Cleveland Vintage Blog — Baseball

Probably only the most hardened of Cleveland baseball fans know that the venerable and longtime New York Yankees owner, one George Steinbrenner, had his sights set first on his hometown team, the Cleveland Indians (which had its fair share of interesting team owners in the past).   A handshake deal was struck by Steinbrenner in December of 1971 with Tribe owner Vernon Stouffer’s son Jimmy for Steinbrenner and his buying group to acquire the Indians for $8.6 million. The younger Stouffer and Steinbrenner had been classmates at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, and it seemed like Steinbrenner was on the verge...

Where to begin? I have so many memories of Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, the grand old gray lady, I couldn’t possibly know where to start, but the beginning always seems to be the best spot. The vision of Cleveland’s city manager at the time, William Hopkins, then-Indians president Ernest Barnard, a future team president in Alva Bradley and the Van Sweringen brothers, Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium was dedicated on July 1st, 1931, carrying with it various cost overruns of roughly $500,000, a pretty substantial amount at the time. The first actual event held at the stadium was on July 3rd, 1931, a heavyweight...