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JACOBS FIELD
Cleveland
Opened: 1994
Capacity: 43,345
Average Ticket Price: $21.17
Avgerage Cost of Concessions and Souvenirs: $71.50
Pluses:
Public transportation system (RTA) offers bus service to within a 10-minute walk of the park; about 30,000 spaces are available in surface lots within a few blocks of the park; on-site parking is $12 a vehicle.

Minuses:
Despite prices that aren't exorbitant, on-site parking is fairly limited; public bus service is not timed to coincide with the start or finish of games, making for some long waits.
Cleveland's Jacobs Field, with some help from a pair of American League pennant-winning Indians teams, has helped revitalize baseball interest in a city where football is as important as that morning cup of coffee.
Photo by AP
Plenty of concession locations (68); average number of restrooms (45); generous access for disabled fans (610 seats); not much for kids to do outside of watching the game; seats beyond the dugouts in upper and lower decks are angled to face the middle of the infield; Market Pavilion in center field offers a variety of food (Asian, Mexican, Italian, etc.) and a full-service bar opens at 4:30 p.m. before night games, allowing fans to refresh themselves while they watch batting practice.
Who needs Botox to look young? Believe it or not, the Jake is 11 years old, yet it still looks spanking new. The days when entire seasons sold out prior to Opening Day are in the past, so walk-up tickets are easily available. With the team in transition from its pennant-filled 1990s incarnation, fan energy has been low in recent seasons; applause is often reserved for the JumboTron or the team's odd mascot, Slider. In an effort to rekindle some of the buzz they once generated in Cleveland, the Indians lowered ticket prices in some sections in 2005. Sightlines throughout the park are generally excellent except in the upper right field corner, where a telescope is needed to follow the action. In summer, the bleachers are as close to the beach as many get in Cleveland, offering a great view of the game and a chance for sunbathers to work on their tans. Unfortunately, beach season doesn't last long in the Midwest, a fact the Tribe would be wise to remember instead of subjecting their fans to the often arctic conditions of Cleveland at night in April and early May. Food here is pretty typical of most parks, with the exception of the locally famous stadium mustard, which is worth buying a foot-long for. -- Dale Cary  
Located at the edge of downtown, the Jake serves in many ways as the gatekeeper to the urban revitalization Cleveland started but never quite finished. The vibrancy of the local watering holes and restaurants has diminished with the team's late-season fortunes of late. But within a mile radius of the park, there are a number of bars and dining spots that still maintain steady business. The scale of nightlife is a bit, well, Midwestern, but that also makes for easy navigation of streets and good prices. Traffic is only moderately troublesome in comparison to the moving parking lots on the coasts, but parking can be a pain if an event is being held at the Cavs' home next door. --Dale Cary  
2005 Record: 74-58 (all statistics through Aug. 29)
Players worth price of admission: Jhonny Peralta (.297 average, 20 HRs, 65 RBIs), Victor Martinez (.292, 18 HRs, 65 RBIs), Travis Hafner (.314, 22 HRs, 82 HRs), Grady Sizemore (.288, 15 HRs, 20 SBs).  
A relatively mature park among the sea of new stadiums built in the last decade and a half, the Jake doesn't do anything too flashy but what it does is portray its long-suffering city in a positive light, which is no small thing for a town that was forced to endure years of dismal baseball in desolate Cleveland Stadium. And while that hasn't transformed the city into Las Vegas on Lake Erie, it has at least given people good reason to think of Cleveland as something more than the Mistake on the Lake.  

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