Scrote Squad
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac_clevela/ac_clevela_ts3766
By Justice B. Hill, Associated Content
Summer had rolled into fall, but this warm, humid Friday night at Progressive Field felt like a night in mid-August more than one in late September.
With temperatures in the 80s, fans should have flocked to the downtown ballpark on Carnegie Avenue and Ninth Street, even though their Indians were playing the gosh-awful Kansas City Royals.
The game itself featured a pair of 90-loss teams that were trying to stay out of the cellar in the American League Central Division. So even with fireworks as part of the post-game show, the prospects of cheering for two of baseball's worst teams didn't seem overly appealing.
"Team's bad; economy's bad," said Rick Balasz, a law student at the University of Virginia and a Cleveland native who was at the game. "It's just not the cool thing to do."
Cool?
Well, the Indians don't exude cool anymore.
Not too long ago, any weekend night would have filled the ballpark with people — 43,405 jammed into the aisles and concourses back when Progressive wore the name Jacobs Field. In those halcyon days, "The Jake" shook with excitement. On those warm nights in the bleachers, John Adams, with his kettledrum next to him, would pound a steady melody that stoked emotions and ignited the Indians.
But his drum was silent this September night. Adams himself was missing. So were 18,000 others who would, back in The Jake days, never have missed a ballgame in the waning days of the baseball season — particularly a game on Fireworks Night. The Indians were the show then; they were the hottest, sexiest ticket for sports fans.
The Indians were cool.
The shelf-life of cool lasts about as long as unrefrigerated milk. Fans are fickle about cool, an unsettling fact for the Indians organization. It has watched cool turn into indifference, and indifference has left seats unfilled — thousands of unfilled seats each night, even on days made for baseball. People know they have better things to do with their time and their cash. They want to see a good show, not a roster of cheap, no-name talents who are trying to hone their skills for later years.
"Star power puts people in the seats," Balasz says.
Getting baseball fans like Balasz to put their fannies in $15 seats has proved difficult for an Indians ownership that has seen the life sapped out of the franchise.
Some people and most sports talk show hosts in town blame ownership. They say its tightfistedness has left fans so disillusioned they would rather wile away whatever warm days remain in this Indian summer anywhere else but at Progressive Field.
So empty seats outnumbered filled seats. The cacophony of sounds that used to shake the ballpark to its rivets had become a hum in comparison, and this was a good night, a night that offered fans fireworks with their baseball, peanuts and Cracker Jack.
Fireworks aren't an every-night affair, so it is baseball — good, exciting and winning baseball — that draws the crowds.
They did see winning baseball on this warm night — a rare sight, indeed, for a team with more than 90 losses. But the Tribe's 7-3 victory came against the Royals, a team as lousy as the Indians are.
That's what baseball has become now. It looks much like the bad baseball played at old Municipal Stadium, a ballpark where gimmicks and discounted tickets were what the Indians relied on to fill seats.
They will have to offer more next season, it seems, if the organization expects fans to return to Progressive Field and have it rockin' and rollin' as they did back when the ballpark had "Jacobs Field" on its marquee.