I miss the sell-outs man.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/cleiatte.shtml
You have to wonder when was Cleveland a "baseball" town. They didn't sell out the 1st 2 years in Jacobs Field. The 111 win team in 1954 averaged 17,000 +. The period between 1997 and 2000 is when they averaged 40,000. You COULD say that attendance has regressed toward the mean.
I love baseball and am happy to be living near an MLB team (I moved to the Canton area from the Buffalo area in 1996). I try to go to 2-4 games a year. If Shapiro's marketing strategy is to bring up the nostalgia of going to the ballpark, I'm not sure that's going to work...
When I moved here in '96, I went to a Canton-Akron Indians game at Thurman Munson. Nice time, nice park with mainly bleacher seating. The next year, Canal Park is built in Akron. Canal Park is 50x better than what Thurman Munson is. In 1996 there were 2 pro ball teams in NE Ohio. Now there are 5 (Akron, Lake County, Mahoning Valley, Cleveland and Lake Erie). I've been to Classic Park in Eastlake. It's a great park to watch a game. I'm sure that the parks in Avon and Niles are nice too. Those places average 2500-4000 a game. If I'm to show up for a "great night at the ball park with hot dogs and beer, etc", I could do that in Akron, or if I'm an eastsider, Eastlake, or if I'm in Y-town, I could see the Scrappers. And at a lower price than the $3.50/gal gas, $10 parking and $20 ticket that I spend to go to Progressive.
The mid-late 90s Indians were marketable, you knew who Belle, Thome, Ramirez, Omar, Robbie and Sandy were. Who's like that on the team now? Kipnis? Santana? C. Perez-but more for the things he says off the field.
Front office has a lot of work to do for attendance to be a respectable (25,000 +) a game.