I have regularly done writeups of ballparks that we have visited, so I'm trying to get these posted so that they are all collected together. To come: Comerica Park, Citifield, and new Yankee Stadium.
Progressive Field in Cleveland, OH June 12 and 13 2010

This park was opened in 1995 as Jacobs Field, and is still known in some quarters as “the Jake”. It has a nice urban feel, with some downtown buildings in the background view from the stands. As we were on foot coming to the right field gate we did not get much of a sense of the building, but it is quite good-looking when driving by on the south – brick and high arches – and is also impressive from the sky (I flew into Cleveland, and was fortunate to have a pass over the downtown before landing). A sculpture/set of benches at the right field gate is a series of giant granite capital letters spelling out “WHOS ON FIRST’’, and must be a great landmark for meeting people. (A couple of blocks away in front of Quicken Loans Arena, nee Gund Arena, where the ice hockey team plays, there is a comparable sculpture for sitting on that spells out MEET ME HERE.)
Inside the park there is a sculpture/tribute garden to the Indians’ greats – on the first level all the players who are also in the MLB Hall of Fame, and lower down other players who have been honored by the team. There is also a plaque to the fans, for selling out Jacobs Field for 456 (or comparable number games) after the park opened.
We saw two games, the first a “turn back the clock” to the 1920’s with the Indians wearing uniforms from 1920, and the Nats wearing Senators’ uniforms from 1924. The screens were all in black and white, and ushers, vendors, and all other staff were wearing fedoras – lots of flappers, although some touches got beyond the 20s. There was also an orchestra playing popular favorites from the era and forward.
The Indians just blew away the Nats that night 7-1, and when the game was objectively evaluated (i.e., we stepped away from it and calmed down) we realized that Fausto Carmona, the pitcher, had been just brilliant – only faced 28 batters with three hits, but two of the hits were immediately followed by double plays – third hit was Ryan Zimmerman’s solo homer.
Saturday was also CHOO Shin-Soo bobblehead night, also the Indians’ new catcher, Carlos Santana, had just come up from the minors (and they do play “Black Magic Woman” as entrance music for him) – he is going to be really good, and I feel like we saw one of the next generation’s star players, like seeing Justin Hayward or Stephen Strasburg.
We were sitting right by the left field foul pole on Saturday night, and Josh Willingham tossed a foul ball to one of the kids sitting near us – father commented that they would have to find out who “16” was (remember, old uniforms, no names) so I told them about “the Hammer”. We had a nice chat, and they even offered me discount tickets for purchases in the team store.
The highlight souvenir, incidentally, is a plastic bottle of a local brown mustard which is available for the hot dogs in the park, and which is delicious. There are three mascots, Ketchup, Mustard, and (Ms.) Onion, who are available for pictures and who have a mid-game race. We were surprised that there was no Relish, which does seem to reflect regional differences. There is also a fuschia-colored mascot, Slider, who seems to be a sort of G-rated version of the Philly Phanatic.
Stephen Strasburg was pitching on Sunday, (second major league start) and some 10,000 additional tickets had been sold for the game. One thing we did notice was that the drummer in the outfield stands was not active while Strasburg was pitching, although did start in when the relief pitchers came in.
At one point in this game when the Nats were bringing in a relief pitcher they played “Hang On Sloopy”, with Nat Pack types leading this from the top of the dugouts, which included spelling out OHIO (a la YMCA) as a part of the chorus, so local – all in all, a wonderful relief from something homogenized like “Sweet Caroline”. (FYI, we found out the next day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that “Hang on Sloopy” is the state song of Ohio.)
There were a lot of people at Progressive Field who had come from Washington for the game, certainly more Nats fans than I have ever seen at another park other than OPACY. My husband Dennis regularly had a Nats shirt on during this trip, and did get a lot of people coming up to him in all different places, launching into comments about how “your boy” was doing – at least one person told us that he had come up from Florida to see Strasburg pitch.