That’s the Ticket! Cleveland Indians Tickets!

Illustration scanned from a Brilliant Electric Signs ad from a 1968 scorecard

The Cleveland Indians clinched the American League Central title this week. So naturally, I’m feeling kinda nostalgic about going to see the Indians play down at the old Municipal Stadium back in the 60s and 70s with Dad and my brothers.

I first wrote about going to those games back here.

Since that post, I discovered that I had a bunch of ticket stubs from those games.

As I explained before, the tickets were free as part of a Cleveland Press promotion that rewarded students who received straight A’s.

The seat locations of the free tickets were usually kinda crummy, but you could upgrade the tickets to better ones, which Dad always did.

It looks like we saw at least one game each year from 1968 to 1971, when we saw two.

The games were:
• August 29, 1968 – Indians vs Minnesota (a loss, 3-2)
• July 26, 1969 – Indians vs Minnesota again (a win, 6-3)
• August 29, 1970 – Indians vs California Angels (a win, 14-1)
• July 31, 1971 – Indians vs Oakland Athletics (a loss, 9-1)
• August 21, 1971 – Indians vs Chicago White Sox (a win, 9-4)

It turns out that the tickets from the August 29, 1968 game versus Minnesota correspond with the battered Indians scorecard that I saved all these years.

I scanned in a bunch of ads from the scorecard back here, here, here, here, and here.

But the best ad is still the one from radio station WERE that includes this illustration (below), in which Chief Wahoo apparently used a player from the opposing team for batting practice.

For more Chief Wahoo fun, you can revisit my post about the 1949 Cleveland Indians Sketch Book.