3. Jacobs Field a.k.a. Progressive Field
Despite my not being a Cleveland Indians fan, Jacobs Field is my home turf. 63 of the 99 MLB games I have been to were at the cathedral at the corner of Carnegie & Ontario. In 2008 the name was changed to Progressive Field due to the wonders of stadium naming rights, but pretty much everyone still calls it The Jake, and more importantly the stadium itself was unchanged beyond the signage.
This is a good thing, because Jacobs Field is a pretty fantastic park. Admittedly, I have some bias, but of the 24 parks I've been to thus far only a few jump to mind as being clearly better than the Jake. The sight lines to the field are great and during breaks you can see the city out over the center field wall. The scoreboard was pretty good when it opened, but the tenth anniversary refurbishment in 2004 put in a truly gigantic screen. There's the statue of Bob Feller watching over one of the gates, more history in Heritage Park, and the greatest fan in baseball, John Adams drumming in the bleachers. The food is plentiful (at least on the main level) and while it may not have the wide range of options of some newer parks, the standard ballpark hot dog has real stadium mustard and not that cheap yellow shit.
The league tends to agree with Cleveland's high ratings of its park. Sports Illustrated rated it #1 as recently as 2008, despite there being many newer parks and the Indians themselves having, to put it politely, wildly uneven quality from year to year.
I personally have sat in basically every section. I like the upper deck behind home plate and the bleachers. The right field corner is easily the worst place to sit, and I haven't sat there since the Indians then record 455 game sellout streak ended at a game I attended in April 2001. However, back during the streak most of my tickets were student tickets through my college, so I sat up in that corner a bunch of times, including what may have been my first home Indians game.
May have been? I have a ticket stub for April 16, 1999. However, that game was rained out and I went to the doubleheader make up the next night on April 17. I know for certain that I was at that game, because
[a] The Tribe lost 13-8 to the Twins in extra innings
[b] I left with the Twins leading 8-7 in the top of the ninth inning. Wait, I left early? Yes, because jenny31978 was freezing and wanted to go home. Naturally, the Indians tied it in the bottom of the night, even if they did blow it later. I have extremely clear memories of gettinb back to the dorms and finding out we'd missed a rally. In the years since I've left fewer than five games early, and almost all of those were because one of my companions had to leave.
But was that my first game at the Jake? Maybe, but if not I can't prove it. My ticket stub collection didn't really get going until 1998. My carefully groomed event lists didn't start until 1998, and some of that was reconstructed after the fact, so I'm in the gray area of conjecture and memory. Here's what I know:
- I first moved to Cleveland in late August of 1996. I know I didn't go to a game that season; the Tribe had long sold every ticket before I set foot in town and with a great team tickets were very expensive.
- In 1997, I was only around in April, May, and September since I went home for the summer. I definitely went to a AA game at Akron in the spring before I went home, but I have no memory of having gone to the Jake in the spring. I *think* I went that fall, but I can't say for sure.
- I may have gone in 1998, but it would have to have been April or May as I moved to Kentucky that summer for co-op, or on one of the summer weekends I returned to Cleveland.
So the upshot is, I definitely absolutely veritably went to The Jake in 1999. I have this vague recollection that the April 1999 game wasn't my first time at the Jake, and given how much I love baseball it seems unlikely that I would have held off on going for nearly three years of time in Cleveland, even given the difficulty of getting tickets in that time period.
Oh well, I can't say for sure where I've started, but a whole lot has changed since then. Heck, now I've got season tickets. None of my season ticket games have been terribly memorable, but I do have some other fine moments the Jake beyond the sell out streak ending, including a whole bunch of home openers (I've missed two since 2002). Beyond that:
- I was there for the longest home opener in history.
- I was also there for the blizzard home opener, although technically I wasn't because the game was called and replayed later in Milwaukee.
- A 19-1 beatdown of the Yankees on George Steinbrenner's birthday. Don't look at me, you were invited.
- I saw Jim Thome's return to Cleveland. The crowd went nuts.
The only way this could be better is if the Oakland A's played there instead of the Cleveland Indians, but you can't have everything. I look forward to many more years at the Jake.
