For nearly a quarter century now, people have been asking Mike Hargrove how long it took him to get over what happened in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series. And for nearly a quarter century, his reply has been the same.

“Just as soon as it happens,” the former Cleveland skipper will say, “I’ll let you know.”

There’s no getting over one of the most gut-wrenching losses in World Series history.

Not in this lifetime, anyway.

And so for Hargrove and other members and fans of the Cleveland team that fell to the Marlins in the 11th inning of a manic Miami night, mere mention of the year 1997 is picking at an old, unhealed wound. It will forever be “too soon.”

But as Jim Leyland, the grizzled manager of the 1997 Marlins, once said of that Series, “If that had been the Yankees and Mets playing, it would have gone down as one of the greatest World Series in the history of baseball. But because it was us and Cleveland, it never got the credit it deserves.”

So if we’re going to -- deservedly -- celebrate the 1997 Series as an all-timer in terms of how tightly contested and captivating it was, we can’t just talk about Leyland’s feisty Fish. We’ve got to throw a little love and shine a little light on the Cleveland club that got its heart ripped out live on national television.

Because that’s a pretty interesting story, too.

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Hargrove really wasn’t sure what kind of team the 1997 Cleveland Indians would be. By Opening Day that season, the club had changed rather dramatically. Though Cleveland won 99 games in ’96, the winter was spent revamping a team that lost to the Orioles in the first round of the playoffs.

Gone was Albert Belle, who followed the pull of more cash from the White Sox.

Gone, also, was Kenny Lofton, another rock from the ’95 World Series team. He was shockingly dealt to the Braves before Spring Training camp broke.

In their places stood David Justice and Marquis Grissom, both acquired from Atlanta. And the addition of third baseman Matt Williams dictated a move to first base for future Hall of Famer Jim Thome.

All this shuffling ensured the early days -- and, to be sure, months -- of the 1997 campaign would pose a challenge for Hargrove, who, in his sixth full season at the helm, was hearing rumblings that his job might be on the line.

“The biggest challenge,” Hargrove told MLB.com in 2007, “was taking a lot of new faces and trying to get them to gel. Anytime you change that many faces, the personality of the team will change. Chemistry and personality go hand-in-hand. A team has to find its identity.”

That search took longer than expected.

Though the Tribe managed to maintain a division lead in the relatively weak American League Central from May 18 through the remainder of the season, it didn’t plow its way through the regular-season schedule like its 1995 and ’96 predecessors.

“I think it was the most bizarre season of any of the playoff teams we had, because the club did not play very well for much of the year,” broadcaster Tom Hamilton said. “There was a lot of anxiety around that team all year.”

It took a somewhat silly motivational tool for the team to kick into gear. On Aug. 27, Cleveland had lost two games in a row and four of its last six. Thome wasn’t in the lineup against the Angels that day, but his teammates decided to honor him on his 27th birthday by, in Thome fashion, hiking up their pant legs and revealing their socks.

Down 3-0 early that night, Cleveland erupted with a 10-run fourth.

And so the sock trick stuck.

“It just took hold, and from that point on, we had great chemistry and the ball started rolling,” Hargrove said. “As stupid as that sounds, that was the one thing everybody could grab a hold of.”

Cleveland won 16 of its next 26 games to win a third straight division crown. But an 86-win ledger didn’t inspire much optimism for a deep October run. Especially with the 96-win Yankees -- the defending World Series champs -- looming in the AL Division Series.

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For the second straight season, Cleveland appeared headed for a first-round exist. Down 2-1 in the best-of-five and 2-1 in the eighth inning of Game 4 at Jacobs Field, the Tribe was four outs away from elimination. And the man on the mound for the dreaded Yankees was the great Mariano Rivera, who was at the early stage of establishing the dominance that would eventually make him the first unanimous Hall of Famer.

A comeback seemed improbable. But Cleveland could not have had a better option step to the plate than catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. His 1997 season was instrumental in Cleveland even getting to this point, as Alomar put up a career-best .324 average (aided by a month of June in which he got a hit in every game), 21 homers and 83 RBIs. He even earned the MVP Award at the Cleveland-hosted All-Star Game.

“Alomar’s season was incredible,” Hamilton said. “He just had one of those years you never duplicate. Every time we needed a big hit, Sandy got it.”

And he got it in this at-bat, sending Rivera’s fastball over the right-field wall for the game-tying homer -- one that the great Rivera would often cite as a career-changing moment.

"For me, it was the stone where I stepped to push forward, because it helped me to become better," Rivera said in 2013. "If that wouldn't have happened, God only knows where I would have ended up. But because that happened, it pushed me to be better in moments like that and in situations like that."

An inning later, Vizquel’s base hit off the glove of Ramiro Mendoza scored Grissom to give Cleveland the 3-2 win. The next night, rookie Jaret Wright turned in a stellar start, the offense fed off its own momentum, and a 4-3 victory sent the Tribe to the ALCS against the Orioles.

Facing Baltimore, planning and luck went a long way.

“Our advance scouts had done a really good job on [the Orioles],” Hargrove said. “They picked up on some things, and our guys were talented and intelligent enough to take advantage of situations.”

Primarily, Cleveland took advantage of Baltimore reliever Armando Benitez, despite his explosive 100-mph fastball.

