As you’re all aware, the Boston Red Sox are in town for the first part of this week. They are one of the most popular teams in baseball, and they usually draw pretty good size crowds, even when on the road. A look at last night’s attendance at The Jake shows the Indians are facing a major attendance problem. The announced attendance was 19,613, which is just 43% capacity. That number was about double the actual attendance, according to my sources. In some other games this season, actual attendance has been as low as 5,500.

This is a major problem for a team that once set a record for most consecutive sellouts in this stadium. Jacobs Field (if the Progressive corporation wants me to attach their name to the stadium, they can pay me directly, otherwise they can KMA) is not the huge draw it once was, and apparently neither are the Indians. I know times are tough, but this is our baseball team, the same team that was rescued from the depths of obscurity a decade ago to become perennial contenders. If we can’t come out to see them play, how long can they last in this decaying town?

The Indians promotions this year are intriguing, if not a little bizarre. They’ve got an 80’s weekend coming up in June to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movie Major League (with Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn bobblehead). One of the promotions that weekend will be a Shin Soo Choo 80’s bobblehead, which features our star outfielder dressed as Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice, standing on one of those Simon games (4 color buttons, follow the pattern. You know the game). It’s the weirdest promo I’ve seen in a while, but if anyone gets their hands on one I’d sure like to have it (email thatrichguy @ yahoo.com for contact info, I’ll throw you a link if you have a website). Let’s hope some of these free goodies will get some fans in the seats. Nobody wants to go back to the ho-hum days of the late-80’s when we lost every year and nobody was even there to see it.

Tribe Tags: attendance, bobblehead, cleveland indians, major league, rick vaughn, shin soo choo, wild thing