A New Thome Is Starting His Own Baseball Legacy: CLE Daily

🌤️ 72°; Nice

🎒 First Bell: Most CMSD students — grades 1-12 — head back to class today under new cellphone-free rules and ID badges, the district's first full school year after last year's building consolidation. Kindergartners start Aug. 28.

🏃 Batman Hangs It Up: Nick Chubb, the Browns' bruising four-time Pro Bowler, announced his retirement Friday at 30 — seven seasons in Cleveland, four straight 1,000-yard years, and a brutal 2023 knee injury that never let him get back to his best. "Go Browns," he signed off.

ICYMI: At The Current Year in Parma, Michael and Marie Stutz have built a shop around every format streaming left behind — records, cassettes, 8-tracks, even floppy disks. "People are realizing the scam of streaming," Michael says.

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Trivia Question

What year was Cleveland officially incorporated as a city?

Sports: A new Thome is starting his own legacy in pro baseball.

By Colleen Smitek

Landon Thome — son of Cleveland Hall of Famer Jim Thome — is a first-round talent chasing his own path. On July 11, the White Sox picked him 34th overall, sending him nearly 2,000 miles from home to the Arizona Complex League, where his dad now works as the team's special assistant to the GM.

• A full-circle pick: Jim hit 134 home runs for the White Sox in the late 2000s, and remains close to the organization — making Landon's selection there feel less like coincidence than continuation.

• The numbers behind the name: Nazareth Academy's Gatorade Player of the Year batted .532 his senior year and stole 59 of 60 bases, earning a $2.5 million signing bonus far beyond his dad's own 13th-round start.

• Same humility, new generation: Mom Andrea calls Landon a "Jim twin" — he opens and closes the interview by thanking Cleveland Magazine, and talks more about bonding with fellow draftees than about his own draft slot.

• Dad's advice travels well: Jim's mantra — baseball's a game of failure, so find something small to "put in the basket" every day — is one Landon says he's carrying into 115-degree Arizona ball.

Worth Noting: Cleveland fans who remember Jim's blue-collar legend — the $50 pizza tips, the self-delivered UPS packages — will recognize the same instincts already showing up in his son, four days after the biggest phone call of his life. 

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

Cleveland Public Library workers walk out at noon today. After 11 months and 35 bargaining sessions, SEIU Local 1199 heads to the picket line with no further talks scheduled before the deadline — the union is asking for a 10% raise over three years; the library's latest offer includes a 0% third-year raise and pricier healthcare. Branches stay open under a limited-operations plan.

RTA riders are adjusting to a leaner system. The B-Line Trolley is gone for good and nine bus routes saw service cuts as of last week — part of a 3% reduction the agency says was needed to close a budget gap. A second round of cuts could come in December, and GCRTA is still eyeing a sales-tax levy ask for next May.

Cleveland is pumping the brakes on data centers for three more months. City Council advanced a moratorium on new standalone data center construction while the city rewrites zoning rules that don't currently define the buildings — fallout from this summer's rejected $1.6 billion Slavic Village data center permit.

More laid-off CMSD teachers are heading back into classrooms today. A Fox 8 follow-up found additional recalls beyond the 60 already brought back under a district-union deal, with roughly three-quarters of one group of laid-off teachers expected to return — welcome news as the district's 278 spring layoff notices loom over the first day of school.

Music: Akron's Killer Video celebrates and archives dead media. 

By Annie Nickoloff

An endless scroll of genres is readily available on most streaming platforms, but just as many titles can be found at Akron’s nostalgic Killer Video. The movie rental museum and shop prides itself on having just as many movies to offer in its VHS and DVD collections.

• Rows of Options: The museum and business recently received a substantial donation, making its collection offer more titles than Netflix. It has more than 2,000 VHS and DVD movies on display, paired with a couple thousand artifacts from founder Jonathon Carmichael's years of working in Hollywood.

• Horror Flicks: The scary movies make up the bulk of the appropriately titled organization’s collection; Carmichael estimates that his bank of horror movies is double what’s available on either of two leading horror streaming services, Shudder and Screambox.

• Rental Era: In the digital media era, Killer Video aims to preserve the movie rental experience that died as streaming grew in popularity. For about three decades, from the 1980s through the 2000s, perusing the video rental shop was practically a rite of passage, Carmichael says.

Jonathon Carmichael: “It was a true cultural phenomenon worldwide. There are not a lot of things that last that long, that so many people have this shared happiness and shared good memories and nostalgia for.” 

Though the museum items are not available for purchase, Killer Video hosts a separate rental store for members to enjoy. The business also puts on a variety of events, including a monthly horror trivia night, movie viewings and its popular Dead Media Markets, where regional vendors sell their nostalgic media and collections with an expanding community. 

Read more about Killer Video in our "going analog" series.

Things to do This Week

Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra (Aug. 27): As part of Summers at Severance, Franz Welser-Möst is conducting the opening of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Deutsch’s Intensity and Strauss’ Symphonia domestica. Welser-Möst has spent 25 years as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, and his chemistry with the musicians and the compositions are sure to make for a breathtaking performance. 7 p.m., $22-$76, 11001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, clevelandorchestra.com

moCa Fall Opening Night Celebration (Aug. 28): With a new season of exhibitions, the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art invites old and new friends to join in celebrating contemporary art for an evening. The exhibits of Jody Pinto, Tishan Hsu, Rachel Rose and Faye Wei Wei are designed to make you think about identity and the environment around you in new ways. Take this night to engage in community, art and reflection. 6 p.m.-9 p.m., Free, 11400 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, mocacleveland.org

Cleveland Guardians vs Kansas City Royals (Aug. 28): Head out to Progressive Field for a busy night at the ballpark, including Free Shirt Friday, Dollar Dog Night, $2 Pregame and Phantom Fireworks. This is a night full of perks that you don’t want to miss! 7:10 p.m., $27-$152, 2401 Ontario St., Cleveland, mlb.com

Friday's Trivia Answer

The westernmost part of the Western Reserve – in present-day Huron and Erie County – was known as this, ostensibly because it was for people who’d been burned out of their homes during the American Revolution? Firelands

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

Cleveland's students are back today. It is the district's first full school year since last year's consolidation, with new cellphone-free classrooms and ID badges to boot. It's easy to focus on what changed: fewer buildings, familiar faces in unfamiliar hallways, new rules to adjust to. But worth remembering on Day One: none of that matters much once the bell rings and a teacher starts class. Good luck to CMSD's students, teachers and staff this year. We'll be watching how it goes.

— Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

Have a story idea? Tell us what we should cover at conversation@clevelandmagazine.com.

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