Cleveland: Progressive Field
Distance comes in droves.
I’ve had this date circled on my calendar since I started planning this trip to all 30 MLB ballparks. Cleveland is about two-and-a-half hours up I-71 from where I live. I go there several times a year for work. I pop up whenever a band I really like doesn’t schedule a Columbus date.1 Many of my oldest friends — by tenure of relationship, not by “damn, you’re old” measures — live in Cleveland and its many suburbs. I admire the old city feel, the ethnic neighborhoods, the architecture, the industry, the lake shore… all of it. Even the axle-breaking potholes.
So why the fuck haven’t I been to a baseball game here in 20 years?
The last ticket stub I have from a Cleveland baseball game, dated June 12, 2004, has two words printed on it that you won’t find on a ticket in 2024: “Jacobs” and “Indians.” The former being the original name of the field before selling naming rights to Progressive in 2008, the latter being the eighth name of the franchise known today as the Guardians.2 Sometimes change is for the worse, and sometimes change is for the better.
I’m not 100% sure if this was the last time I’d visited The Jake — yeah, I still prefer to call it that — but I honestly can’t remember the last time I set foot in that building. Not that I don’t have plenty of good memories there:
April 21, 1999: My first ever game at The Jake. My buddy Scott3 and I were sophomores in college at Bowling Green and somehow he got his hands on two tickets during the sellout streak. Cleveland rallied from 4-0 down to beat the A's on a Kenny Lofton sac bunt attempt botched by A.J. Hinch that brought the winning run all the way around from first base. The place absolutely exploded: I'd never witnessed an energy and excitement like that in a crowd, probably because I grew up as a Detroit fan.
Fast forward almost two years later, and Scott and I are again at The Jake on April 8, 2001 for the major league debut of Mr. Carsten Charles Sabathia. The kid had some nerves, giving up three runs in the 1st to the O's, but settled in and allowed only two more baserunners before being pulled in the 6th. Cleveland ended up coming back to win 4-3, and Scott and I knew we had witnessed the beginning of a special career.
By mid-2004, I had moved from Bowling Green to Columbus. It’s roughly a two hour drive to downtown Cleveland from either spot, but it just feels further from my new home than my old one. That probably has more to do with starting over in a new city, working odd hours, making peanuts and overall just trying to figure out who I was. Baseball — at least in-person — took a backseat to reality.
Distance is a remarkable thing. You can keep it, you can feel it, you can measure it, you can travel it, you can even stare into it. One thing I’m looking forward to on this trip — but also something that makes me nervous — is reaching out and reconnecting with people all over the country when I’m popping into their towns for a ballgame. Between my beer family,4 my extended rock band family and my actual blood relatives, I’ve got people in nearly every MLB city.
However, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always the best friend, cousin, colleague, what have you. Introversion is partly to blame, as is anxiety, as is some inexcusable self-centeredness. I certainly haven’t done enough to stay on most people’s Christmas card lists. I want to overcome this habit of making and keeping distance in general and on this trip in particular.
If there’s a big league team in your city and I haven’t reached out to you, it’s not that I don’t want to. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t yet. Or maybe, because I haven’t put in the work to maintain our relationship, I don’t know that you now live in a city that I will be rolling through over the next two months. If you want to help me bridge the distance that may have developed between us, please drop me a line, pop a comment down below or hit me up on Instagram.
Knowing that I wanted to make the effort to reconnect with people and also that this Guardians game would essentially be my send-off for sabbatical, I invited a ton of people to join me for my first visit to The Jake — er, Progressive Field — in 20 years. Lesson learned the hard way: you can only buy eight tickets to a Cleveland game with a single MLB Ballpark account. I needed 12 in total, so I enlisted the help of my wife to be a straw buyer for the last four tickets and then transfer them to me.
Erin and I hit the road early, picking up my longtime friend and bandmate Kyle (Sowash of The Kyle Sowashes) for the trek from Columbus to Cleveland. We picked up my longer time friend and former bandmate Scott (currently of Yankee Ghost, formerly of treysuno) in Berea on the way to Noble Beast Brewing Company to meet yet another longtime friend/current and former bandmate, Nick, and his wife Amy for lunch and drinks.
After some seriously impressive beer and fare, our sextet braved the early heatwave and walked to Masthead Brewing for another round and one of their extraordinary wood-fired pizzas, peering down Superior Ave. on our way in the door to see if we could catch a glimpse of Superman.
I was intent not to miss out on the Josh Naylor bobblehead giveaway, especially after seeing earlier that morning that people had been pre-selling them on eBay for more than $60 each before they had even been handed out. Does that qualify as a futures market? We again trudged through the heat to Progressive Field, quickly navigated the lines to the right field gate, grabbed our bobbleheads and procured a number of pre-game special $2 Miller Lite cans that cannot be calculated using only human digits.
