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April 5, 2011
It’s old news by now, but this past weekend the Cleveland Indians made some history by drawing the smallest crowds in Jagressive Field history. After the perfunctory sell-out on Opening Day, the attendance on Saturday was below 10,000. On Sunday, it was below 9,000.
After a season in which the Indians had the lowest attendance in all of baseball, people seemed to be taking some odd and perverse pleasure in the news. On Twitter, there were more than a few stabs taken at the Dolans of the “This is what you get for trading away my favorite players” ilk. Shapiro and Antonetti were also castigated for similar reasons. The blame war had begun.
I don’t know if the impulse was contrarian or honest, but the Cleveland “Leader” decided to chime in on the low attendance. The article was sorely mistitled (for page hits, I suppose): “Cleveland Baseball Fans Better Start Acting Like a Major League City“. Was the author actually blaming the fans for not paying to go see a team that’s gotten progressively worse for three straight years? It seemed to me that the article was trying to react against the notion that the front office is entirely to blame for the terrible attendance—a position I happen to sympathize with—by suggesting that the fans don’t deserve to have a Major League team. This is obviously nonsense: no one “deserves” a team. As Bill Munny would say, “‘Deserves’ got nothing to do with it.” But this piece tried to place blame on those lousy, substandard, ungrateful fans for not supporting their team.
The truth, as often seems to be the case, lies somewhere in the murky middle.
The front office certainly bears its share of blame for the current attendance woes. You can’t trade your three best players and expect attendance to hold steady. If the front office were to express public disappointment in the fanbase, I would find it beyond ridiculous. I understand their need to treat MLB like a business, but they should at least expect their customers to do the same. I speak only from my own experience, but I wouldn’t take a client to an Indians game unless I knew he was a fan. It’s become a niche experience—one that I enjoy a great deal, but not one that most people are going to appreciate unless there’s free food and drink. Winning breeds ticket sales, and if the front office were to whine about attendance falling, I’d be offended, considering their moves in recent years. This is not the fans’ fault, and I think it’s obscene and exploitative to suggest that it is.
But similarly, it’s hard to suggest that the front office deserves all the blame for the Indians’ generally sub-par attendance figures. In 2007, Shapiro built (and Dolan financed) a team that won more games than any other in baseball. That season, the Indians ranked 22nd in attendance out of 30 MLB teams. That’s a reality the front office has to deal with: even when the team is good, they’ll be lucky to get attendance figures that most teams in baseball would find pathetic. And that’s why it’s generally unsustainable for the Indians to have an average payroll—average payrolls need to be sustained by average attendance figures, and we don’t have those, even when the team is remarkably successful.*
*I’m not going to talk about the 90’s and the sellout streak. It’s a red herring that means less than nothing in this discussion. The Browns were gone, the Cavs were terrible. There was a new stadium and a booming economy that funneled money to Dick Jacobs like a waterslide. Cleveland’s population was significantly larger than it is now. And the payrolls of those Tribe teams, while relatively large for the era, are miniscule compared to today’s MLB payrolls. It is not an argument that deserves to be entertained by a rational person.
I’m not saying that Cleveland fans need to “man up” and buy tickets. I don’t think we suffer from particularly dispassionate fans anyway.* The fact is that Cleveland is a small city, and shrinking. There is no Metropolitan Statistical Area in the country with three professional franchises and a smaller population than Cleveland. According to the latest census, Cleveland’s MSA (including surrounding areas like Mentor, Elyria, etc.) now has fewer people than Portland—a city that has exactly one professional sports team. Whether we like it or not, the demographics are challenging. By any reasonable measure, we can probably support about one and a half professional sports teams. We have three major franchises and four minor league affiliates/independent teams, all competing for the same shrinking pool of entertainment dollars.
*I’m also, for the record, not particularly interested by the argument that Cleveland has the “best sports fans in the world”. Anytime people claim these sorts of superior qualities, it strikes me as hollow and chest-thumpy and, yes, a little insecure. “My fandom is better than yours” ranks up there with “My dad could beat up your dad” in the panoply of stupid, hollow phrases. But that’s just like, my opinion, man.
