Jacobs Field

From Ballpark Roadtrip

Jacobs Field

Cleveland, OH

Boston Red Sox @ Cleveland Indians*

St. Louis Cardinals @ Cleveland Indians

July 5, 2001*

July 6, 2001

Contents 1 The Road Trip 2 The Park 3 The Game 4 Next Stop: Toronto!

The Road Trip

Our journey to Jacobs Field will go down in Ballpark Roadtrip history as the asterisked park, like Roger Maris' 61* homers in the record books. We certainly did not plan to attend the July 6th game vs the Sox but things don't always work out the way we had planned, sometimes for the worse but sometimes for the better. Our scheduled game for July 5th was a day game at Cinergy Field. After the game we took a ride through Columbus since Cooter had graduated from Ohio State, or "The Ohio State University". He gave us a deluxe tour of the town and university and we realized that the amount of money which OSU puts through their athletic department is greater than the GNP of many somewhat civilized countries. It is absolutely amazing/ridiculous how focused they are on sports. Kinda ironic since Cooter is a pretty smart guy but certainly not gifted in the athletic department. After our grand tour including the predominantly gay neighborhood in which Cooter used to live (never realized that Columbus was a liberal hotbed), we made our way back up to Cleveland where we were spending the night in the Hampton Inn Downtown Cleveland. It was twilight and we were approaching Cleveland from the south, we noticed that the lights were on at the Jake - we had never even considered whether or not the tribe was at home tonight. Lumpy quickly remembered that the Sox were in town to face in the Indians. At this time, the Sox were looking like they'd give the Yankees a run in the AL East and the tribe would certainly roll past an overrated Twins team (hindsight is 20/20!), so this was a BIG game. It was about 9:00 and Colon was on fire going into the fifth. We decided, for kicks, to take a trip around the stadium and see if there were any scalpers still hangin out looking to get rid of some tickets. We were the only car on the street and it seemed like this guy came crawling out of the bushes with tickets in his hand. We pulled over and started negotiating through the window. This guy wanted a ridiculous amount of money for a game that was half over. We were standing firm on $10 a piece. He was haggling and haggling and eventually handed us the tickets to look them over or whatever which brings up Rule # 407 of scalping:

If the scalper hands you the tickets in the middle of negotiations, the ball is in your court. He wants you to get used to having them in your hands so you don't back out of the deal. Stand firm on your price.

He was still being fickle and we were missing the game so Mike handed him the tickets back and told Cooter to forget it and drive away. The guy caved we finally had the tickets for $10 ea. Lumpy and Mike hopped out to head in while Cooter and Dauber parked the car. We were so stoked to be able to squeeze an extra, totally unexpected, game into our trip, especially since it was the Red Sox vs. Indians.

After the Red Sox game, we'd spend the night at our hotel right down the street from the Jake, and return on Friday night for the Cardinals game.

The Park

When we originally started thinking about taking on this road trip challenge, Jacobs Field was high on our list of anticipated ballparks and it did not disappoint one bit. The Jake is conveniently located in downtown Cleveland, walking distance from the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame which is more like the Bono Hall of Fame. One thing we noticed right away which is consistent with the "new era" ballparks is that you can see right into the park from the surrounding streets. Perhaps the best decision we made was to take a tour of the Jake on Friday afternoon. We were pleasantly surprised that they give tours on game days. The cost is $6 and you can get tickets at the Jacobs Field gift shop which is entered from the outside of the park (you don't need a game ticket to enter the gift shop). Speaking of the gift shop, it was pretty cool that they had a display case with historic Indians garb with the "politically incorrect" depictions of Chief Wahoo. Was all that controversy really necessary? One journalist wrote that Chief Wahoo was demeaning to Native Americans because of the stereotypes displayed with the red skin and buck teeth. Does Chief Wahoo have buck teeth? His dental work looks pretty good and since when was there a stereotype that Native Americans have buck teeth!?!?

