Cleveland was on the 1997 World Series rocks when Baltimore's Davey Johnson looked like he saw an iceberg

"Titanic" hit theaters on Nov. 1, 1997, a week after Cleveland almost became kings of the baseball world.

As for the giant boat, it was an unsinkable GOAT before it went down in history as something else. As for the baseball team, we pick up the story on a Sunday afternoon in May 1997.

Willie Blair never knew what hit him. In the fifth inning at Jacobs Field, Cleveland designated hitter Julio Franco hit a rocket off his head. The Detroit pitcher lay on the mound motionless.

"I could have killed him," Franco said after the game. "I'm going to pray the Lord gets him through this."

A 2-0 loss sank Cleveland's record to 14-14. The team stumbled all the way to August before Blair, back from a broken jaw, faced them again.

This time, Blair worked eight innings in a 13-3 Tigers win. Along the way, Manny Ramirez lost interest and got picked off second base. Now the season really looked like it was going nowhere, with the record at 59-56. A real team, Baltimore, was 71-41.

1997 World Series - Part 1:25th anniversary special - Cleveland took 1997 World Series to the end of the line

Franco, a Cleveland fixture in the 1980s, was the face of the 1997 funk.

He returned to town in 1996 and hit .322 for a team that went 99-62. The first round of the '96 playoffs turned with the bases loaded on a ball Franco smoked over the head of the Orioles center fielder. Brady Anderson's stumbling, lucky catch changed everything.

Franco wasn't the same in 1997 and was released at the end of July.

Orel Hershiser had warned everyone 1995 wouldn't last. During a run to a 100-44 record, the aging pitcher advised everyone to enjoy a Halley's Comet lineup while it shot across the '95 sky.

Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga and Eddie Murray, '95 cogs who returned  in '96, were gone by the '97 opener.

David Justice, Matt Williams, Marquis Grissom and Tony Fernandez arrived in their place. It was hardly a case of replacing big names with unknowns.

- Justice gave Atlanta the home run that beat Cleveland 1-0 win in the last game of the 1995 World Series.

- Williams was fresh off a string of league MVP candidacies with the Giants.

- Grissom attracted MVP votes in four of the previous five seasons.

- Fernandez made the All-Star team four straight years while with the Blue Jays.

General manager John Hart seemed quite proud of himself over the roster he handed manager Mike Hargrove.

Hart was a Florida guy who in 1981 coached an Orlando high school team to a state championship. He opened up about the '97 team in an instructive interview with the Orlando Sentinel. An excerpt:

"In '94 and '95, we completed one of the most dramatic turnarounds in sport after 40 years of second-division play. You know what we had ... bad ballpark, no attendance, no players.

"By making it to the Series in '95, I think people came to recognize we now have a great park, plenty of fans, a beacon franchise.

"As much success as we had the past few years, the distractions made my job impossible to enjoy. There were too many fires, too many egos. I haven't had the first problem with this group."

Hart had an ego the size of the Everglades. Hargrove was a proud, stubborn Texan. It figured there might be trouble.

The '97 batting order eventually came around. The newbie veterans mixed with emerging home-growns.

Ramirez, a first-round draft pick in 1991, was 25 years old, on his way to 555 career home runs.

Jim Thome, 27, was a former Round 13 draft pick on his way to Cooperstown with 612 career home runs. He was coming off a 1996 in which he hit .311, smacked 38 home runs, drove in 116, scored 122, and drew 123 walks.

Brian Giles, a former 17th-round pick, got a chance in the outfield, with Belle and Lofton gone.

Catcher Sandy Alomar and shortstop Omar Vizquel were in the prime of their respective 11-year Cleveland runs.

Alomar, 29, had been with Cleveland since 1990. Everything came together for him in '97.

Vizquel, 30, still had young legs, stealing 43 bases and winning his fifth straight Gold Glove.

The lineup was at least an 8 on a scale of 10. The pitching staff was maybe a a 6.5.

In 1999, shortly after Hart fired him and the Orioles hired him, Hargrove told the Washington Post he was "short on starting pitching" throughout his nine years as Cleveland manager.

"We haven't had that one horse," Hargrove said.

Hart took his shots in the '90s, bringing in Jack Morris, Hershsiser, Dennis Martinez and Dwight Gooden, oldies who had been other teams' aces.

His best chance at an ace in his prime was Jack McDowell, who was 30 when he arrived in 1996, four years removed from winning a Cy Young Award. In seven years with the White Sox, McDowell's earned run average was 3.50. In 1995 with the Yankees, it was 3.93. In 38 starts for Cleveland, it was 5.11.