None of this makes me happy. It makes me sad that the city is shrinking and that the economy remains a mess. It makes me sad to know that people are leaving Cleveland and moving to Texas. I’ve been to Texas—I promise that it sucks. Shoot, most of the writers on this site don’t live in Cleveland, and I know they all LOVE CLEVELAND. As someone not born in town, I’ve chosen to make my life here because of the city’s many charms—charms I feel are largely overlooked by those who mock us for “both of our buildings.” It would be easier for me if I could blame the Dolans or Shapinetti or lazy fans or (as is my wont) the Red Sox for the hard times that have befallen the team and city that I choose to put so much of my heart into.
But I can’t—not if I want to be honest about it. This is a real problem, and one that won’t fix itself. The reality is that the Cleveland Indians operate in an excessively challenging environment. I know that it’s challenging to be a fan; I am one. I’m sure it’s challenging to be a General Manager or Team President or (yes) a Team Owner too. Things are rough in Cleveland, but creating boogeymen doesn’t make it any easier for anyone. To blame one person or one group of people for the terribly difficult situation in which this city finds itself would be, at best, misguided and, at worst, intentionally divisive.
A pretty neat guy once said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds affection.” When I hear people shouting at each other about being a crummy fan, or a crummy owner, or crummy general manager, I just want to shake them. I know a lot has happened since then, but don’t you remember 2007? Don’t you remember how magical that was? It wasn’t because of baseball. It was because the entire city was pulling together for the same thing: for our team and for each other and for civic pride and belief in the little guy. We weren’t fractious or bitter or angry or vainglorious or eager to blame or quick to hate. We were at our best.
And we averaged fewer than 29,000 fans per game. Attendance doesn’t always tell the whole story. Not then, and not now.
90 Comments
With the Cavs being “Decisioned” and the Browns possibly locked out, the disposable income of sports fans is going to be out there for the taking, but without “Winning, duh”, the fans aren’t going to give it to the Indians.
Just look the popularity of this site. I imagine a decent amount of your traffic is from people outside the Cleveland metro area who can’t regularly attend games. I’d go to 10+ games a year if I lived within 45 min of Cleveland, which I did until 2007. Now I attend maybe 3 a year, living several states away.
The Indians drove a dagger in the hearts of all true fans on July 31st, 2009.
Much like the Cleveland economy, I’m still recovering.
I don’t know what the following will do to reaffirm anything Jon said. Probably nothing. The only link to what I am about to say and what you typed is attendance at Tribe games. That said, I love the Indians. I wish I lived closer to Cleveland so I could attend more Tribe games. It’s about two-and-a-half hours from where I live to Cleveland, so it’s just long enough of a drive to be more than a jaunt. I happen to live about 40 miles from Pittsburgh, and had I the desire, I could attend a bunch of Pirates games (“plenty of good seats available”) if I so chose. All kidding aside about the quailty of the Pirates’ product in recent years, attending a Pirates game would give me the opportunity to see two major league baseball teams less than an hour from my front door. I have been to three Pirate games since PNC Park opened, and twice, the tickets were freebies. I’ll make at least that many trips (three) to The Jake this year once summer rolls around. To summarize, I live much closer to Pittsburgh than to Cleveland, both of which are major league cities, yet I’ll make the drive to Cleveland more than once this summer while ignoring PNC Park. What’s the point of my rambling? It would be to encourage those of you that live closer to Cleveland to take advantage of the Indians being closer to you than they are to me. You’ve got the Indians in your backyard – take advantage. I know the FO has gutted our team. I follow every day – on here, on indians.com, on the fishwraps’ online versions. I know all about the situaion. Yet, I will encourage you again, those of you that are closer, get to the ballpark. Support our Tribe. Those of us that would like to on a more regular basis would appreciate it.
Snoop Pearson also said “Deserves got nothin to do with it,” but under much different circumstances…
I hate when the 2007 attendance is used as evidence that the fans won’t even come to see a winner. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who remembers how pathetic that team was for the first half of the season. There was like a 2 month period where it felt like we were averaging maybe a run and a half a game. Then we got hot at the right time thanks to Lofton, Cabrera, and a lot of luck.
What happened to the promises from the front office that they would spend money to improve the team when the time was right? We came to within one game of the World Series, and pretty much all they did in the offseason was lose Lofton and add Jamey Carroll?
