Cleveland Stadium was the home of the Cleveland Indians of the American League.

Cleveland Stadiumn, aka "The Mistake by the Lake", was built in 1931 as home to the 1932 Olympic Games. What's that, you ask? The 1932 Cleveland Olympics? Exactly. Thus, the mistake. Cleveland never got the games. They went to Los Angeles. And so, Cleveland was left with an 80,000 seat stadium on the shore of Lake Erie. The Indians played their games at League Park, a cozy 22,000 seat stadium on the east side of town and were more than likely content to stay there. However, somebody had to use this big thing by the lake, so the Tribe began splitting their time between League Park and Cleveland Stadium. At times, the ballpark was called Municipal Stadium, but I am not sure of the naming history. Finally, in 1947, League Park was abandoned for good and the big ballpark became the permanent home of the Indians.

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I saw the place in it's final season, a month before it closed down for good as a baseball stadium. It was quite a sight. "Huge" doesn't begin to describe it. I had tickets for a Saturday afternoon game, but arrived the night before. The Tribe were playing a doubleheader and the 2nd game had just begun, so I drove to the park to catch the nightcap. As I walked up to the gate, the art-deco brick facade towered above me. It was an awesome and beautiful sight.

I actually snuck into a game for the first and only time that night. They wouldn't let me in without a ticket, but the ticket booths were closed, so I made some lame excuse about having left after the first game and forgotten my camera lens. They let me in and I quickly tried to lose myself in the sea of empty seats. You see, Cleveland Stadium had a lot of empty seats.

There were a lot of good and bad things about Cleveland Stadium. The primary problem with the place was the size. It was simply too big for a baseball stadium. Simple physics required that a great deal of the seats were very far from the field. The upper deck was so massive and covered so much of the lower deck that to sit down below gave the feeling of sitting in a deep, dark cave... even on a beautiful sunny day! The food was nothing much to speak of and the wind off the lake during that night game was brutal.

Despite the above problems, I really liked the place. The pillars and the outrageously massive roof were breathtaking to behold. It had a tragic majesty about it; a sense of potential unfulfilled, dreams never realized, like so many lost Tribe seasons and the Olympics that never were.