So we got tickets to go on the Jake Tour and it was awesome! We thought we would get a cheezy tour of how they refill the mustard bottles and change out the hockey pucks in the urinals but we were in for a treat as we had access to almost all parts of the Jake except for the grass on the field. We started out in the press box and the tour guide explained that they give the best seats in the box to the newspaper reporters because that was the medium that originally gave coverage to baseball. We spent a decent amount of time getting loads of info from the tour guides. They both knew an awful lot of about the Jake were able to pull loads of stats off the top of their heads. She said that the Jake had the biggest scoreboard in baseball until Comerica opened. Now, take look at the scoreboard and explain how they can actually call all of those ads "scoreboard". It may be a big board but there ain't much scoring being displayed on it! There are older parks with scoreboards which give much more info. There are a few other dynamic displays in the stadium. One which you can't see in the photo is a circular monitor right behind one of the window columns which always shows a photo of the current batter. One of the guides also explained that they have a contract with the MLB Umpires Association to not show replays which contain umpire decisions of a questionable matter. This is so lame! The NFL refs would love to not have 60,000 people booing them as they watch a replay on the MEGATRON showing a blown call; then the coach gets to appeal via the instant replay rule and prove that the ref blew the call. Players are analyzed via every statistic a sportswriter can think up yet we never hear of any accuracy stat for umpires.

They took us into the luxury box area in right field, we were surprised the cost was not as high as expected; if you could actually get a big group together the price was around $100-$150 pp which isn't too bad since it includes food and beverage delivered right to the suite. They have a playground for the kids set up, you don't need special tickets to enter. The concourse is very wide and has great views of the field so you can still see the game while waiting in line at the sushi counter. This trait is common among the new parks as is the standing area that they have behind the lower level seating. If you are sitting in the upper deck you're welcome to come down and get a better view from the standing room area to see some of the different angles at the park. From the right field concourse you can see the players parking lot. We were told that Jim Thome is always the first one there driving in his Hummer as he arrives at 2:30 for a night game to begin his warmups.

The tour brought us down to the Indians clubhouse and we saw the warmup area right behind their dugout which included several batting cages, one of which has the first pitching machine to throw knuckleballs. An interesting fact, the Indians DH warms up in the batting cages behind the dugout before his at bat, like a reliever in the pen, should be a decided advantage for the Cleveland battery. We were then able to walk into the dugout and out onto the track in front of the dugout, just don't go on the grass! We asked if we could pick up the bullpen phone to pose for a photo but were denied because some bigshot with the front office was there. We were surprised that we were even allowed into the Indians dugout which, against tradition, is the 3rd base dugout.

We were told that the plans for the stadium simply called for the better facilities to be on the 3rd base side so the Indians has to file for permission with the League to use what is usually the Visitors dugout. The tour talked in detail about all of the aspects of the park which were borrowed from other stadiums like their "green monster" and the center field bleachers being borrowed from Wrigley Field, etc. They also boast that the lighting on the field is engineered to maximize the visibility of the ball under all conditions in all directions. If you get the chance to go to a game at the Jake, take the time to go on the tour. From now on we will probably try and hit more stadium tours hoping that they are half as thorough as Jacobs Field.

The Game

We arrived to the unoffical game* on Thursday night in the sixth inning where Bartolo Colon had a no-hitter against the Red Sox and took it into the 7th. Upon arrival, Lumpy started rooting for the Sox and heckling the Indians fans with lines like, "What do you expect from a team who lost the World Series in '97 to the Florida Marlins? What's up with that?" and "Jim Thome looks out of breath to me, maybe he should lose a few more teeth so he can get more oxygen." Colon would give up a run in the 7th and Trot Nixon would hit a 2 run blast in the 8th. Lumpy was making a lot of enemies but there were a few Sox fans starting to join in the rally. Wickman would bail him out and Rocker would take the mound in the 9th for a save op in a 4-3 ballgame. The P.A. thundered with "Rock You Like a Hurricane" as he charged out to the mound. He'd get "rocked" all right as Jose Offerman would single home 2 runs with 2 outs. Seeing Rocker blow a save was awesome! Derrick Lowe, who is also blown-save prone sealed the deal in the bottom of the 9th and the Sox would steal a victory from a gem of an outing by Colon. This was an exciting game and we were excited that we were able to squeeze this one into our schedule.

We'd return on Friday for the night game against the Cardinals and were looking forward to this hot rookie Albert Pujols. We had 2 tickets behind home plate and 4 tickets in right field. There were enough empty seats next to Mike and Lumpy to accomodate all of us but one lady refused to give up one empty seat so we could all sit together. Lucky for her the Tribe would win this one handily otherwise she would have gotten a massive dose of heckling.

Pros: Stadium design, food selection, ballpark tour, town of Cleveland, views from seats, featured team of movie Major League, witty advice from local cab drivers.

Cons: Tour guide would not let us play with the bullpen phone.

Next Stop: Toronto!