Читать книгу No Money, No Beer, No Pennants. The Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Great Depression онлайн

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It had been quite a successful day for Alva Bradley and his partners. They watched an exciting game with loads of action. Everywhere the new owners looked, there were fans yelling and applauding, thrilled to see the home season get off to a rousing start. There was still a great deal of work to do in making the club a contender, but Bradley saw the potential of putting a quality product on the field—including justification for building a new ballpark that could seat more than three times the amount of fans squeezed into League Park.

The game ended right around 5:00 p.m. Fans madly dashed to their automobiles, intent on getting ahead of the traffic. Within minutes one of the all-time traffic snarls in Cleveland history took place. The fifty police officers on duty whistled and yelled at hundreds of autos trying to get out of the neighborhood and find their way to Euclid and Carnegie Avenues. Any sense of protocol and orderly behavior was forgotten. Cars were everywhere, flying down alleys and side streets. The streetcars, special buses, and taxis moved in to pick up the thousands of people needing rides. Soon they were literally stopped in their tracks, blocked by the onslaught of Model T’s and the like. Police estimated the delays at forty minutes and climbing. The cars that somehow reached Euclid Avenue ran directly into the normal traffic jam that had begun a half-hour earlier. Motorists were able to move about three feet, then stop and wait a few minutes to move another three. The fender benders were too numerous to count. One driver shouted to police to stop the car behind him that had already rammed him twice. An officer screamed back to write it down and mail the complaint to headquarters.