To me, the fact that they didn’t try to improve the team during that offseason was proof that they had no interest in competing.
And by the way, I am a huge fan. I go to probably 15-20 games a year. I remain optimistic about the team. I go to games/watch games no matter how far out of first place we are. I’m not one of these people who says that they’ll spend money on the team when the Dolans sell or anything like that. I’m just a guy who likes to point out that 2007 wasn’t exactly 1995: the sequel, and that the fans shouldn’t be blamed for continuing to have problems with the team even after almost making it to the World Series.
It does make me sad to see people in this town not caring about the Tribe, and not coming out to the games, but I really think the lack of competitiveness is a much bigger issue than you are making it out to be.
What other voice do we, as fans, have to show our opposition to the Indians’ owners than to not go? Does it hurt the team? Of course. But if we go all we would do is make the owners feel vindicated on their budget team.
I think the attendance issue is about trust – whether the fans can trust the organization to put a winning product out on the field year after year. Cleveland has always been a football town, so the Browns don’t seem to need to pass this test, but the Indians do.
That 2007 team didn’t gain traction until the very end of the season because people were guarded – they didn’t want to buy in (like in 2005) only to have the team come up short and not even make the playoffs. The biggest mistake this front office made was not the CC, Victor or Lee trades, it was not making a move in the offseason leading up to the 2008 season and showing the fans that the organization was serious about contending for the long haul.
The trades simply cemented what everyone suspected after that offseason, the Dolans are not serious about winning.
“It makes me sad to know that people are leaving Cleveland and moving to Texas. I’ve been to Texas—I promise that it sucks”
I promise that it does not. It’s 75 and sunny today. Same as this past weekend. We had a ‘long winter’ by local standards that lasted 3 weeks and temp’s dipped as low as 25 (at night).
It’s green (Hill Country), it’s temperate, it has a great economy, great schools, tons to do no matter if you are a youngster or older w/ kids, oh and it’s not much more expensive to live here than Cleveland.
the negatives are that the summer does get hotter (but not so hot like Houston or Phoenix, etc) and umm…I guess if you don’t like 300 days of sunshine a year that could be a bummer?
mgbode-
Honestly, 75 and sunny sounds terrible to me. I’m very uncomfortable if it’s warmer than 60-65.
note: I do love Cleveland. Too many memories to not love it, however except for the part where my extended family still lives there, I would choose Austin over it every time.
I’m not “you traded my favorite player away guy”, but I am “quit the BS and start being honest with us” guy. (Or gal, technically)
The ownership’s refusal to face facts that they are not cut out for the job and this constant “shaking the shiny keys” crap is, well, a bit condescending – and I haven’t even begun to discuss our team president’s knack for talkin’ down to us dumb fans cause we don’t know nothin’…
Red hats, upper management on twitter, commercials that are geared to pull at the heart strings like a jewelry commercial around valentines day – we’ve seen it all by now fellas. This is a major league franchise. You want to nickel and dime and treat it like a “entertainment venue”, you’re gonna get that kind of attendance.
– Start with some real coaches in the minor league system and develop your youth. (And for that matter, explain to me again why Tim Belcher was a better choice at pitching coach than Carl “coached 2 Cy Young winners, thank you” Willis?)
– Instead of signing every busted veteran who should’ve called it a day a couple seasons ago to take up space in the field, why not get some actual ML experience on that pitching staff? You know why Sabathia and Lee got good – they had some veterans on the staff with them. If anyone thought that Fausto was ready to helm the ship after a fluke rookie campaign, they were high. Love the kid, but who the heck is he supposed to talk to?
I used to come back to Cleveland for 20-25 games a year when I lived in Detroit in the early 2000s. I wish the fellas on the team a healthy and successful season, but my plans for a trip to the baseball park are looking like the first weekend in June to Pittsburgh to see the Pirates & Phillies.
The Indians just need to sign Peyton Hillis
oh, from yesterdays thread about the threat of Indians-relocation:
I’m not worried. Unlike in basketball where there are cities with arenas that either are ready or need modest upgrades to be ready for a pro-team. There aren’t any suitable ballparks out there.
Building a 3quarter billion ballpark isn’t going to be on the docket for any states that are cutting budgets.
