Performer: Seal
Songwriters: Gus Isidore, Seal
Original Release: Seal (II)
Year: 1994
Definitive Version: None
When I went to Cleveland to
see Pink Floyd Memorial Day weekend 1994, Scott’s crew and I got a hotel about
15 miles south of the city. Why did we get a hotel? Well, why go see Pink Floyd
once, when you can see them twice? John and Chris decided they wanted to get
random tickets—didn’t matter where, as long as they were in the stadium.
Once was enough for me and
Scott—particularly when you consider that we were going to be seeing them AGAIN
in two days. So we instead decided to see an Indians game that Friday night. (I
know I said earlier that the first Pink Floyd show was Friday, but now that I
think about it, it had to have been Thursday, because the Indy 500 is always
Sunday, unless it’s rained out, and we did nothing Saturday save for the BBQ.)
I didn’t have any trouble
getting tickets, which was surprising given that it was the first year of
Jacobs Field, the brand-new new-wave ballpark. Cleveland apparently wasn’t
quite ready yet to pile on the franchise-rebirth bandwagon.
We started the next day at
Denny’s across the parking lot from the motel and proceeded to the nearby
Kmart. Everyone had been appreciative of my clothes the night before, but they
wanted their own togs this time around. The gametime temperature for Pink Floyd
the night before was 41 degrees, and it wasn’t going to be much warmer tonight.
(They don’t call it the Mistake by the Lake for no reason, you know.)
After that, we needed to
find something to do to kill time during the day. Cleveland was more than a
year from opening the Rock Hall of Fame, so we didn’t have a lot of options. We
found an arcade and batting cages and then decided to see a movie.
How about … Sirens? What’s
Sirens? That’s the movie where Elle Macpherson is naked—a lot naked—so I’ve
heard. I’m in! Me too! It’s unanimous—Sirens, it is! Yeah, go figure that such
a movie would be of interest to four 20-something dudes?
After that and after
separate cold shoulders (just kidding), we headed into town. First pitch was at
the usual 7:05, and I wanted to walk around the park to check it out, so Scott
and I broke off first.
I noted with some irony that
I had never seen a game at Muni Stadium, although I’d seen two concerts there
(the other being The Who in 1989, story to come). In fact, this would be my
first Indians game anywhere. Can you believe that after almost 30 years of
living in and around Ohio? Well, what the heck: At that point, it’d been almost
two decades since I’d seen a Reds game.
Jacobs Field, or ob’s Field,
as the sign still being assembled read on this particular day, would be the
first of the new-wave ballparks I would visit for a game. Scott and I checked
out the Bob Feller statue outside the right field stands and toured the yard
during batting practice. It looked beautiful, different from Camden Yards, the
first retro park, but definitely of the ilk.
The Indians had the Oakland
A’s on the schedule, and Scott and I had seats that were about as far from home
plate as you could get and still be in the stadium. We were literally at the
end of the last row in the lower bowl. If someone hit a homer off the Feller
statue, we had a chance to catch it if we got lucky with the rebound.
It was cold for May, but
fortunately, unlike the previous night, it was clear, so it wasn’t a bad night
for a game. Scott and I had the usual—dogs and beers—for dinner, and the game
rolled along fairly quickly and uneventfully until Paul Sorrento sent everyone
home happy with a game-winning homer in the bottom of the ninth to give the
Tribe a 3-2 win. It was the first walkoff home run I’d ever seen at a
professional game, so that was cool.
But now Scott and I needed
something to do. The game ended, we figured, at about the same time as Pink
Floyd was playing Time, so it was going to be at least another hour before the
show finished and another half-hour before we met up with John and Chris.
Sirens again? Sadly, no movie theaters were in the immediate vicinity.
So we hiked up Ninth Street
by the park before coming to a rather ornate brass-railing and fern bar that’s
something else now. They had the Stanley Cup playoffs on, so that seemed like
the place for us. It was Game 7 of the Rangers-Devils and it was 2-2 at the
start of the third period.
We watched the third period,
the first overtime and the second until the Rangers, of course, won it. By this
time, we figured, the concert was over. And, sure enough, almost as soon as we
left the bar to go and meet up with John and Chris, here they came walking up
the street. How was the show? It was awesome: They played all of Dark Side of
the Moon and The Wall and Wish You Were Here and Meddle and … Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Heard it.
And with that we jumped in our
cars and caravanned our way to Muncie, Ind. The kids were willing to split a
hotel room to see Pink Floyd twice in Cleveland but not to avoid driving for
five hours in the middle of the night. Ah youth.
It was about 3 in the
morning when Scott and I pulled up at his place. We would have to get up at about
9 to get things moving before the scheduled start of the second, now annual,
500 Barbecue. Sleep? No sleep. The Cleveland leg of the epic weekend was over;
the Indianapolis leg was about to begin.
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