Progressive Field has been undergoing major renovations since last season, and is not expected to be fully completed until Opening Day next year. As it is, walking through the concourses and seeing large sections behind barriers or covered in plywood makes one feel as if you may be asked to grab a nail gun and get to work. It’s like going to a housewarming party where the new owners have gutted the kitchen and offer only perfunctory furniture for guests to sit on.
That said, the first phase of renovations is impressive. The concourses are divided into “districts” that enhance the communal feel of attending a ballgame. There’s a thoughtful effort here to not just have a ballpark in the city, but to have the ballpark be part of the city. Locally-owned food and beverage companies have a very strong and visible presence at Progressive Field, considerably more than I have noticed at the six other parks I have visited so far this year. The experience is very much curated to be a microcosm of the city of Cleveland itself, which is an approach I think more ballparks should embrace.
Our sextet became a duodecet shortly after first pitch as we were joined by our drummer Dan and his family, our friends Jon and Nicole from Cleveland and our friend Brian from Columbus who pounced on an extra ticket we had on the morning of the game.
Critics of the modern game opine that too much scoring in baseball is dependent on the home run and that focusing on sporadic raw offensive power detracts from the excitement and nuance of baseball. Those critics would likely have been raving at this game, as all six of Cleveland’s runs and all three of Toronto’s were scored on home runs (four hit by the Guardians and three by the Blue Jays.) I promise you, none of the sellout crowd of Cleveland faithful were upset to see their boys knocking balls out of the yard. I, however, watched my fantasy-rostered utility man Isiah Kiner-Falefa thwack two solo homers, sulking when I realized that I left him on my bench, negating any personal benefit from his uncharacteristic show of muscle.
With a dozen music nerds in our group, we couldn’t help but indulge our curiosity about the free postgame concert featuring former Cleveland Cavalier backup center Shaquille O’Neal5 under his music producer moniker Diesel. I had listened to his most recent album before buying tickets to this game. Hey, I’m not a fan of EDM or dubstep or whatever it is that Shaq says he’s making, so I’m not equipped to be the hype man here. The few hundred club kids who bought $25 field passes to wave their arms at Shaq and hope for a chance to be pulled on stage for a selfie? Those are your five star reviewers.
For an hour, Diesel played the first verse and chorus of seemingly every song on the official white people wedding playlist before the drop came down like a hammer time and time again. It was confounding, maybe a little dumb, certainly pandering, but undeniably entertaining to witness.
When the Progressive Field renovations are complete in 2025, I’ll be sure to come back here and see the finished product. As is, it’s a work in progress, getting better with the promise of even more improvement to come. I certainly won’t wait another 20 years to visit again.
Now, if I can just translate that sentiment to my friendships…
NEXT GAMES:
Miami Marlins at Philadelphia Phillies, Saturday, June 29, 4:05 p.m., Citizens Bank Park
Texas Rangers at Baltimore Orioles, Sunday, June 30, 7:10 p.m., Oriole Park at Camden Yards
New York Mets at Washington Nationals, Monday, July 1, 6:45 p.m., Nationals Park
Houston Astros at Toronto Blue Jays, Wednesday, July 3, 7:07 p.m., Rogers Centre
Soundtrack:
English Teacher - This Could Be Texas
King Hannah - Big Swimmer
La Luz - News of the Universe
Despite being a metro area of more than two million people and growing faster than any other in Ohio, touring bands have always had to have their arms twisted to play here.
In 1899, the franchise played in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the team was known as the Furniture Makers. They moved to Cleveland in 1900 and were known as the Lake Shores, Bluebirds, Bronchos and Naps before a group of local sportswriters decided to rip off the newly-christened Boston Braves shortly after that team won the World Series in 1914.
Twenty-five years after going to our first ballgame together, Scott and I will be hitting the road for games in Minneapolis, Kansas City, Arlington, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, Anaheim, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco this summer. Buckle up.
Shout out to all the always overworked, often underappreciated non-profit state brewers guild professionals across the country. It was almost exactly two years ago at our biennial summit when I started to put it together that I was suffering from burnout, as a *lot* of us in these jobs are. I absolutely love having you all in my corner and I’ve always got your back when you need it.
I am knowingly and playfully minimizing the big man’s hall of fame career. All respect to the L.C.L.
Love my hometown and team! Pretty sure my last game was 1997 for my bachelorette party then we hit the Flats. Bunny thought it was a good idea to invite my mom. 😳🤣
"Posing for our Christian ska band album cover at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario."
"Jericho Bricks" really took off once they got their Horn section sorted