BleacherReport even did a study on the cities best fit for a MLB relocation. There are choices that could support a team (San Antonio, Portland, Sacramento, Albuquerque), but none have a ballpark now nor will have public funds to build one anytime soon. And what owner is going to leave without one?
My only problem with bringing up 2007 is that those attendance numbers were skewed. At the beginning of the year no one really expected them to have the best record in baseball. By July we were selling out nearly every game… jump to 2008… season tickets went up and excitement surrounded the team and they choked! You cant blame the fans for that… they got back on board in 2008 and were treated with a stinker and therefore gave up on the team which is where we are now. Until this team consistently wins… attendance will suffer.
For what it’s worth, if the city of Cleveland/state of Ohio had schools that were worth a darn and actually HIRED teachers, I’d never have left. I have now been in the Tampa area for going on 8 years and hate it, but at least there were jobs in education to be had when I moved down–I got one and stayed. I’d be happy to leave in/near Cleveland and get to 20-25 games a season (which I do here for Rays games, and that’s just because I love baseball), but that economy–statewide–just won’t allow it.
@Kram
What happened to that promise? They kept it. Here are the payrolls for the year preceding, the year of and the year after 2007.
* 2008: $ 78,970,066
* 2007: $ 61,673,267
* 2006: $ 56,031,500
You know what happened in 2007? They re-signed Westbrook, Sizemore, Hafner to large and expensive contracts. They did it the next year with Carmona. You might even remember that they added Kerry Wood for an absurd $10M/yr after 2008.
They spent. And the Dolans also spent a good amount of money around this time getting STO started, hoping that it would help the team stay ahead of the curve financially (supposedly, STO really doesn’t make much, so much for that).
I can deal with any argument except the one in which the Dolans don’t care about winning. Why? They traded popular players who never won anything and no one was coming to see anyway. I understand that winning cures everything but even when they do they will still be in the bottom half of attendance.
I guess people need someone to blame and if Dolan is the man than fine…but you are kidding yourself if you think ANY owner would do anything different.
Just think of what that nice new ballpark in Minnesota will look like in 6 years with a last place team…it will be 30 degrees for an April home game and there will be 4,000 people there.
If people can’t bring up attendance in ’07 then I also don’t think the argument that the owners didn’t spend when we were ready to compete. The trade for Derosa and signing of Wood were moves to put us over the edge and put out attendance numbers up over $90 million – good for 16th in the major leagues.
@Ben Good point. People weren’t coming to see CC, Vic and Lee and now use trading them as an excuse to continue not coming to see the team. Unless people were planning on cheering for their contracts, it seems a bit unfair.
Elizabeth: bravo.
Jon, your “truth lies in the middle” response is too facile and safe and avoids pointing a finger at the main problem: the Dolans don’t have the independent funds to play hands at the big boys’ table. And “fair” or not, that’s what a Cleveland owner will need. Population loss from within Cleveland city limits is a red herring – most stayed in NE Ohio and most of the 90’s fanbase didn’t live in city limits. The Cavs were selling like crazy until this year, and next year won’t for non-population loss reasons. The Browns’ local economy always seems pretty good.
Nothing indicates the Dolans are cheap. That charge is unfair and seems baseless given how they overpaid for the team. Their problem is that no one wants to visit an amusement park when the rides are old, sold, broken down. Jacobs played the game in a somewhat more even field but already made a fortune through JVJ, etc. The Dolan side business is a boutiquey little Chardon law firm, plus investments in brother Jim’s Cablevision stock. Not a national pizza chain, enormous mortgage company, credit card company, etc. That’s why you have to dump Cliff Lee a year early, Pavano before his incentives kick in, can’t even discuss any form of discounts with Victor, and Grady is gone if he halfway resembles his old self come July. This is show business, not show loyalty. I may love music, but won’t show up to hear a lousy band because if I do they promise to pay a decent guitarist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Combined_Statistical_Areas
Just a quick comment on the MSA ranking, due to the way that the US census creates MSAs the Cleveland CSA does noy included the Akron or Youngstown area. Cleveland and Akron are combined for CSAa (Combined Statistical Areas). The CLE-AKR CSA basically includes most areas within an hours drive of Jacobs field and ranks 16th in the country for CSA. All of the CSAs above us have at least 3 professional sports teams (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) if not more, so I don’t think size is that good of an argument. We are just jilted fans after 2005 and 2007.