Park Rankings
RankParkTeamFirst Visit# Visits
1Jacobs FieldCleveland IndiansApril 17, 199963
2 The MetrodomeMinnesota TwinsJune 22, 19923
This is a good thing, because Jacobs Field is a pretty fantastic park. Admittedly, I have some bias, but of the 24 parks I've been to thus far only a few jump to mind as being clearly better than the Jake. The sight lines to the field are great and during breaks you can see the city out over the center field wall. The scoreboard was pretty good when it opened, but the tenth anniversary refurbishment in 2004 put in a truly gigantic screen. There's the statue of Bob Feller watching over one of the gates, more history in Heritage Park, and the greatest fan in baseball, John Adams drumming in the bleachers. The food is plentiful (at least on the main level) and while it may not have the wide range of options of some newer parks, the standard ballpark hot dog has real stadium mustard and not that cheap yellow shit.
The league tends to agree with Cleveland's high ratings of its park. Sports Illustrated rated it #1 as recently as 2008, despite there being many newer parks and the Indians themselves having, to put it politely, wildly uneven quality from year to year.
I personally have sat in basically every section. I like the upper deck behind home plate and the bleachers. The right field corner is easily the worst place to sit, and I haven't sat there since the Indians then record 455 game sellout streak ended at a game I attended in April 2001. However, back during the streak most of my tickets were student tickets through my college, so I sat up in that corner a bunch of times, including what may have been my first home Indians game.
May have been? I have a ticket stub for April 16, 1999. However, that game was rained out and I went to the doubleheader make up the next night on April 17. I know for certain that I was at that game, because
[a] The Tribe lost 13-8 to the Twins in extra innings
[b] I left with the Twins leading 8-7 in the top of the ninth inning. Wait, I left early? Yes, because jenny31978 was freezing and wanted to go home. Naturally, the Indians tied it in the bottom of the night, even if they did blow it later. I have extremely clear memories of gettinb back to the dorms and finding out we'd missed a rally. In the years since I've left fewer than five games early, and almost all of those were because one of my companions had to leave.
But was that my first game at the Jake? Maybe, but if not I can't prove it. My ticket stub collection didn't really get going until 1998. My carefully groomed event lists didn't start until 1998, and some of that was reconstructed after the fact, so I'm in the gray area of conjecture and memory. Here's what I know:
- I first moved to Cleveland in late August of 1996. I know I didn't go to a game that season; the Tribe had long sold every ticket before I set foot in town and with a great team tickets were very expensive.
- In 1997, I was only around in April, May, and September since I went home for the summer. I definitely went to a AA game at Akron in the spring before I went home, but I have no memory of having gone to the Jake in the spring. I *think* I went that fall, but I can't say for sure.
- I may have gone in 1998, but it would have to have been April or May as I moved to Kentucky that summer for co-op, or on one of the summer weekends I returned to Cleveland.
So the upshot is, I definitely absolutely veritably went to The Jake in 1999. I have this vague recollection that the April 1999 game wasn't my first time at the Jake, and given how much I love baseball it seems unlikely that I would have held off on going for nearly three years of time in Cleveland, even given the difficulty of getting tickets in that time period.
Oh well, I can't say for sure where I've started, but a whole lot has changed since then. Heck, now I've got season tickets. None of my season ticket games have been terribly memorable, but I do have some other fine moments the Jake beyond the sell out streak ending, including a whole bunch of home openers (I've missed two since 2002). Beyond that:
- I was there for the longest home opener in history.
- I was also there for the blizzard home opener, although technically I wasn't because the game was called and replayed later in Milwaukee.
- A 19-1 beatdown of the Yankees on George Steinbrenner's birthday. Don't look at me, you were invited.
- I saw Jim Thome's return to Cleveland. The crowd went nuts.
The only way this could be better is if the Oakland A's played there instead of the Cleveland Indians, but you can't have everything. I look forward to many more years at the Jake.
Park Rankings
RankParkTeamFirst Visit# Visits
1Jacobs FieldCleveland IndiansApril 17, 199963
2 The MetrodomeMinnesota TwinsJune 22, 19923