Cleveland Stadium

The stadium was built for football as well as for the Cleveland Indians, who played their first game there on July 31, 1932, losing to the Philadelphia Athletics' great pitcher Lefty Grove 1–0 while attracting a then-major-league-record crowd of 80,184.[10] The Indians played all of their games at the stadium from the middle of the 1932 season through 1933. However, the players and fans complained about the huge outfield, which reduced the number of home runs. Moreover, as the Great Depression worsened, attendance plummeted.[11] The Indians returned to their smaller previous home, League Park, which was owned by the team, for all of the 1934 and 1935 seasons.

The Indians used the stadium to host the 1935 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and returned to the stadium in 1936 to host the New York Yankees on August 2 as part of the Great Lakes Exposition, drawing a crowd of 65,342. In 1937, the Indians began playing Sunday and holiday games at Cleveland Stadium during the summer, adding selected important games there in 1938. League Park lacked field lighting, so the emergence of night baseball in the 1930s led to the addition of night games to the schedule after lights were installed at the stadium in 1939. By 1940, the Indians played most of their home slate at the stadium, abandoning League Park entirely after the 1946 season. They remained at Cleveland Stadium until the end of the 1993 season, after which they moved to Jacobs Field.[12]

View of center field in 1993. Lake Erie is visible just outside the stadium. Visible beyond the outfield wall is a portion of the original (larger) outfield area.

The stadium foreshadowed problems that would emerge 40 years later when cookie-cutter stadiums were in vogue. Due to the fundamentally different sizes and shapes of baseball and football fields, the baseball sight lines generally left much to be desired. Many of the seats in the upper deck were too far from the field to be of any use during the regular season. The original baseball playing field was so large that an inner fence was constructed in 1947 to cut down the size of the spacious outfield. Even after the fence was installed, the distance markers on the bleacher walls remained visible for many years: 470 feet (140 m) from home plate to the bleachers in straightaway center field, 463 feet (141 m) to either corner of the bleachers, and 435 feet (133 m) to the far corners of the main stands in left-center and right-center. No player ever hit a home run into the center field bleachers. According to his autobiography, Veeck – As in Wreck, Indians owner Bill Veeck would move the fence in or out, varying by as much as 15 feet (4.6 m), depending on how it would favor the Indians, a practice that ended when the American League specifically legislated against moving fences during the course of a given season. But over the years, various ownerships tinkered with the position of the fence from time to time.

Like some other facilities built before warning tracks became standard, the stadium had an earthen berm in front of the center field wall. After the inner fence was installed, the berm was still visible during football season.

Jim Palmer was convinced that the pitcher's mound at the stadium was taller than most. "The mound was, despite whatever the rules claim, just a little lower than Mount Kilimanjaro."[13]

The facility, located just south of Lake Erie, was known for the biting cold winds that would blow into the stadium in winter, as well as during much of the spring and fall. Because of its proximity to the lake during hot summer nights, its lights attracted swarms of midges and mayflies. Game 2 of the 2007 American League Division Series at Jacobs Field on October 5, 2007, brought back memories of the old stadium, when swarms of midges (misidentified by the television announcers as mayflies) infested the field, particularly the pitcher's mound.

The Indians set three Major League attendance records during the 1948 season, when they won the American League pennant and World Series behind pitcher Bob Feller and shortstop/player-manager Lou Boudreau. That season, Cleveland had the highest single season attendance, 2,620,627, which was not eclipsed until 1962 by the Los Angeles Dodgers,[14] largest regular season night game attendance of 72,434 for the first major league start of Satchel Paige,[15] and biggest World Series game attendance of 86,288 for game 5 on October 10, 1948.[16] However, during the Indians' lean years from the 1960s through the 1990s, they rarely attracted more than 30,000 people, and even crowds of 40,000 looked sparse in the cavernous environment. After the Indians were eliminated from the pennant race in 1949, as a black humor-themed stunt they held a mock funeral procession on the field and buried their 1948 pennant behind the center field fence.[17] Due to the large size of the facility, the Indians began using a bullpen car in 1950.[18]

In addition to the 1935 MLB All-Star Game, Cleveland Stadium also hosted three additional all-star games: 1954, 1963, and 1981. Cleveland Stadium and Yankee Stadium are the only venues to host four MLB all-star games. On May 15, 1981, Len Barker threw a perfect game at the stadium, the second in franchise history and eighth in modern Major League history. The final Indians home game at Cleveland Stadium was held October 3, 1993, a 4–0 loss to the Chicago White Sox in front of 72,390 fans. During the game, fans, led by comedian Bob Hope, who grew up an Indians fan and was once a part-owner, sang a version of his signature song "Thanks for the Memory" with special lyrics for the occasion.[19]

During the last Browns game played in the stadium, December 17, 1995, against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Cleveland Browns, originally members of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), began playing at the facility in 1946, and played there through 1995. The stadium was the site of the AAFC Championship game in 1946, 1948 and 1949, all Browns wins. The Browns joined the NFL in 1950 and hosted the NFL Championship Game in 1950, 1952, 1954, 1964, and 1968, winning titles in 1950, 1954, and 1964.