I also know April attendance numbers are going to be quite dismal because the Indians did not require April tickets to be bought for the Season ticket pools, such as the one my family belongs too.
Between the refusal / inability to resign anyone with any talent, the lousy drafts they have had for the last decade more than account for why they stink like they do.
1998 – CC Sabathia
1999 – Corey Smith
2000 – Alan Horne
2001 – Dan Denham
2002 – Jeremy Guthrie
2003 – Bradley Snyder
2004 – Michael Aubrey
2005 – Jeremy Sowers
2006 – Trevor Crowe
2007 – Beau Mills
2008 – Lonnie Chisenhall (has promise)
When you completely, inarguably whiff on a decade of first round picks ( obviously I have hope for Chisenhall) then how can you ever expect to have your own home grown team? Honestly, I know there are 50 or so rounds in the draft, but the amount of failure involved here is laughable at best. If they can’t hit in the first round, they don’t have a chance in hell at competing.
I still blame Major League Baseball for most of this. They only care about the success of the Yankees, Red Sox and other big market teams. If MLB were structured like the NFL or NBA (i.e. with salary caps/floors and wider revenue sharing with a certain percentage of salary tied to league revenue), at least we would know for sure if the Dolans really cared about winning. As it stands, we’re left to debate it. Until the majors restructures, I’ll watch from afar but won’t invest.
I want to fully support the Indians, but it’s hard with the deck so stacked against it combined with an ownership and front office I don’t trust.
It isn’t that the Dolan’s refuse to re-sign anyone – they only refused to re-sign guys that got record-breaking deals.
All the guys they signed got injured – Hafner, Grady, Westbrook; or they didn’t pan out – Peralta, Carmona, Wood.
Bad luck has as much to do with this teams’ failures as anything.
I think the reason people don’t come to see the Indians is simple. First of all, this is a football town. The Browns will always come first and suck up the most fans’ dollars leaving the Cavs and Indians to fight for the scraps. This town is a front running town and will give the scraps to whichever team is winning.
I agree that 1995-2000 was the perfect storm for Indians attendance, but I would also like to point out that 2007 was an imperfect storm. The Indians were coming off a 2006 season that was a huge disappointment. They won 90+ in 2005 and were expected to win the division in 2006 and instead they choked terribly. This killed buzz for the team and hurt preseason ticket sales. Next, the Cavs went to the Finals that year. Until the Cavs were eliminated on June 14, this city had basketball on its mind. Throw in the fact that the city has lost population and has a worse economy than in 1995 and the poor attendance is explained.
I never see the Indians selling out 455 straight games again. I do however see them pulling 30,000 people a night though. People who say they are mad because management traded Victor, Cliff and C.C. are probably the same people that were mad we got nothing for when Belle, Thome and Ramirez walked on us for free agency. We had to trade those 3 guys because we weren’t winning, they were going leave in free agency and people weren’t attending games anyway. These people will come back when the Indians are winning the Central and the Cavs are still getting smacked around by the Heat and Lakers. This is a front running town and always will be.
I believe part of the problem is also that the front office is the one who said this team was being built to contend for 2012.
Well, it’s 2011 so why should we spend money if the front office doesn’t even believe in the team?
This spring they have changed their tune to saying they want to make the playoffs this year, but it’s too late.
They dug themselves into the hole by blowing away the 2010 and 2011 seasons as rebuilding years.
Maybe people think Progressive Field is “under construction” and therefore staying away?? (LOL!)
Cleveland invested heavily in their sports franchises in the 1990’s. Well, it didn’t pan out, did it?
Cleveland is a city that is considered to be a farm team atmosphere for players to stop off before making it big somewhere else.
Even Detroit has the Red Wings and the Pistons!
Clevelanders: enjoy the fancy buildings that were built for your sports teams. God, I miss the Coliseum in Richfield!
Sorry to be negative and disagree with a basic premise of your obviously passionately held beliefs, but the number 455 is all that needs to be written about Indians attendance. We were sold out for years. Becuase they won, period. One year, 2007, doesn’t begin to match ’94-’98 contending not just for the division but for the American League. And if we did average 29K as you write with a contender, what more could be put up if there were several years in a row of winning clubs. Cavs packed the Q for several seasons after dismal attendance based on a horrid product; does anyone doubt for a second that if the Browns FINALLY start winning consistently that every game will sell out? The problem is simple, value has to be created in the product for it to sell.