McDowell's eighth 1997 start, on May 12, was his last for Cleveland.

It was one of those lucky years when a decent record in a weak division was enough. A 15-7 hot streak overlapping August and September left Cleveland 7 1/2 games ahead of the second-place White Sox, Belle's new team.

Cleveland hit October with a rotation of:

- Charles Nagy, who posted a 33-11 record across the previous two years but, at 30, was losing steam.

- Hershiser, 39, near the end of a borderline Hall of Fame career.

- Jaret Wright, the 10th overall pick of the 1995 draft, just 21 years old.

- Chad Ogea, who went on to a 37-35 record in the big leagues.

- Bartolo Colon, a 24-year-old rookie one year removed from pitching for the Class AA affiliate in Canton.

Colon started on Sept. 14 at Chicago but trailed 2-0 when he left after six innings. If the White Sox hung on, they would pull to within 5 1/2 games of Cleveland.

The deep lineup did its thing in a seven-run eighth inning. The 3-4-5-6 hitters, Ramirez, Thome, Justice and Williams, launched the rally. No. 7 and No. 9 hitters Alomar and Vizquel hit two-run singles.

From there, the team cruised into a playoff series against New York. It was tied at one game apiece before the action moved to Cleveland and the Yankees won 6-1.

In Game 4, on a Sunday night, a sense of doom hung over Jacobs Field from the time Derek Deter doubled off Hershiser in the first inning. The Yankees led 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth when Mariano Rivera retired Justice and Williams.

The mood went from mausoleum to madhouse when Alomar homered into the first row behind right field to tie it at 2-2 (an upcoming article focuses on Alomar's take, 25 years later). Vizquel's walk-off RBI single in the ninth won the game 3-2.

On Monday, the offense gave Jaret Wright a 4-0 lead that stood up in a 4-3 win. It was on to the American League Championship Series against Baltimore.

Again, a sense of doom rolled in like a fog. The Orioles won Game 1 and led 4-2 in Game 2 with two outs in the top of the eighth. Flame-throwing Armando Benitez struck out Jeff Branson and Fernandez but walked Alomar. Benitez ran the count to 3-2 on pinch-hitter Jim Thome, who began to swing at the payoff pitch.

The Orioles' dugout lost it when Thome was ruled to have checked his swing, putting two on with two out and the No. 9 hitter, Grissom, stepping in.

"It rattled Armando, and it rattled all of us because we thought he swung," Orioles manager Davey Johnson said after the game. "That's no excuse. The next guy is the one who can beat you. Marquis was swinging a good bat and he scared me more than Thome."

Grissom hit a three-run homer to the deepest part of Oriole Park, providing a 5-4 win.

After three games in Jacobs Field, the series went back to Baltimore with Cleveland leading three games to two.

In Game 6, Orioles ace Mike Mussina worked nine shutout innings, but Nagy countered with the game of his life. The bullpen got it to extra innings tied at 0-0.

With two outs in the top of the 11th, Fernandez hit the first pitch toward the warehouse. The old pro didn't crack a smile until he crossed home plate. Davey Johnson looked as if his ship had just hit an iceberg.

Fernandez retired with 168 plate appearances in 43 postseason games. This was his only postseason home run. He wasn't even supposed to be in the game. He was in a platoon at second base with Bip Roberts, and it was Roberts' night to play, before Roberts took a line drive off his thumb during infield practice.

"Divine intervention," Roberts called it.

Closer Jose Mesa had to get through the bottom of the 10th.

With two outs and Brady Anderson on first, Mesa got Roberto Alomar on a questionable called strike three, sparking a protest that would have left half the Orioles ejected had the series not just ended on a 1-0 Cleveland win.

All of the ALCS games were thrillers, particularly Game 4 at Jacobs Field. The Orioles led 5-2 early, but Justice had key hits in a rally that put Cleveland on top 7-6 after eight innings. In the top of the ninth, Rafael Palmeiro drove home Roberto Alomar to tie it at 7-all.

In the bottom of the ninth, Roberto's big brother Sandy socked a two-out single, scoring Ramirez for an 8-7 win.

Horns honked into the night.

Justice practically came away singing "this town is my town."

"The excitement this city has for its ball club is unbelievable," he said. "I thought there was excitement in Atlanta, but the excitement is so much better here."

Who cared about a choppy regular season? Unsinkable Cleveland headed for the World Series.

NEXT: "Winning the MVP would have been nice," Chad Ogea says 25 years later, but he can think of something that would have been a much nicer keepsake from the 1997 World Series.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Cleveland 1997 World Series team featured Jim Thome, Matt Williams