The Main Event
- July 31, 1932 – Lefty Grove and the A’s beat Cleveland, 1–0, spoiling the Indians’ first game at their new lakefront stadium in front of a then-major-league-record crowd of 80,184.
On July 31, 1932, the Cleveland Indians opened their brand-new lakefront stadium in front of 80,184 fans, then the largest crowd ever to watch a Major League Baseball game. The home team lost anyway. Philadelphia Athletics ace Lefty Grove silenced the record throng with a 1-0 shutout, spoiling what should have been a triumphant coming-out party for one of the most ambitious stadiums ever built in America. It was a fitting, faintly ironic beginning for a ballpark that would spend the next six decades swinging between glory and neglect.
A City’s Ambition Takes Shape
The idea of a giant municipal stadium on Cleveland’s lakefront had been kicked around since the early 1900s, first as a proposed venue for high school athletics. City Manager William R. Hopkins revived the concept in 1923, and by 1928 Cleveland voters approved a $2.5 million bond issue to fund it. The project drew an unusual coalition of backers: Hopkins, Indians president Ernest Barnard, real estate magnate (and future Indians owner) Alva Bradley, and the powerful Van Sweringen brothers, who saw a stadium as a magnet for downtown commerce tied to their real estate holdings.
Ground broke on June 24, 1930, on a landfill site that pushed Cleveland’s shoreline roughly 200 feet farther into Lake Erie. Workers finished the steel-and-concrete structure in just 370 days, at a final cost of about $3 million, making it one of the first American sports venues built substantially with public money. Its first event wasn’t even baseball: on July 3, 1931, it hosted a heavyweight title boxing match between Max Schmeling and Young Stribling in front of 37,000 fans.
Why So Big?
At 78,000-plus seats, the building — originally called Lakefront Stadium — was the largest outdoor arena in the world at the time of its completion. A persistent myth holds that it was built to lure the 1932 Summer Olympics to Cleveland. It’s a good story, but the timeline kills it: Los Angeles had already been awarded those Games years before Cleveland voters even approved the bond issue. The real explanation is more mundane and more American: civic boosterism. Cleveland was a booming industrial city in the late 1920s, and its leaders wanted a multipurpose showcase that could host boxing, football, and baseball alike, generate rental income, and signal that Cleveland belonged among the nation’s great cities. It was oversized almost by design — built for a crowd the Indians could rarely fill on an ordinary Tuesday.
A Slow Start, Then a Golden Age
That oversizing created an odd early habit. For years after the 1932 opener, the Indians didn’t play there full-time. Instead, they split their schedule between the cavernous new stadium for weekend and holiday games and their older, cozier League Park (capacity about 22,000) for weekday dates, when a crowd of 80,000 was never realistic. That arrangement lasted until 1946, when flamboyant new owner Bill Veeck bought the club and committed to Municipal Stadium full-time starting in 1947. Veeck shortened the outfield fences, filled seats with stunts and promotions, and in July 1947 signed Larry Doby, integrating the American League just months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line in the National League.
The payoff came fast. The Indians won the World Series in 1948, with Game 5 drawing a then-record World Series crowd of 86,288. In 1954, Cleveland won an American League–record 111 games and set the still-relevant single-game major-league attendance mark of 86,563 for a September doubleheader against the Yankees — only to be swept in the World Series by the New York Giants, a defeat forever tied to Willie Mays‘s over-the-shoulder catch.
The Mistake by the Lake
The good times didn’t last. Through the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, the Indians were mostly bad, and a 70,000-plus-seat stadium built for boxing crowds and World Series throngs looked absurd hosting a few thousand shivering fans off frigid Lake Erie winds. Sportswriters and fans started calling it “the Mistake by the Lake,” a nickname that stuck to both the stadium and, at times, the city itself. The Browns, who’d played there since 1946, kept it busy on autumn Sundays, but the ballpark’s massive, half-empty bowl became a symbol of Cleveland’s tougher decades.
End of an Era, and What Replaced It
The Indians left after the 1993 season for the new, baseball-only Jacobs Field (today’s Progressive Field) downtown. The Browns played on alone until controversial owner Art Modell relocated the franchise to Baltimore after the 1995 season. Cleveland struck a deal to keep the Browns’ name, colors, and history, with a new expansion team promised for 1999 — but that meant the old stadium had to go. Wrecking crews began tearing it down in November 1996, and by March 1997 it was gone.
