Jim Ingraham: Fans ... and wins ... are back for the Guardians

If you renovate it, they will come. If you renovate it, and improve the team, even more will come. If you renovate it, and the team has been in first place for virtually the entire season, not only will they come, but they will bring plenty of friends with them. The 2024 season is the 30th anniversary of the opening of Jacobs/Progressive Field, where the big crowds, the dramatic finishes and the daily American League standings look very familiar to those of us who were around when the ballpark opened, and was inhabited by some of the greatest Cleveland teams and players to ever walk the earth. So you might say that what goes around comes around, and if you have been around the old ballyard much this season you have experienced what it was like back in 1994, and through the rest of the century, when Cleveland's team was the most feared in the sport. From the vantage point of this year, the only thing missing from those years were the yearly announcements that Cleveland's entire home schedule was sold out before the season even began. Perhaps equally impressive this year is that Guardians fans are showing up in "we care" numbers that have not been consistently seen at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario since the heyday of Jim Thome, Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Omar Vizquel and all the other Boys of Summer who stole the city's hearts for six glorious years starting in 1994. For a five-year span starting in 1996, every ticket for every Cleveland home game was sold out before the season even began: 455 consecutive sellouts. We will not see the likes of that again. In 1995, Cleveland's average home attendance — that's right, AVERAGE — was 39,483. In 1999 Cleveland led the American League with a season home attendance figure of 3,468,456. The average crowd that year was 42,385. But then came a new century, a team with fewer stars, fewer wins and more empty seats. In a four-year span from 2013-16, Cleveland averaged between 17,000 and 19,000 fans per home game. But then came Tito. The wins returned, as did the bigger crowds and a gut-wrenching Game 7 loss, at home, in the World Series. A few years went by, then Tito Francona said bye-bye, and the Cleveland organization decided to commit to a renovation of the ballpark and the roster ... and all of a sudden it's starting to feel a little like the mid-to-late 1990s again. So far this year the Guardians are averaging 23,727 per home game, which does not sound like a lot, but is 10,000 more than the team's average home crowd just three years ago in 2021. The buzz is back, the fans are coming out again, rookie manager Stephen Vogt is drawing rave reviews and Steven Kwan is threatening to become the first major league player to hit .400 in a season since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. Oh yeah, and Cleveland's ballpark is being renovated. The customers seem to be putting their stamp of approval on the new and improved ballpark, once known as "The Jake," and the team's new and improved roster. The last homestand, six games against Seattle and Toronto, which included three sellouts, drew an average of almost 30,000 per game. Thanks to some visits from our Canadian cousins, the three-game series with Toronto averaged 33,493 per game. To what do we attribute this sudden ballooning of the Guardians' home attendance? Well, there is an old baseball saying that goes something like this: "If you have a really good team, a lot of people are going to come to your games." Or something like that. Not even Tito's teams looked this dominant for this long in a single season than does Vogt's kennel of frisky winners, who are somehow winning despite a starting rotation in shambles. Never mind that. Guardians fans seem to be buying in on all of it — including phase one of the pardon-our-dust two-year ballpark renovation that, even unfinished, appears to be a hit with the customers. They are feeding off the makeover and, even more so, the baseball team, which is becoming as likable and as winning as any home teams that, over the last 30 years, have played at the corner of Carnegie and Tom Hamilton. One of the many appealing aspects of baseball, aside from the day-to-day-ness of the schedule, is when lightning gets caught in a bottle possessed by a franchise in need of some lightning, and a bottle. This year, the burgeoning crowds at Progressive Field, the team at Progressive Field, and, especially, all the winning that is going on at Progressive Field, suggest that this is more than just a celebration over a two-year renovation of our favorite ballpark. This is getting a certain sort of Roy Hobbs feel to it. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com and follow him @Jim_Ingraham on X.