Cleveland Indians Tickets Tickets

BEFORE THIS STADIUM was torn down in 1997, its most dis¬tinctive feature was outside the ballpark: the huge Wahoo Indians logo that towered above the entrance as you approached from Lake Shore Boulevard. This grinning Indian, Chief Wahoo, has been a symbol of the Cleve-land Indians for many generations of baseball fans, and remains one of the most recognizable, long-lived logos in professional sports. It proudly welcomed fans to an otherwise inhospitable facility.

Municipal Stadium was often referred to as the Mistake by the Lake. This stadium was built to attract the 1932 Summer Olympics, which instead ended up in Los Angeles. In order to justify its construction, the city of Cleveland per¬suaded the Indians, who were playing in League Park at the time, to play some weekend games at Municipal. The city did not maintain League Park properly, so as it, deteriorated, the Indians had no choice but to play all their games in Municipal. Its location, close to Lake Erie, made for less than, pleasant conditions when the wind blew in from the water. Its size, with a seating capacity of 78,000, resulted in the large majority of games having more empty seats than fans. It was always clear that Municipal was simply not built for baseball.

Fortunately for Cleveland fans, Jacobs Field replaced Municipal in 1994 and is perennially sold out. The Indians have been contenders ever since the new stadium opened. Sometimes a new ballpark makes all the difference.

DAVE NEMEC (AUTHOR) "It was both the best and the worst place to watch a ball game. When the Indians were a great team in the 1950s and late 1940s and they drew crowds of upwards of seventy thousand, there was no more wonderful place ever to watch a ball game. The place was really hopping. It was a huge, cavernous stadium. When the team started falling on hard times in the late 1950s through almost the mid-1990s, it was absolutely the worst place to watch a ball game. You'd get five or six thou-sand people there in a stadium that could seat over eighty thousand. There was very little crowd noise, as the Indians were usually losing. You felt lonely, isolated, and quite depressed."

BOB MURPHY (BROADCASTER) "What I remember is the tremendous size of the place and how terribly cold that building would get. It would gel into July before it would really start to warm up. It was a massive building, not good for baseball at all."

BRIAN ANDERSON "First stadium as a kid was old Cleveland Stadium. We all had our own personal vendor. And we banged on the seats; maybe we could get a rally, which was two or three times a year."
CARLOS BAERGA "I never thought that it would be so impressive. I used to see ballparks in Puerto Rico, but not something like that, to see so many fans coming to the game."

GREG VAUGHN "Wow... Cleveland, old Cleveland Stadium. I was twenty-one years old, so it was an experience . . . Even when I watched it on TV, I said, 'I'm going to be down there someday.'"