If someone wrote speculatively that a major league team would let not one but 2 Cy Young award winners leave, in consecutive seasons, no reasonable person would believe it. In fact, you’d be ridiculed for not understanding the immense value of great starting pitching. That’s who we are. And incidentally, when you add the All Star catcher who helped develop both pitchers, a pattern of intentional low cost, low maintenance mediocrity as a organizational goal starts to emerge.
Bottom line, while it’s true we can’t recreate the 90’s, we have tangible proof that the environment is ripe for consistent, ongoing sell out level support of sports franchises in Cleveland. THEY JUST HAVE TO WIN!!!
I’m amused by how many posters on here DON’T live in Cleveland (me included); I’ve often wondered, since I’ve followed Cleveland sports since 1980 AND have never lived any closer to the city than Painesville (left in 1991, live in Denver now), if I should change my loyalities. But I can’t; any attachment to another city’s team would feel forced now. But does it make me a traitor if I left the city and could never imagine living there?
@Chris M
The drafts have been bad. I don’t claim that Shapiro is a great GM. I think he’s good, just because of some of the trades they’ve made (Choo, Hafner, ACab, etc.). The drafts were also bad because the Indians weren’t spending a lot of money in the draft, drafting “safer” players like Mills and Crowe. They’ve also had a run of terrible luck. Aubrey and Adam Miller (not listed there, but was a 1st rounder) could have been much more if not for injuries. That’s obviously a little speculative, but it’s hard to imagine a guy with a 94MPH fastball and one of the best sliders you’d ever see wouldn’t have been successful.
That being said, they seem to have gotten their act together recently. According to some prognosticators, the Indians had the best draft in the MLB last year. Chiz looks very good. White looks very good. Kipnis looks like a star in the making at 2B. They’re also spending a lot more money in that department ($10M last year, which is quite a lot).
it’s a bit sad to me to see people blaming the owner or the gm for not having a good enough team… and so attendance problems.
guys: you could have branch rickey and [name a good owner — jacobs? –ok] and it wouldnt change a thing. by most measures jacobs was a good owner. but when the time came he couldnt/wouldnt compete to keep ramirez, belle, thome. john hart was rickey-esque in the colon deal, but once cliff lee started paying off we had to trade him or get nothing.
the system is set up to screw us and no town knows this better than cleveland having watched cc vs cliff in the WS after giving us cy youngs before they left. who wants to invest money but, more importantly, EMOTION in choo and santana when they’re going to be playing for the yanks and redsox in two years?
this is minor league baseball in fact friends. the BEST we can hope for is to win it all while knowing it will be blown up the next year. because who wants to be stuck with the josh beckett marlins jersey.
to blame the cleveland fans is ridiculous.
i think a few of you are dancing right around the most blatantly obvious fact of why this team is not where it should be right now and fans are sick of it…
Shapiro mis-used the money the Dolans were willing to spend on horrible contracts given to sub-par MLB level players (Hafner, Sizemore, Westbrook and Wood)
that’s it…no debating 2007, no facts and figures of MSA’s and blah blah blah.
Shapiro mis-used the bankroll and had to suffer the consequences by letting go of the players he should have spent the cash on.
Wow, so apparently the MLS isn’t a professional league in America?
Portland not only has the Trailblazers but they also have one of the newest MLS teams, the Portland Timbers.
The Cleveland Indians’ home attendance in 2007 for those who were wondering… (click it to see the bigger one…)
I hate to be “that guy”, but until the fundamental economics of MLB change, this is the reality of being a Tribe fan. We can expect 2-3 year windows of contention (dependant upon excellent drafting and wise FA spending)every ten or so years, and then it’s back into rebuild mode. Cleveland is a small city (and getting smaller) in a state with a bad economy. Our ownership is not some titan of industry or finance. The Yanks and Sawx and Phillies and Dodgers can spend like sailors on leave because they are working from a larger pot of population and wealth (both internal and external). If 30,000 Yanks fans can’t afford to get to a game, they’ll still fill the park to near-capacity with little effort. A city of 8+ million can do that. A city now under 400,000 cannot. Unitl MLB decides to level things out for everyone (and the NFL model seems a smart one), this is our reality as fans of this team.