The first Browns game at the stadium was also the first AAFC game, when the Browns hosted the Miami Seahawks on September 6, 1946. The Browns won the game 44–0 and drew 60,135 fans, what was then a record for a professional football crowd. During the 1980s, the center field bleachers at the east end of the stadium were home to many of the club's most avid fans and became known as the Dawg Pound after the barks that fans made to disrupt opposing teams' offensive plays. The fans were copying Browns players Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield, who frequently appeared to bark to each other and to the opposition. Some of the fans even wore dog masks and threw dog biscuits at opposing players. The Dawg Pound was included in the design of Cleveland Browns Stadium (now FirstEnergy Stadium), where the east end zone also has bleacher seating.

The stadium was also the site of two notable moments in Cleveland sports and Browns history. In a 1981 divisional playoff game on January 4, Browns quarterback Brian Sipe was intercepted in the end zone with less than a minute remaining in the game, resulting in a 14–12 loss to the Oakland Raiders. The game has since been referred to by the name of the pass play, Red Right 88. Six years later, during the 1987 AFC Championship game on January 11, John Elway led the Denver Broncos on what is referred to as The Drive, a 98-yard touchdown drive with 5:32 left that tied the game and sent it into overtime. The Broncos ultimately prevailed 23–20.

The final game in the stadium was held December 17, 1995, an emotional 26–10 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, the Browns' final game before the franchise was officially deactivated until 1999. At the end of that game, many fans cut and removed their seats.[20]

Prior to the arrival of the Browns, the stadium was briefly the home field for two other NFL teams, the Cleveland Indians in 1931, and the Cleveland Rams from 1936 to 1937 and again from 1939 to 1941. The football Indians played two home games in their 1931 season, a 6–0 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers and a 14–0 loss to the Chicago Cardinals.[21] The team drew a crowd of around only 2,000 spectators for the September 26th game against Brooklyn and 10,000 for the loss to the Cardinals on November 8.[22][23]

The Rams were founded in 1936 as members of the second American Football League and joined the NFL in 1937. They played home games at the stadium their first two seasons, before moving to the smaller Shaw Stadium in 1938. The Rams returned to the stadium in 1939 and played home games there through the 1941 season before moving to League Park for the remainder of their time in Cleveland. The team returned to the stadium one last time to host the 1945 NFL Championship Game, a 15–14 win in what was the final Rams game in Cleveland before the team relocated to Los Angeles.

The only Great Lakes Bowl was held there in 1947.

The stadium hosted the annual college football game between Notre Dame and Navy 11 times: in 1932, 1934, 1939, 1942, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1950, 1952, 1976 and 1978. The games were well attended, with an average attendance of 69,730 and a high of 84,090 fans for the 1947 game, which was won by Notre Dame 27–0.

Local college teams, including Western Reserve Red Cats, Case Tech Rough Riders, John Carroll Blue Streaks,[27] and Baldwin Wallace Yellow Jackets often used the stadium for home games and local matchups, especially during the 1930s and 1940s when the city Big Four Conference was strong.[28] Of the 60 all-time Big Four matchups, 22 were played at Cleveland Stadium, the most of any venue.[29]

The Illinois Fighting Illini played the Penn State Nittany Lions there in 1959. The Ohio State Buckeyes played in the stadium four times, the first three as the home team during World War II. The first was in a 1942 win over Illinois before 68,656, the second a 1943 loss to Purdue, and the third a 1944 victory over Illinois. The final college football contest played there was on October 19, 1991, when the Northwestern Wildcats played a neutral site "home" game against the Buckeyes. While Northwestern received the home team's share of the gate receipts, Buckeye fans made up the vast majority of the crowd.[30]

In addition to sporting events, the stadium hosted a number of other events including concerts. The first concert held at the stadium, featuring the Beatles, took place in 1966. From 1974 to 1980, the World Series of Rock concerts were held each summer featuring acts such as the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys and Aerosmith. The Rolling Stones' July 1, 1978 concert of 82,238 attendees was reportedly the first concert to gross over $1 million.[31]

In the 1980s and 1990s, the stadium hosted concerts by the Jacksons, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Genesis, the Who and Paul McCartney, plus more concerts by Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones.

On September 2, 1995, the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was celebrated with an all-star concert which featured Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Lee Lewis and others.[32]

The stadium hosts a 1994 Billy Graham crusade

The stadium also hosted numerous religious services. Its most heavily attended event was the Roman Catholic Church's Seventh Eucharistic Congress, hosted by the Diocese of Cleveland in 1935, which attracted 75,000 to a midnight mass on September 24, 1935, and an estimated 125,000 to Eucharistic service the following day.[33] One of the stadium's last events was a Billy Graham crusade, held in 1994.