Cleveland: We want to, we really want to... like Cleveland

Indians 7, Twins 2

(Randy's perspective)

I really wanted to like Cleveland. Penny says she felt the same way.
Cleveland is one of our local teams, at least what we can call local (since we don't actually live in a city). We live in West Virginia, on the Ohio River. We're two-and-a-half hours from Pittsburgh and Cleveland, a little more than three from Cincinnati. We, therefore, call Cleveland accessible. So, it would be nice to love going to an Indians game.
Here are some other reasons we should want to be Indians fans:

• The Indians are a nice story: a historically underachieving franchise in a challenging market. But they've had enough good years in the past few decades to always be taken seriously.
• The Indians have made a lot of right investments/moves during the past couple of years, including adding Terry Francona as manager. The guy seems to make good things happen, and, from the outside looking in, also seems to be a good guy.
• One of our (Parkersburg, West Virginia) hometown heroes is Nick Swisher, even though my former employer, The Associated Press, occasionally refers to him as an Ohio native. Just not true; he is from Parkersburg. ... Perhaps Nick, a former Ohio State player, perpetuates the "Ohio thing" when he trots in from a home run and makes the symbolic "O" arm motion, which he did during this game. ... (Now I know what you might be thinking. Nick thinks of Ohio as a superior territory to West Virginia. But it couldn't be that.)
• Drew Carey said "Cleveland Rocks." I want to believe Drew. But he knows places that I don't.
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. Penny and I have been there, and THAT is a cool place.
• And... I, being a lifelong Atlanta Braves fan, will always appreciate the Cleveland Indians. Starting in 1991, the Braves have made 17 playoff appearances, including five trips to the World Series. But we, in the World Series, vanquished only Cleveland.

Anyway, point is - again - we want to like Cleveland. But Cleveland doesn't always cooperate
As is true with any place, first impressions can be unfair. But our visit to Progressive Field for the Indians' home opener against the Twins was actually not our first visit to Cleveland.  And on this day, despite a relatively interesting game, the trip didn't make us feel any warmer toward (or in) the city. I say "in" because it was cold, cold, cold - and windy, windy, windy.

Actually, it was a fascinating weather day. Rainout was a possibility. The early weather reports said 100 percent chance of rain all day. Eventually they were revised to a slightly better outlook, 60 to 70 percent until mid-afternoon, 30 to 40 percent thereafter.
In the end, we got rain until 2-ish; scheduled starting time was 3:05. The game was delayed because of one final front expected to roll through around 4 p.m. The crowd, with the sun shining at 3:30 and the temperature in the mid 60's, booed the announcement that the game would be delayed until after the front passed.
Then the front hit. Solid rain, with wind.
After 45 minutes, the wind pushed the rain out - but the wind never died. In fact, it picked up to a steady 20 to 25 mph. And the temperature fell into the 40's.
Welcome to Opening Day in Cleveland.

That said, the game was a good Opening Day effort for the Indians. Twins starter Mike Pelfrey retired the first 12 Indians he faced, and the Twins, looking to be coasting, had a 2-0 lead going into the sixth. But then Yan Gomes hit a solo homer. A few batter later, Swisher, batting left-handed, hit a monster line drive, two-run homer to give the Indians a lead they wouldn't lose.
Swisher later almost hit a second homer, this time batting right-handed. It was a double off the wall in right-center.
Cleveland won, 7-2. The opening-day crowd, seemingly mellow to the point of bored in the early innings (no doubt, the cold and wind has something to do with that), got rowdy as the Indians piled on seven runs in the 6th and 7th innings.
Because of the weather, the less-hardy fans in the good seats fled to exits before the end of third inning. Sitting one row in front of us, six guys in their late twenties actually baled in the bottom of the second. One of them said, "I'm just not feeling this. Let's go to a warm bar." Off they went. Like sheep. Or lemmings.
But the stadium transformed starting around the fourth inning. Seventy-five percent of the upper-deck fans appeared to migrate to better lower-deck seats. The fact that they stayed and sought better seats pretty much means they are enthusiastic fans. That's what we determined when the crowd in the stadium got smaller but the noise level increased.
It was downright giddy by the seventh inning.

