By Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY
CLEVELAND � Signs of desolation are everywhere. Stands are closed. Sections are abandoned. Occupants have fled.
By Bill Pugliano, Getty Images
The new national census figures show that Detroit has lost 25% of its population in the last ten years, bringing the city's population down to its lowest since 1910.
By Bill Pugliano, Getty Images
The new national census figures show that Detroit has lost 25% of its population in the last ten years, bringing the city's population down to its lowest since 1910.
"Can you believe this?" Mark Kissinger, 53, a Cleveland-area computer businessman and Indians fan since birth, said during Tuesday's first-place showdown game against the Kansas City Royals at Progressive Field that drew 9,650 fans. "The stadium is starting to look like the city. I hate to say it, but I think we're back to the way things were in the '70s and '80s around here. Pretty depressing."
The Indians, whose rejuvenation more than a decade ago symbolized this city's economic renaissance, now are one of four teams in the Rust Belt? the USA's manufacturing heartland ? with a wary eye on their shrinking populations and battered job markets.
Detroit (25%), Cleveland (17%), Cincinnati (10.4%) and Pittsburgh (8.6%) suffered the largest population declines among the 28 Major League Baseball cities in the 2010 Census. All rank in the top eight for population loss nationwide. Now, they are searching for ways to reunite with their fan base ? or at least retain what remains ? while enduring the nation's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
"We have to reinvent ourselves as a business and look at ourselves differently," says Indians President Mark Shapiro, whose team's season-ticket base has gone from 27,000 fans at its peak from 1995 to 1998 to about 7,700 today. "We can't just seek to attract the same fans, because there's less of them. We have to get some new people in the stands here. Really, we have no choice."
The Indians and Pirates rank 30th and 27th, respectively, in major league attendance this season, their slight average downturns mirroring MLB's 2% overall decline through Wednesday's games. But their fan base was fallow to begin with, and they, along with the Tigers and Reds, must confront a future in markets where fans' spending power, as well as their spirit and optimism, might be diminishing.
USA TODAY spent eight days in the four shrinking cities, examining the enormous challenges that lay ahead for these teams and their plans for viability in the face of population loss.
Cleveland: 'We've got to find other ways to get people into the ballpark'
The Indians, who made no significant improvements to a team that finished fourth in the American League Central in 2010, surprisingly are in first place in the division with a 15-8 record.
The city has yet to notice, it appears. The Indians are averaging a paid attendance of 13,536. They've already had their six smallest crowds in their stadium's 18-year history this season, drawing more than 11,000 fans twice.
"I'm a fair-weather Indians fan," says Jermaine Ingram, one of three people standing at the ticket window one recent afternoon. "I think everybody's still kind of skeptical."
This is not the same juggernaut that mowed down the American League Central year after year, drawing 455 consecutive sellouts at then-Jacobs Field from 1995 to 2001. The sustained winning stopped in 2002 with their first losing season in nine years.
The off-field losses were more profound for the city's future.
Three Fortune 500 companies departed. Jobs dried up. The population declined so dramatically that 396,815 residents, down from 900,000 in 1950, remain, the lowest total since 1900.
The Flats, the neighborhood that drove Cleveland's revival and whose trendy nightspots flourished with the Indians in the late 1990s, now is littered with abandoned buildings.
Nearly one in every four Cleveland homes, according to the 2010 Census, are vacant or no longer exist. Most of the abandonment is on the east side, where vacancy rates have soared by 65%.
"It's never going to be like it was in the '90s," says Indians coach Sandy Alomar, their former six-time All-Star catcher. "You look at the market values. The home values. There's no jobs."
The Indians have tried to respond. They've slashed seat prices in the bleachers from $20 to $10 and in the upper-deck seats behind home plate from $16 to $8. The decline has left the Indians with a gorgeous stadium and 130 luxury suites and not that many people to fill them.
"The deterioration that has taken place is shocking," says former Indians pitcher Brian Anderson, a Cleveland-area native. "I love it there. But if you're a kid and go to college, unless you're in the medical field, why are you going to stick around?