Kudos to Matt for dropping a reference to the greatest TV show ever, The Wire…Everyone has made some really good points. One of the biggest problems for the Indians (and soon will be a HUGE problem for the Cavs too) is the loss of corporate partners. Having those suites empty is a major loss of cash for the Dolans. Dick Jacobs was a good owner because he was a great businessman. He bought the team on the cheap and got out of MLB at the perfect time. John Hart and the front office did a brilliant job of acquiring young talent and managed to buy out the first couple years of free agency of a group of players so talented we may never see the likes of again. The free agents Jacobs allowed Hart to sign were not big ticket guys but older vets past their prime money making years. Guys like Hershiser, Martinez and Murray were great but it wasn’t like signing the Rangers going broke for A-Rod.
The Lee & Sabathia deals stung but the team had no choice. You can argue (and you won’t get much of a fight out of me) that the Tribe should have received more out of them. Resigning either of them made no sense from a business standpoint. I do think the Indians made a horrible mistake in trading Victor Martinez. He’s making Hafner type money with the Tigers and was the heart and soul of the team. He was a fan favorite and unlike CC and Lee, he made no secret that he wanted to be an Indian. Imagine a lineup with Victor at 1B and Santana at C?
I don’t know how the fans of one city can be considered better than another but I do know that Cleveland fans are smart. We see the economics of MLB and know we don’t have a chance to contend. If the MLB owners were to share revenue for the good of competition in the league then they could move to a salary cap. The Yankees get away with their spending because their revenue streams and the rules of the game allow it.
Progressive Field is still a beautiful place to spend a day. It’ll probably never rock the way it did in the 90’s but if we can acquire and develop players that we can connect to and start to win the Indians will draw good crowds. Winning cures everything in sports.
One thing not taken into consideration when talking about the “lower population contributing to worse attendance” argument is the fact that in 1970, when Cuyahoga County had 500,000 more people than it does now, the Indians drew 9,000 fans a game. 9,000!
Another thing that can’t be overlooked is that cable revenue has changed everything.
A prime-time spot in Cleveland is $500, while a prime-time spot in New York is $5,000.
Assuming a 2-minute break at the top and bottom of every inning (18 commercial breaks, 4 commercials per break) the Indians make $36,000 per game on STO while the Yankees make $360,000.
That is another reason why re-signing our FA isn’t realistic – the Yankees can always out-bid us and make that money back. If we miss on a big contract (see: Hafner) it kills us for years.
Craig, is that imgage titled fairweater.jpg?
Baseball is the screwed up system here. It keeps the small market teams bad and the large market teams good. It is designed that way people and it works!
Due to this system that keeps our team full of Jack Hanahan’s playing third or Lou Marson’s as our starting catcher (2010) our team isn’t good, and we don’t go to games. I can’t try to fathom the idea that we’re supposed to somehow feel bad about not going to the games.
Baseball wants the Indians to be bad, because if we weren’t we might challenge the Yanks or Red Sox in the playoffs and that would be bad bad bad.
@Anthony It’s not that MLB doesn’t want someone to challenge the Yanks or Sawx or Phils or Dodgers. In fact, they love when a scrappy team comes along to play David to those Goliaths. What the system effectively does is ensure that those teams remain the powerhouses, while the title of “scrappy challenger” rotates among the “mid-level” teams of the league. No sustained threat to the money franchises, but enough to string fans in smaller markets along. Not sure if that was the intent of it all, but that is the consequence.
@Narm good point about cable revenues. I’ve often wondered just how much STO helps our cause. I do know that it’s not available down this way (unlike YES and NESN).
@Reggie I don’t think anyone can dispute the Jake as a quality ballpark. Obviously I’m biased, but I think it stacks up against just about any of the “new” parks out there. I do my best to get up there for at least a game or two each summer, and it’s always a good time, win or lose.
@41: Exactly. Hence my rebellion against MLB. There’s no point when the system is rigged against a vast majority of your franchises in order to benefit the 8-10 biggies.
