José Ramírez supplied the swing, Gavin Williams supplied the shutdown work, and Travis Kelce supplied the kind of suite-level celebration that looked like it had been waiting years to break loose. Cleveland’s 2-0 Game 5 win over the White Sox on Saturday night sent the Guardians through the American League Division Series and gave their newest minority owner a memory he called one of the finest of his life.
A ninth-inning kind of roar, delivered early
Ramírez turned Progressive Field upside down when he drove an extremely low curveball over the wall in right field, producing the only runs of the decisive game. Kelce, wearing a Ramírez jersey in a suite with childhood friends, sprang from his seat, celebrated with the group and opened his arms toward the ballpark in a full-throated roar.
For Kelce, raised in Cleveland Heights and now a minority investor in the Guardians, the scene reached beyond the business side of his connection to the club.
“That was one of the coolest experiences of my life,” Kelce said after the game.
Kelce has won three Super Bowls with Kansas City and recently married Taylor Swift, but he spoke Saturday as the Cleveland kid who grew up watching baseball in this park. He had planned to throw a ceremonial first pitch earlier in the season to mark his ownership investment, though rain postponed that game. Even with the game washed out, he stayed outside the players’ lot to sign autographs and pose for photographs with fans.
Game 5 finally offered his first real chance to experience a Guardians postseason game as an owner. The timing fit neatly into the Chiefs’ bye week after Kelce came through Kansas City’s previous Sunday win over the Raiders healthy.
- Kelce said he could not attend Game 2 on Monday.
- He decided that if the series reached a fifth game, he needed to return home for it.
- The Guardians gave him the finale he wanted, erasing a two-games-to-none series deficit to advance.
Williams held the line before Ramírez broke it open
The Guardians had returned from a series-changing showing on Chicago’s South Side, then handed the ball to Williams in the winner-take-all game. The right-hander struck out 12 White Sox and did not permit a hit until there were two outs in the sixth inning.
That gave Cleveland room to wait for one defining at-bat. Ramírez found it, somehow getting the barrel to a breaking ball at the bottom of the zone and lifting it just far enough beyond the right-field fence.
Kelce saw the home run as another example of what Ramírez has represented to Cleveland on and off the field.
“That’s José,” Kelce said. “He has been an All-Star on the field and in the community. Watching him send the stadium into that kind of frenzy was incredible.”
Ramírez has become the unusual Cleveland star who stayed, agreeing to multiple contract extensions that could leave him as the franchise’s greatest position player. That carries particular weight in a city accustomed to seeing stars leave or local athletes reach their biggest stages elsewhere — as Kelce himself did after becoming a third-round pick and building a future Hall of Fame résumé with the Chiefs rather than the Browns.
A comeback with meaning around Cleveland
The Guardians became the 11th club to overcome an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-five postseason series. They were only the fourth team to do it after dropping the first two games on its home field.
The accomplishment landed differently for a fan base that remembers Cleveland having been on the losing end of the previous 0-2 Division Series comeback, along with other painful October exits. Saturday’s victory changed a line in the record book, but it also offered some relief from the old baseball scars around town.
Kelce believes the club’s bond has helped push it from its familiar late-season charge to the top of the AL Central into a deeper October run.
“You can see the camaraderie,” he said. “They play with energy for one another, and they genuinely enjoy each other’s success. I have been around a lot of strong teams, and that is one of the biggest traits you notice. It makes you want to join them, and if you cannot, it makes you want to root for them.”
The Guardians’ ownership group also includes another NFL-linked minority investor, Browns cornerback Denzel Ward, a Nordonia native. But Kelce’s presence brought an especially local note to Saturday’s celebration: a Cleveland sports figure who has become nationally recognizable returning to the stadium that shaped his earliest memories as a fan.
From Jacobs Field memories to the ALCS
Kelce recalled being at the 1997 All-Star Game when Sandy Alomar hit his memorable home run. The venue was Jacobs Field then, and Kelce said seeing major moments there as a child made Saturday’s scene feel especially personal.
“I remember being there for Sandy Alomar’s homer at the 1997 All-Star Game,” he said. “To grow up watching big moments in this building, and now to see another one, makes me feel lucky to be a Cleveland fan.”
Cleveland now moves on to face the Rays in the American League Championship Series, with Game 1 scheduled for Monday at 8 p.m. ET on TBS, truTV, UniMás and HBO Max. The Guardians are chasing a World Series title that has eluded the franchise longer than Kelce’s parents have been alive.
Kelce, whose professional football life remains in Kansas City, made clear where his sports roots remain.
“I am Cleveland through and through,” he said. “I have given everything I have to Kansas City, but my childhood, my heart and my love for sports will always start in Cleveland.”
