Playing the Fields

In an era when live major-league baseball has retreated to pleasure palaces packed with flashing videos, blaring music, and gut-busting food courts, has the old-fashioned game lost something? Across seven ballparks in seven days, one fan goes looking for an answer

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GAME 4
Boston Red Sox vs. Cleveland Indians
Progressive Field, Cleveland
July 23, 2007

We're instant targets when we arrive at Progressive Field. Batting practice is still going on, which means the visiting big guns, Boston's David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, are cracking homers left and right into our section in the left field bleachers. Before we even sit down, a scorching shot from Big Papi almost plunks Dad in the noggin.

It doesn't take long to realize that our section is populated by Boston fans. (The couple next to us with a baby in a Red Sox onesie is the first clue.) The Red Sox nation is so powerful and so irritating it pretty much takes over the ballpark tonight, which is a shame, because Tribe fans are generally a proud folk.

Baltimore's Camden Yards kicked off the retro ballpark trend in 1992, but Progressive Field (known as Jacobs Field until this season) is generally considered the best example of the form. Locals have loved "The Jake" since the day it opened in 1994. But, in typical Cleveland fashion, Progressive Corp., a local insurance company, managed to alienate the bulk of Indians fans by laying off 341 workers in 2007, then promptly spending $58 million to put its name on the stadium. Most fans, understandably, still refer to it as The Jake.

Whatever you call the park, it's holding up nicely. The relative lack of video screen graphics and distractions competing for attention is a welcome respite. After three days of beer and hot dogs, the wide aisles are a relief. And an outdoor beer garden/picnic area beyond center field feels like a natural extension of the park instead of something plucked from a suburban strip mall. Heritage Park, a tree-shaded rotunda nearby, is downright magical considering how few of the players immortalized in it have hoisted a World Series trophy. Perhaps most touching is the old bronze plaque honoring Ray Chapman (1891-1920), the only player ever killed in a major-league game.

The view is great from the bleachers, especially if you're a Red Sox fan. Boston quickly jumps out to a five-run lead, and coasts the rest of the way. That, combined with a steady drizzle, seems to have lulled the home crowd. A fuchsia-toned shag carpet of a mascot called Slider tries to pep up the proceedings with all kinds of forced entertainment. (I am told that Cleveland fans loathe Slider so completely that some cheered when he fell off an outfield fence in 1995 and tore his anterior cruciate ligament.) A pathetic attempt at starting The Wave, courtesy of some overmatched teenager in flip-flops, fails miserably. When it's all over, the Indians have lost, 6-2, and the Boston fans file out smugly.

The home team is now 0-4 on this trip. We're officially a jinx.

A couple of miles outside the ballpark, I get pulled over by a trooper for doing 77 in a 65. The cop is in good spirits, though, and lets us go with a warning. I might have imagined it, but his accent sounded vaguely Bostonian.

This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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