“I can vividly remember Jim Thome coming out of [the advance] meeting and saying, ‘If we get to Armando Benitez, we got ‘em,’” Cleveland pitcher Brian Anderson recalled. “They must have had his pitches through the way he was setting his glove up or something.”

Cleveland got to Benitez three times.

After a 3-0 loss in Game 1 at Baltimore, the Tribe was down 4-2 in the eighth of Game 2, when Grissom took Benitez deep with a go-ahead three-run home run.

Game 3 went into extra innings in a 1-1 tie, setting up one of the more bizarre plays in playoff history. With runners on the corners and one out, Vizquel tried to lay down a suicide squeeze and whiffed. But the ball bounced off catcher Lenny Webster’s glove and rolled away, allowing Grissom to score from third for the winning run.

Or, at least, that’s how the play was called. The Orioles believed the ball fouled off Vizquel’s bat.

“To this day,” Hargrove said, “I don’t know if anyone knows for sure whether that ball was fouled off or not.”

After Cleveland gave up a 7-6 lead in the top of the ninth inning of Game 4, Alomar again came through in the bottom of the inning with the game-winning hit off Benitez for an 8-7 victory.

Game 5 went to the Orioles. But more good fortune arose for Cleveland before Game 6 at Camden Yards. Tony Fernandez was taking cuts in batting practice when he hit a ball that bruised Bip Roberts’ thumb. Roberts was the scheduled starter at second, but the bruise scratched him from the lineup. Fernandez replaced him.

Sure enough, in the 11th of a scoreless tie, Fernandez took Benitez deep for the go-ahead homer, and Cleveland went on to clinch its second AL pennant in three years.

For once, the championship-starved city of Cleveland appeared to have fate on its side. The Tribe had taken down the mighty Yankees and the 98-win O’s. Facing the Marlins -- winners of the NL Wild Card -- seemed tame, in comparison.

But nothing about the 1997 World Series was tame.

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The Marlins took advantage of the home-field edge at Pro Player Stadium with a 7-4 victory in Game 1, but Cleveland answered back with a 6-1 win in Game 2. Game 3 at Jacobs Field was a weird one, with the Marlins scoring seven runs in the top of the ninth to go up 14-7, only to have to fend off Cleveland in a four-run bottom of the ninth.

A Series set in southern Miami and northeast Ohio was bound to have some temperature swings, but the game-time temp for Game 4 was a record-low 38 degrees.

“They were playing ‘Jingle Bells’ during BP,” Leyland recalled.

Nevertheless, Cleveland’s bats were hot enough to put up double digits again in a 10-3 win to even the Series at two wins apiece.

In Game 5, the Marlins got to Orel Hershiser for the second time in the Series in an 8-7 win, giving themselves a chance to clinch their franchise’s first title at home. But Cleveland survived Game 6 thanks to one of the World Series’ great defensive gems. In the sixth inning, Cleveland led, 4-1. Mike Jackson was on in relief with runners on second and third, when Charles Johnson bounced a grounder to Vizquel’s far right. The Gold Glove shortstop made a diving stop, stood up and made a perfect throw to first for the inning’s final out.

Had Vizquel not made that play, Johnson probably would have knocked in two runs, and the inning might have gotten out of hand. Instead, the play helped the Tribe preserve its lead and force a Game 7.

“It’s one of the proudest moments in my career,” Vizquel said. “Not only because we got to play Game 7, which is the most exciting thing that can happen to you. But with all the pressure, when you make a play like that and look back, I can’t believe I made that play in that situation.”

The stage was set for Game 7.

After a strong start for Wright and Fernandez’s two-run single in the third, Cleveland was tantalizingly close to ending a 49-year title drought.

Then it all fell apart.

In the bottom of the ninth, with Cleveland up, 2-1, closer Jose Mesa, who had lost confidence in his fastball, ran into trouble. Moises Alou led off with a single, Johnson moved him to third with a one-out single, and Craig Counsell knocked in the tying run with a sacrifice fly to right.

Forget the fact that the World Series trophy had already been wheeled into the visitor’s clubhouse. The game was far from over.

“It was like a stab right in your heart,” Vizquel said.

The game went into extras, and the Tribe players tried to recover from the ninth-inning disaster. But the sucker-punch to the gut lingered.

“Once they tied it, it was like the chances of us winning, even though we went into extra innings, were almost nil,” Anderson said. “It was a very odd thing to watch. We didn’t have that approach of going out to win the game. It was like we were trying to hold on and not lose it.”

They lost it.

In the 11th, Charles Nagy was brought on for the rarest of relief outings. He gave up a leadoff single to Bobby Bonilla. Counsell hit a grounder to the right side that Fernandez booted at second, moving Bonilla to third.

“Jose Mesa is always the villain, but, to me, Tony Fernandez’s error was as big as Bill Buckner’s was in the ’86 World Series,” Hamilton said. “Buckner is vilified. Fortunately for Tony, he hasn’t been.”

Nagy intentionally walked Jim Eisenreich, and then gave up Edgar Renteria’s Series-winning hit.

Hargrove will let you know when he gets over it. But all these years later, it’s interesting that it was a relatively mediocre Cleveland club that came the closest to ending what is now the longest active championship drought in the sport.

“The ’95 team was probably a stronger team,” Hargove said. “But I think the ’97 team was a gutsier team. It was more of a grinder-type team. It was a real enjoyable team to be around and manage and watch play and probably the team I got the most satisfaction out of.”