A new football-only stadium rose on the same lakefront footprint, opening in 1999. It’s changed names repeatedly with sponsorship deals — Cleveland Browns Stadium, then FirstEnergy Stadium, and today Huntington Bank Field. Fittingly, even that building’s days on the lakefront are numbered: the Browns broke ground on a new domed stadium in nearby Brook Park, targeted to open in 2029, which will finally end professional football’s 80-plus-year run on the site where Lefty Grove once silenced 80,184 people on a summer afternoon in 1932.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for July 31
- July 31, 1921 – Goldie Rapp goes hitless in Chicago, ending a 23-game hitting streak — still the longest ever by a Phillies rookie. Rapp had come over from the Giants earlier that year in a trade involving Casey Stengel.
- July 31, 1929 – Don Hurst hits a three-run homer to beat the Pirates, 6–2, capping a team-record streak of four straight games with a home run and no other hits.
- July 31, 1944 – The Phillies lose 5–1 to Chicago at Shibe Park — their 20th straight home game — before heading out on a 26-game road trip.
- July 31, 1982 – Manny Trillo commits an error against Chicago, snapping his major-league-record streak of 89 consecutive errorless games.
- July 31, 1987 – Steve Bedrosian records his 30th save of the season, the first time a Phillie ever reached that mark.
- July 31, 1991 – Traded Roger McDowell to the Dodgers for Mike Hartley and Braulio Castillo.
- July 31, 1994 – Traded Milt Thompson to Houston for Tom Edens.
- July 31, 1994 – Kim Batiste goes 1-for-3 with a walk in a 9–5 loss to Atlanta — his only walk in 209 at-bats that season.
- July 31, 1994: Steve Carlton is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
- July 31, 1996: Traded Terry Mulholland to Seattle for Desi Relaford.
- July 31, 2006: Traded Rheal Cormier to Cincinnati for Justin Germano.
- July 31, 2012: Traded Shane Victorino to the Dodgers for Josh Lindblom and Ethan Martin.
- July 31, 2012: Traded Hunter Pence to San Francisco for Nate Schierholtz, Tommy Joseph, and Seth Rosin.
- July 31, 2015: Traded Cole Hamels and Jake Diekman (plus cash) to Texas for Matt Harrison, Jake Thompson, Alec Asher, Jerad Eickhoff, Jorge Alfaro, and Nick Williams; also traded Ben Revere to Toronto for Jimmy Cordero and Alberto Tirado.
- July 31, 2015: Pat Burrell is inducted into the Phillies Wall of Fame.
- July 31, 2017: Traded Joaquin Benoit to Pittsburgh for Seth McGarry.
- July 31, 2019: Traded international bonus-pool money and a player to be named later to Pittsburgh for Corey Dickerson; also sent cash to Baltimore for Dan Straily.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for July 31
- Red Munson (born 1883) – Catcher whose entire big-league career was a nine-game cup of coffee with the 1905 Phillies.
- Slim Harrell (born 1890) – Right-hander who pitched a single major-league game for Connie Mack‘s Athletics on June 21, 1912, three scoreless innings in relief.
- Erv Kantlehner (born 1892) – A left-handed pitcher who spent most of his career with Pittsburgh (1914–16) but closed it out with the Phillies at the end of the 1916 season.
- Heinie Scheer (born 1900) – Light-hitting but sure-handed second/third baseman who backed up Ralph Young and Jimmie Dykes on the A’s in 1922–23.
- Billy Shantz (born 1927) – Catcher who served as Joe Astroth‘s backup for the Athletics’ final Philadelphia season in 1954, then followed the franchise to Kansas City in 1955.
- Terry Fox (born 1935) – A hard-throwing reliever who spent most of his career with Detroit before finishing his final big-league season with the Phillies in 1966, going 3–2.
- Fred Van Dusen (born 1937) – An 18-year-old “bonus baby” outfielder whose only major-league plate appearance, a pinch-hit at-bat in September 1955, ended when he was hit by a pitch.
- John Vukovich (born 1947) – As a player was a light-hitting infielder for the Phillies (1970–71, 1976–81) who won two World Series. “Vuke” then became the longest-serving coach in franchise history (1988–2004).
- Pete Koegel (born 1947) – A catcher/first baseman/outfielder acquired from Milwaukee in an April 1971 trade for Johnny Briggs. Koegel played parts of two seasons in Philadelphia.
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