Wednesday, September 08, 1999
Baseball at Jacobs a total delight
4-star experience even from outside
BY JOHN ERARDI and JOHN BYCZKOWSKI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
There is no better new ballpark than Jacobs Field in Cleveland when it comes to the game experience.
We suspected as much when we launched last month our 11-day, six-city tour of the nation's new major-league ballparks.
We emerged from the tour with our opinion unchanged.
The reason we didn't include the “The Jake” in our tour is because we already knew so much about it. Everything we saw elsewhere, we compared mentally to what we knew about The Jake.
From the moment one sees the green of the field — yes, from outside the park, through the wrought-iron main gate in left field — a trip to Jacobs is an exhilarating experience.
The ushers and the rest of the ballpark personnel won't let it be anything but. The staff underwent many hours of Disney training in treating customers with courtesy and care. The turnstile folks are super-friendly and their high-tech equipment allows them to verify and cancel your ticket without ripping or marking it, thus making for a nicer memento than would a ripped ticket stub.
It's a small thing, but it begins the experience on the right foot. Ushers keep it on an equally high level, always smiling, as they welcome you to the ballpark.
The ballpark music is an upbeat blend, played at just the right decibel level that doesn't irk the seniors while simultaneously providing just enough bass for the younger generation to do their hip-hop thing.
Most of the 43,000 seats are filled for most every game. The Indians have sold out 300-plus consecutive home games, although some folks are no-shows, leaving a sprinkling of empty seats here and there. And all eyes are riveted on the field of green.
It helps, of course, that the Indians have had an exciting, contending team since the day they opened the doors in 1994.
That said, the ballpark itself, when empty, is not among the creme de la creme.
Of the seven new ballparks, The Jake rated four stars and tied for fourth with us. That ranking was behind the five stars of Camden Yards in Baltimore and Coors Field in Denver; and the 41/2 stars earned by the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas.
We rank Jacobs even with Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix and ahead of the three stars of Seattle's Safeco Field and Turner Field in Atlanta.
Taken as a whole, Jacobs is more intimate than any of them (it has 6,000-7,000 fewer seats). Also, its retail merchandise is a better value; more distinctive and slicker than anything we saw elsewhere.
But Jacobs doesn't have Baltimore's signature warehouse or its pedestrian-filled Eutaw Street ... or Denver's 360-degree concourse open to the field ... or the Ballpark in Arlington's character. It also doesn't have Arizona's uniqueness ... or Seattle's views ... or anything like Atlanta's family-fun zone called “Scout's Alley.”
Its best architectural feature is the “look” from outside into the diamond.
But we don't particularly like the ballpark's exterior that is a spider web of exposed steel and vertical light towers.
We also don't like the big scoreboard in left-centerfield (a glorified billboard), the three tiers of luxury suites piled atop one another (looks like the side of a cruise ship) or the views from the upper deck (too distant, a victim of the sight-line priority that went to the aforementioned luxury suites).
We do like the left-field bleachers, the 19-foot-high “little green monster” fence in left field that houses the out-of-town scoreboard and the giant photos of great Indians and world championship celebrations of the 1950s and earlier.
And the sound system is second to none, as is the club's musical taste in rock 'n roll — fitting for the city that is home to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Of all the new ballparks, none does “baseball” better than The Jake, where the game is the focal point.
For that we gave The Jake its fourth star.
The Enquirer's Diamond Dreams series, published Aug. 29-31, can be seen at the newspaper's Web page, www.enquirer.com. Click on the “back issues” section and select August, 1999. Look for the “Finding the Perfect Ballpark” headline.
Reds Stories
Reds page
