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This is my garden flag.  It’s been outside of my house for over a year; it’s faded and obviously severely torn.  It continually gets wrapped around the shrub behind it, and I have to untangle it at least once a day.  I think that a giant gust of wind might finally cause the bottom portion to separate completely from its tenuous grip on the rest of the flag.

You might ask, why in the world wouldn’t you replace that?  Do you put absolutely no care into the exterior of your home and its surroundings?  But we do – everything is fairly meticulously maintained.  That’s why I ordered a new flag online a month or two ago.  But when it actually arrived in the mail, I didn’t have the heart to pull this one down yet.  Part of it was due to superstition…if things have gone well with the flag, should I really pull it down? (Like a team’s fortunes is based on one idiot fan’s garden flag).  The other reason was that I just didn’t have the heart to do it.  It was like the little flag that could – beaten, but not down.  I mean, if you really think about it the top part of it is in pretty good shape (other than the fading).  It’s actually been in this shredded state for several months.

Then in some ways, the sad little garden flag started to remind me of the Indians.  It started out in one piece but started to break down over the course of a long season.  Despite that fact, it’s still hanging in there…waiting to greet me every day when I return home.  The Indians were severely battered as the season went on – losing several key players to injury, including two important pitchers from their starting rotation in Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco.  But it still made it through the season in one piece, despite its flaws.

So I’ve decided to leave it there as a testament to a team that met its share of challenges, but still held on to win the AL Central.  I’m hoping that it can hang on for a while longer…perhaps until early November!

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