"Look at what happened to The Flats. That was the place you wanted to go to have a good time. Now it's a place you go if you want to get shot."
One bar was open Tuesday night after the Indians' game. The lone parking lot with activity was Christie's Cabaret, a strip club.
"So many jobs have been lost," Shapiro says. "The executives we don't have aren't buying our luxury seats. The middle management we don't have aren't buying season tickets. The workers we don't have aren't buying walkup and bleacher seats."
Architects are designing ways to reduce the number of suites, and the club plans concerts and winter sports events.
"We've got to find other ways to get people into the ballpark, because the ballpark is our greatest asset," Shapiro says.
Detroit: Unemployment at 11.3%
Malek Ameating, a Detroit native for 19 years, sits four hours in his cab outside a downtown hotel, waiting for a fare. This is his second year on the job, after he was laid off at Ford Motor Co.
"Look at this city," he says. "The city is so dead."
No major league city has been slammed harder than Detroit. Its population of 713,000 in last year's Census was the lowest it had been since 1910. Unemployment is at 11.3%; the national average is 8.8%.
Downtown streets are desolate. Burned-out and vacated buildings are on virtually every block. A chain-link fence now protects the property of old Tiger Stadium, with the flagpole the only sign baseball was even played at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.
"There's not even enough money to burn down the buildings," says Wayne State professor Jim Puklin, who lives in the same complex where civil rights activist Rosa Parks once resided. "There's no grocery stores. No department stores. I've got to go to the suburbs for everything."
The Tigers largely have flourished in 12-year-old Comerica Park despite the decline and decay around them, setting a franchise record by averaging more than 30,000 fans a game the last five years, including two seasons of at least 3 million fans.
They are drawing 25,113 fans this year.
"There's a passion here that's unbelievable," Tigers manager Jim Leyland says. "I told these guys, 'This is not the time not to be running to first base.' People are starving and losing their jobs. They're paying their hard-earned money to come."
Says Brandon Inge, the only player who lives full time in Michigan: "It's amazing people show up like they do. People thank me all of the time just for living here."
Last Friday night, amid 41-degree temperatures and misting rain, there was a paid attendance of 23,537. The Tigers have more than 12,000 seats priced at $16 or less, including season-ticket packages starting at $10 a game.
"The city and state are going through tough economic times," Tigers President Dave Dombrowski says, "but we're coming out of it. We draw from all over.
"It's absolutely amazing the support we have here. The auto industry will never be the same. But it's coming back. And if it comes back, a lot of other businesses will come back."
It indeed might be on its way. Ford announced a $2.6 billion profit Wednesday, its best first quarter in 13 years.
Still, it will take time. And the state beyond Detroit has seen attrition; Toledo ? 60 miles away ? ranks ninth in the nation in 2010 Census population drop (8%).
There are 79,725 vacant homes in the city, according to Census data, a staggering 22.8% of the total. In Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, the business vacancy rate is 62.2%. The next-worst is Cleveland with a 35.1% business vacancy rate.
"The people there are very resilient," says Kirk Gibson, the World Series MVP for the 1984 Tigers. "They'll be back."
Pittsburgh: Worst attendance in NL
There's a woman buying ice cream at the Dipping Dots station in the late innings on Easter Sunday at PNC Park. Another man is buying nachos at the North Shore concession stand.
That's it.
There are 12 concession stands lined up around the lower concourse that are empty.
Pittsburgh attorney Brendan Delaney, one of 5,986 fans who walked through the turnstiles to watch the Pirates play the Washington Nationals, says "It's easy to be a fan when you're winning."
They haven't had a winning season since 1992, the longest drought by any major franchise in North American history.
The Pirates' attendance is the worst in the National League. The Pirates, who christened PNC Park in 2001, have drawn less than 10,000 in three of their last five games.
After losing at least 94 games in six consecutive seasons, including 105 last year, they blame themselves.
"If we ever finish at .500, they'll throw a parade," Delaney says. "The big joke is that people have kids in college who have never seen a winning season."
