"Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone"

On Saturday night David and I watched the Cleveland Indians lose 3-1 to the Seattle Mariners at Progressive Field (The Jake) because the Indians are the second worse team in the league right now. Watching the Indians lose is a time-honored tradition in Cleveland. I've never seen less hustle out of people getting paid major bucks to do something they supposedly love. We went with David's coworker Jay and Jay's girlfriend Emmy. Emmy was the only native Clevelander so we bugged her every 15 seconds about where to park and where to go once in the gate. Emmy being a true native had no idea about those things because she always got dropped off at The Jake with a bunch of other natives and their Cleveland sense would tingle and then they would end up magically in the good seats.

The only other baseball stadium I have ever been to is Dodger Stadium (thanks for the memories, Mikka!) which is a bit different than the Jake. For starters when you go to Dodger Stadium you drive right into the parking lot (like Disneyland or a shopping mall) which is convenient. That doesn't happen at The Jake. David brought it to my attention that The Jake is a classic field of the east coast-ish region. It is situated in the major city's downtown. So we drove around like dummies looking for the stadium parking when we realized that parking is handled by surrounding small lots. One lot that provides parking is a Catholic Church. I said we should park there next time so God would watch over our car. We only live about 30 minutes from the field and Cleveland has little traffic so it was an easy drive even with the parking confusion. It was so odd to look up past the scoreboard and see buildings and not endless blue California sky. I was shocked to be in a major city watching a baseball game, don't ask me why I just was. I've read that The Jake is closer to a "classic" field and that means reminiscent of fields of olden days. But I don't know what that means so I can neither confirm nor deny that observation.

I've read on the Internet that there are no "bad seats" at the Field. We were in the view box so we were high up enough to freak Emmy and I out that we were going to trip on the narrow concrete stairs and fall to our deaths. We were far enough away from the field for me to also worry that no magic treat men selling fine sugared goods would dare travel that far,but they did, just not selling the good stuff (cotton candy).
Even that far up two foul balls got hit straight our way which caused me to duck and cover in a panic. I wasn't about to try and catch one and fall, like some dude down below did catching a foul, (he didn't fall far) or get a souvenir bloody nose. Those boys may not be the best in the league but they still hit hard.

At the game I tried to keep my "AND THIS ONE TIME AT DODGER STADIUM" comments limited to only the very important moments. Like the time Matthew McConaughey was sitting merely rows away from us and I really didn't know who he was because he wasn't shirtless and on a skateboard.

All in all a good time. We didn't see how fast the pitches were because the radar gun was broken. I was bummed about that. They also played Ohio's official state rock song,"Hang on Sloopy" by The McCoys and everyone did the O-H-I-O dance (it's like the YMCA dance) and sang along to what is quite possibly the lamest song on the planet. I should know, I read the Wikipedia article about it and that makes me an expert. It didn't rain and the fans were friendly. David had a little trouble getting home even with the GPS navigator. We have more tickets so we will be going to another game sometime soon. I look forward to going and continuing on the path to becoming a well-rounded Cleveland citizen and just as depressed.

On a completely unrelated side note: David got a speeding ticket and I am now an officially licensed Ohio driver. Well, officially licensed at least I have yet to actually drive. It was a busy weekend, indeed.