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Around the nation, much is made of the miserable crowds at Indians games. But think about what they've seen when they've gone to the games. Sometimes it's a wonder anyone shows up. Would you go back to a restaurant that gave you ptomaine poisoning?
For their thirty-four sad seasons, the Indians have played in the worst stadium in the major leagues. It is a depressing, Depression-built structure of eighty thousand seats teetering on the edge of Lake Erie. It catches the brunt of every weather front that blows down from Alberta, Canada. Games have been called because of rain, sleet, snow, even fog. In July the bugs were thicker than the crowds, and players would rather step to home plate with a fly swatter than a bat. Pitcher Jim Kern once had to leave a game when he swallowed a moth.
The place had poles that wrecked your view -- perhaps an act of mercy considering what Cleveland fans were forced to watch on the field. Some nights the stadium reeked of beer and stale hot dogs. Imagine working out next to a guy who was sweating out a three-day drunk; that's how it sometimes smelled at Cleveland Stadium.
No wonder this confused poor Herb Score. The voice of this franchise for thirty years and one of the symbols of its lost promise, in May 1993 Score said on the air, "Oh, my. The Indians have just walked the bases loaded on ten straight pitches."
Well, it was twelve, but after a while, who was counting?
The franchise has been the worst funded, the worst managed...the worst of the worst. The remarkable aspect of this franchise is not how few people have gone to the games over the years but that anyone bothered to go at all. That is why in my town they sell T-shirts that say cleveland, you gotta be tough.
Well, we have been, but so have the times. And to think it all looked so promising once, only a lifetime ago.
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