more like $72 million in talent because of the Charles Nagy, Wilfredo Cordero and Eddie Taubensee contracts. All that required some tough decisions, from allowing Gonzalez to walk to trading Alomar and changing the team's personality. "Even when we won the last few years, people didn't seem happy," says one of the member of the coaching staff. "That was OK five years ago, when this team was really good. But times had changed."

"We needed to make some changes," veteran pitcher Chuck Finley says.

But this is not what Cleveland fans are used to, and as they build their enthusiasm for the season, they aren't interested in the greater view. Hart is now in Texas, where Tom Hicks has told him to spend anything he wants to build a winner. Every time Hart adds a quality starter like Chan Ho Park or a star like Gonzalez, the move is greeted with applause. In Boston, fans applauded Dan Duquette for having what newspaper columnists called "a good winter" because he took his prospective bosses' money and spent whatever anyone asked for Dustin Hermanson, Johnny Damon, Tony Clark, John Burkett and Ugueth Urbina. Hart, of course, did what he was asked to do. Duquette, whose payroll again exceeded $100 million, was fired less than 24 hours after new ownership took over for what one of the owners referred to as "10 years of questionable monetary decisions."

	Cleveland Through The Years
	Year	W-L	Pct.	Runs	ERA
	1995	100-44	.694	1st	1st
	1996	99-62	.615	2nd	1st
	1997	86-75	.534	3rd	8th
	1998	89-73	.549	6th	6th
	1999	97-65	.599	1st	6th
	2000	90-72	.556	2nd	7th
	2001	91-71	.562	2nd	9th

"This is a business of tough decisions," Oakland's Billy Beane says. "We understand that Kevin (Towers) has restrictions on what he can spend, but we know he does the best he can," Padres outfielder Ryan Klesko says of his GM. After winning 102 games, Beane had to let Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen and Damon walk and retool with David Justice, Billy Koch, Carlos Pena and others to keep the payroll under $40 million. These are the evaluation-under-budget calls that Brian Sabean and Gerry Hunsicker annually make so brilliantly. "If it doesn't matter what you spend," Beane says, "then you don't really have difficult or creative decisions to make."

Shapiro, however, isn't deterred by this week's discomfort. "I knew that this wasn't going to be easy," he says. "Robby is a great player, one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of being associated with, but I know that there was no such promise, and I know that if there's one thing those who know me aren't going to question, it's my integrity. How you react in these situations depends on one's definition of self-worth. If you allow your self-worth to be tied to the emotional moments, if you tie your self-worth to team performance and go about your job that way rather than your own set of values, then you'll ride that roller-coaster. More important are human beings and your relationships. If your entire public persona is tied to the team's performance, you can be left in a shell when it's all said and done."

Pat Gillick understands this. He allowed Junior Griffey and Alex Rodriguez to leave Seattle, but built a team that won 116 games and plays with minimal ego. Hunsicker would have loved to have kept Moises Alou, but could not under the guidelines of his job. Sabean would have liked to have kept Shawn Estes after signing Jason Schmidt, but he, too, has a budget that requires decisions that sometimes defy the "he really wants to win" adage by which media and fans so often define owners and general managers.

How good are the Indians? They are not going to approach the thunder of the White Sox, but in this transition from the '95 style of bashers to the '54 style of defense, they should have very good pitching if Sabathia, Colon, Baez and either Ryan Drese or Jaret Wright hold up in front of what should be a deep bullpen. Baez and Wright have thrown exceptionally well, and Wright seems to have taken to pitching coach Mike Brown's avice on softening his front foot and delivery, which allows him to get the ball down and softens that horrid recoil at his follow through. He was clocked between 94-97 mph in his second spring outing.

Baez has shown a better curveball than expected. But everyone understands that there are a lot of questions up and down the order. "We're going to have to do a lot of things, but we can," Charlie Manuel says. "The last three years, we just let the guys at the front of the order go. Now we'll have to be a little creative, but that's fine."