Lind (second base)
Sam Langford (center field)
Joe Sewell (shortstop)
George Burns (first base)
Homer Summa (right field)
Johnny Hodapp (third base)
Luke Sewell (catcher)
Joe Shaute (pitcher)
Johnny Mostil led off for the White Sox and grounded to George Burns. Pitcher Joe Shaute gave up a base on balls and hit a batter, but kept Chicago from scoring. The Indians got rolling in the bottom of the first. With one out, Carl Lind singled. Sam Langford lined a ball off the short right-field wall but was held to a single. Veteran outfielders like Johnny Mostil knew how to play balls that caromed off the imposing wall. He played the bounce perfectly, wheeled and threw to second to keep Langford from advancing. Joe Sewell got the crowd shouting by lining a double to right field. Lind crossed the plate with the first run of the home season. George Burns flied to right, scoring Sam Langford with the second run. Those would be all the runs needed by Shaute to win the home opener, although Cleveland scored five more times in the seventh inning. The big hits were a bases-loaded single by Johnny Hodapp and a double by Luke Sewell. The Indians cruised to a 7–1 victory.
It had been quite a successful day for Alva Bradley and his partners. They watched an exciting game with loads of action. Everywhere the new owners looked, there were fans yelling and applauding, thrilled to see the home season get off to a rousing start. There was still a great deal of work to do in making the club a contender, but Bradley saw the potential of putting a quality product on the field—including justification for building a new ballpark that could seat more than three times the amount of fans squeezed into League Park.
The game ended right around 5:00 p.m. Fans madly dashed to their automobiles, intent on getting ahead of the traffic. Within minutes one of the all-time traffic snarls in Cleveland history took place. The fifty police officers on duty whistled and yelled at hundreds of autos trying to get out of the neighborhood and find their way to Euclid and Carnegie Avenues. Any sense of protocol and orderly behavior was forgotten. Cars were everywhere, flying down alleys and side streets. The streetcars, special buses, and taxis moved in to pick up the thousands of people needing rides. Soon they were literally stopped in their tracks, blocked by the onslaught of Model T’s and the like. Police estimated the delays at forty minutes and climbing. The cars that somehow reached Euclid Avenue ran directly into the normal traffic jam that had begun a half-hour earlier. Motorists were able to move about three feet, then stop and wait a few minutes to move another three. The fender benders were too numerous to count. One driver shouted to police to stop the car behind him that had already rammed him twice. An officer screamed back to write it down and mail the complaint to headquarters.
At one point a streetcar managed to reach a large group of fans. Within moments it was filled. Those who hadn’t managed to climb aboard stood defiantly in the street, holding back the traffic until they spied another streetcar. To add to the chaos, a woman driver in a large auto attempted to make a left turn in the middle of Euclid Avenue. She got about halfway across, then stopped suddenly, unable to drive any further. This daring move stopped traffic in both directions, causing the male drivers let go with obscenities. Women had made significant strides by the late 1920s, but equality was still many decades ahead. The fact that the woman sat calmly in her car and chewed gum really aggravated the guys on both sides of her. It would be more than a full hour before the streets began to clear. This was Opening Day at its finest.
The following day, Willis Hudlin kept the good feelings alive by defeating the hapless White Sox, 9–2. Johnny Hodapp and Carl Lind had three hits apiece. The new second baseman was off to a blazing start, knocking in three runs with a single, double, and triple. All this winning was something new, prompting Gordon Cobbledick of the Plain Dealer to write, “If you will glance at the table of American League standings this morning, you will observe that the first team on the list is Cleveland and that New York and Washington were tied for second place.” Cobbledick had taken the place of Henry Edwards, who moved to Chicago to work in the American League office. For the next forty years Gordon Cobbledick, a native Clevelander, would be regarded as one of the best sportswriters in the business. He may have been overly optimistic given that it was still only late April, but for a short time the Indians were playing like contenders.
In the beginning of June the Indians dropped seven in a row to the Red Sox, Yankees, and Senators. No doubt many of the sceptics were waiting for this. The team did not have much pitching and defense, and the lack of a real power hitter began to show. In the middle of July they dropped five straight to New York. As the months continued Cleveland sank deeper and deeper in the standings. Another sixth- or even a seventh-place finish was looming.
The Indians’ inexperienced front office was making mistakes as well. On July 14 the newspapers reported the team had claimed pitcher Johnny Miljus on waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates. Miljus was a journeyman at best, not a star by any means. Almost immediately a controversy arose. The front office had neglected a rule which stated that a player who had been bought by a Major League team, if waived within a year, must pay the purchase price and not the waiver fee. The Pirates had bought Miljus from Seattle for $17,500 the previous July. That meant the Indians had to pay $17,500, not the waiver price of $7,500. The front office, likely covering for an embarrassed Billy Evans, issued a quick statement that a clerical employee had made an error and was not authorized to act on the waiver deal. The office wanted to withdraw the claim and pretend it never happened. The identity of the phantom employee was never revealed. The Pirates front office appealed to Commissioner Landis to oblige the Indians to cough up the money. Landis took one week to render a decision. It was a terse one, to the effect that the Indians had bought Miljus for $17,500. Evans tried to save face by issuing another statement to the press, saying, “We took a licking but we don’t feel bad about it. We rather think the acquisition of Miljus is a good thing for us.” From July through September, the new pitcher would win one game for his new team.
Just two weeks after the Miljus fiasco, Alva Bradley made a decision that launched Cleveland baseball into the modern age: he gave the green light to WTAM Radio to start broadcasting the Indians home games every day except Sundays. For some time Bradley had agonized over the decision. He, like other owners, was concerned that the broadcasting of games would result in a significant reduction in attendance. Why pay money to see the games when you could hear them for free in your office or home? There were no statistics to analyze involving any trends in attendance versus broadcasts. In the end, Bradley came to his decision by putting the interests of the Cleveland fans first.
Radio had been around in baseball since 1921, when station KDKA broadcast a Pittsburgh Pirates game. The World Series was next, with Grantland Rice behind the microphone. A few years later, Graham McNamee joined Rice and quickly established himself as a fan favorite. McNamee was not a student of the game, but his colorful and lively descriptions endeared him to listeners. If he made an obvious mistake or two, the fans just smiled and did not complain.
On Wednesday, July 25, 1928, WTAM broadcast the first Cleveland Indians game. Billy Evans started the play-by-play along with former public-address announcer Tom Manning. Fans chuckled at Evans’s attempts to describe the action. Manning had suggested that the general manager use a diagram of the field, with names included, so he could quickly note who was making the plays. Evans scoffed at this but soon found that he did not recognize the players as well as he thought. To make matters worse, he had a sore throat which deteriorated as the game progressed. He tried lozenges and sucking on a lemon but nothing helped. After a few innings he turned the mike over to Manning and retired from broadcasting. The Indians, perhaps inspired by the new technology, clobbered the Red Sox, 10–2. A happy Evans bought a round of lemonade and orangeade for all the sportswriters in the press box.
The radio broadcasts