Before moving on, let me tell you something about Penny. I, because of Penny, am the envy of many, many men in our little city of Parkersburg.
First, she is great-looking, smart, funny and fun to be around - but that's not exactly what I'm talking about with this reference.
These men are envious because of this baseball journey.
More than once, this has happened.
ME: "I'm sorry, I can't do ...(whatever) ... this weekend because I'll be out of town,"
OTHER MALE: "Ok ... vacation?"
ME: "Sort of. Penny and I are visiting every Major League stadium. We're road-tripping to a ballpark this weekend."
OTHER MALE: "Oh, man. ... That would be great."

I say that to tell you that this stadium journey started out as kind of "lark" with Penny. "Hey, let's go see a baseball game while we're in San Francisco." That's how it started.
But the journey has evolved.
En route to Oakland, Game 1, she said: "What's this team we're going to see? The Oakland Who?
En route to Cleveland, Game 11, she said, "I really want to see the Bob Feller statue. And, hey, you know they actually call the park 'The Prog,' right?"
In other words, she's getting this baseball thing.
That said, Penny is fascinated by the dynamics of the crowds. She understands that during a late-August day game, with temperatures in the high 80's and the White Sox in last place, a crowd at U.S. Cellular Field will be relatively apathetic.
But she was amazed that the crowd was not more "into" the Indians home opener. A solid team, opening home game, just dodged a rainout, time to drink - she couldn't get over what she thought was a mellow crowd.
I understood what she was saying.
She and I both actually pay attention to how the stadiums interacts with fans. I'm old-school enough to remember when the game was the game - and that was enough. But I get that this is a different time. Penny digs the fan cameras and the music and shazzam-style scoreboards.
For stadiums we've visited so far, Atlanta and Baltimore set the bar high for crowd enthusiasm and stadium interaction. It's worth going to a game in Atlanta, for example, to see the theatrics when Craig Kimbrell comes in to close out a game.
As for Progressive Field, she wasn't impressed with the music, the fan cams or the scoreboard.
In a way, that is almost a tribute to Cleveland fans. They got into the game without a lot of artificial help.
One last note about the stadium.. There's a drummer in the left-field bleachers. He beats a bass drum - he's sort of a "rally drummer." His contributions were solid.

Anyway, here are few final other highlights (or lowlights) of our day in Cleveland:

• Driving to Cleveland was special, because we had to deal with Ohio drivers all the way to the stadium. West Virginians understand what I mean by that. Can you say: 60 MPH in the left lane of the interstate?
• On the way in, we tuned in to the Indians' flagship radio station, WTAM. We listened for more than three hours. The combined number of updated weather forecasts and traffic reports on the flagship station: ZERO.
• A traffic report would have been nice. We made the mistake of getting on Huron Street, which runs east-west from the stadium through downtown. We advanced 10 blocks of Huron Street in one hour and 15 minutes.
• A string ensemble from the Cleveland Orchestra played the National Anthem. I thoroughly enjoy symphonic music. I think I liked the rendition. But I'm still not sure. It was violin music on a windy day.
• Progressive Field, formerly Jacobs Field, was something special when it was built in the mid 90's. Its predecessor, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, was a mammoth multi-purpose facility that actually seated 73,000 for baseball. So Jacobs Field was cool and chic when it was built, sort of like Camden Yards in Baltimore. But in 1995, they still hadn't come to the conclusion that a stadium serving beer to beer-loving Clevelanders needs enough bathrooms. The bathroom waits lasted about a full inning, and it wasn't even a full house.

Here's the biggest positive, though. My guess is that the Indians are now good enough to make the aggravations of too much traffic, too-little parking and too-few bathrooms merely inconveniences to the team's fans - not deal-breakers.

One final thought: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is excellent.