"The Pirates used to be one of the crown jewels of baseball," says manager Clint Hurdle, who has an ornament hanging on his office doorknob that reads, Out of challenges, grow miracles.
"We need to revisit greatness again. We need to re-bond with the city. We lost a lot of fans. They're tired and worn out."
Still, despite the 8.6% population decline, Pittsburgh's economy is turning, thanks to its health care and service industries and universities.
"Pittsburgh is actually in pretty decent shape," says former Texas Rangers CEO Chuck Greenberg, whose family has lived in the area for five generations.
"A lot of the challenges that Cleveland and Detroit are facing now, Pittsburgh had to confront in the '80s. Pittsburgh lost their coal industry a lot more quickly than the other Rust Belt cities did.
"So even though the city has gone through very difficult times, it helped Pittsburgh position itself easier than most."
Pirates President Frank Coonelly says the city's resurgence can be an inspiration to their own comeback.
"The city and the region have done a remarkable job transforming from an industrial city to an economy that continues to thrive on financial health care, high-tech and advance manufacturing," Coonelly says.
"There remains a very strong corporate base here. The population isn't what it once was, but Pittsburgh never really enjoyed the bubble of increased home prices ? and certainly not a population growth. So it hasn't suffered the burst of a bubble."
The Pirates' season-ticket sales are up 10% over a year ago, Coonelly says, to more than 7,000. Their pre-sales also are ahead by 10% over last year, when they sold 1.6 million tickets.
Says Greenberg: "Very deep in the DNA of Pittsburghers is their love of baseball. Everybody just needs to have hope again."
Cincinnati: Relies on three-state area for fan base
Cincinnati's downtown streets, with boarded-up buildings, are filled with signs that read: "Retail Space Available," and "Office Space Available." But the morning air is filled with the sound of heavy-lifting cranes, dump trucks and jackhammers.
Al Behrman, AP
The Reds have had eight crowds of less than 20,000 fans during the past three homestands.
Cincinnati, a city of 296,243, saw its unemployment rate fall to 9.7% from 10.9% a year ago. New jobs are coming with the development of the Banks, a 24-hour urban neighborhood along the city's riverfront. There will be offices, restaurants, clubs, retail shops and homes.
"This should all help make the Reds more of a destination," says local businessman Bob Crotty, a season ticketholder for baseball's oldest franchise.
But prosperity has been elusive for the Reds since their 1970s glory days with the Big Red Machine. They won the pennant four times in seven years and remain the last NL team to win back-to-back World Series titles, in 1975 and '76.
Yet their greatness perhaps casts a shadow on the current Reds. The Reds won the NL Central last year for the first time in 15 years, but they drew only 2.06 million fans. The day they clinched the division, they drew 30,151 at Great American Ball Park, which opened in 2003. The next day 14,760 arrived. This year, over the last three homestands, the Reds had eight crowds of less than 20,000.
"Probably a lot has to do with the economic climate," manager Dusty Baker says. "We're a tri-state team. People have to drive to come see us. It's tough when the price of gas is so high."
The Reds, whose fan base covers about a 150-mile radius in four states, also could be hurting from population drops in neighboring cities. Dayton, 54 miles from Cincinnati, lost 15% of its population, the nation's fifth-largest decline.
The Reds average 22,512 fans a game, but they expected more. They sold about 3,000 more season tickets than a year ago, increasing their ticket base to about 11,000.
"The economy is so much different now," says Phil Castellini, Reds COO. "But we think if we can have sustained winning, we can slowly rebuild the base."
But they still must fight external factors. Cincinnati had a 7.3% drop in home sales in March, with the median price falling more than 19% to $98,000. Hamilton County, which encompasses Cincinnati, lost $5 billion in value in the past year.
"I know the economy was hurting last year," says Yankees scout Tim Naehring, whose family grew up in Cincinnati, "but people are surprised they're not drawing better. It's still a great team. This is a hardworking German town, and the fans here are very loyal. It's just that here, everything moves a little slower."
Nightengale also reported from Cincinnati, Detroit and Pittsburgh
ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg writes about all things Big Ten in his conference blog. 