@42 and the reward for those ‘scrappers’? i’m looking at carl crawford and josh beckett on the sox. of course i’m remembering vmart and manny on the sox. not sure if the padres were ever scrappy by his arrival in boston had been foregone for two years prior to his landing here.
job well done you scrappy indians, rays, marlins, and padres! you’re doing your part to keep boston on top. extra bonus for you cleveland and tampa –> redsox fans will help drive revenue by taking over your stadium 10 times a year.
and guys, as long as you keep blaming dolan or antonetti or shapiro for trying to make chicken salad out of the chicken you-know-what theyve been given to work with, that system will stay the same.
^^oops. what i meant to say..
…not sure if the padres were ever scrappy but adrian gonzalez’ arrival in boston had been foregone for two years prior to his landing here.
@26
Completely agree. This is a football town and whoevers winning at the time comes second. If the Indians attendance woes were as simple as Cleveland not supporting a loser, then the Browns would be drawing 40,000 a game. Larry Dolan is the antichrist, yet nobody seems to mind Randy Lerner except for the fact that hes “not around enough”
The attitude is that Cleveland wont pay for an inferior product. Yet, the Browns have been the worst team in the NFL not named the Lions since coming back. Clevelanders dont seem to have any issue shelling out thousands of dollars to watch their football team win 4 or 5 games every year.
Its a very complicated issue. Its not the Dolans, or fan apathy/mistrust, or the return of the Browns, or LeBron James, or the economy, or the dwindling population. Its all of the above. The thing that worries me, like the referenced article from “Cleveland Leader” speculates, is that the Indians wont be around much longer. I hope they find a way to make this work and get back to a point where the Jake can at least draw 30,000 a game to keep this team afloat in Cleveland.
@44
The reward for those scrappers is the feeling you get when finally making the World Series. Crawford went to the Series with Tampa, Beckett won with Florida, Victor went to the ALCS with Cleveland, Manny went to the WS with Cleveland.
The teams you listed as scrappy teams have all reached the World Series since 1997 and the Marlins won twice. That is more than the Phillies, Dodgers, Mets, Cubs, Cardinals and other big market teams. 9 World Series winners in the last 10 years says something.
MLB is set up to keep big market teams always in the playoff hunt, but it doesn’t prevent small market teams from reaching the World Series.
@GhostToMost: The Dolans have 81 games they’re responsible for; Lerner only has 10. That’s a big difference.
Yeah, its a football town, but this city has bandwagon-ed and jumped on in the past for the Cavs and Indians. But I seem to think the goodwill that would’ve been accumulated from that has all but dissipated for the Dolans. I think Dan Gilbert will be fine because he’s committed to making his franchise a winner. (And he’s smart enough to spin-off associated businesses to his product — Vertix, Fathead — in the process. STO was a dumb and desperate move. “The Yankees and Red Sox did it, so we should too…”)
@ClevelandFan14 Here’s a radical thought: how about a system that isn’t set up to favor anyone? Seems more reasonable to me. See, I know what thing(s) to blame the Browns futility on–the front office has been a revolving door of awful, leading to poor draft decisions and constant coaching changes. Frustrating as that experience has been, it sure beats the knowledge that years of a bad team are essentially happening BY DESIGN in MLB–that any success we ultimately do have will be short-lived, as our most valuable pieces are sold off to the few teams that can afford them for what amounts to HOPE in the form of prospects and draft picks. I don’t find it hard to understand for a second why it is the Browns maintain support while fans are more fickle with the Tribe and Cavs.
@47 youre not kidding are you? that actually works for you?
put it this way: have you noticed that spiffy #19 patch the indians are wearing? honoring a hall of fame pitcher who played only for cleveland from 1936-56? are you conflicted when you see the patch? on one hand you want to pay respect to feller. on the other hand you know better than any other fan base in mlb that we will never see a hall of famer play his entire career in cleveland under the current circumstances.
if you’re ok watching talented players stop by cleveland for a couple years – hey maybe they win something before they leave! – on their way to bos, ny, la, whatever, then good for you. as for me, if my team’s reason for existence is to provide talent to other bigger teams, then my team is a minor league team posing as major league. they should be happy to be drawing like the buffalo bisons and louisville cardinals. at least the bisons and cards are honest about their goals.