Good times at the Tribe Social Deck ... er, Suite

My lovely wife, Lisa, and I were invited to watch last night's Indians game from the Tribe Social Deck, and I can tell you it was a great place to watch the game from, even though we technically didn't watch it from there. This is the first season for the Tribe Social Deck, which, for anyone who doesn't know, is an area set aside for bloggers and social media users. My wife sent me a story about it, with a link to apply, and you can probably figure out what happened from there.

We arrived at the Social Deck, which is right next to the left-field bleachers, about 10 minutes before game time, and were chatting with the fellow social media-ites (who included Kory, the night guy on Q104), and were sweating our petoots off when a helpful Tribe employee named Rob came by and told us we were being moved to a suite because there was rain in the forecast and because of the hot, sticky weather. And I probably don't need to tell you there's no better way to watch a baseball game than from a suite. That's my wife in the photo below.


Oh, don't get the wrong idea. They didn't feed us all the hot dogs and hamburgers we could eat or anything like that. They had the food cupboards and the fridge all tied off. But my wife scammed a beer off a nice older gentleman in the adjacent suite, who told her he and the friends he was with at the game are all from New York, but now live all over the country and get together to watch baseball games every so often. They're obviously all doing pretty well for themselves.

Anywho, Rob provided us with the materials that are usually only given to the reporters in the press box, which was four pages, front-and-back. It included a page of tidbits about what's going on with the Indians these days — to take just one example: "Better arms: Over the last 23 games the Indians pitchers as a whole sport an ERA of 3.10 (203.1 IP, 183H, 70ER) and have lowered their team ERA from 4.87 to 4.44... Starters are 11-7 w/a 3.46 ERA (137.2IP, 134H, 53ER) in the 23G... Pitching staff has allowed 3 earned runs or less in 17 of the last 23G, over with the Indians are 15-8." There was a page about last night's starter, Mitch Talbot; a page and a half of info about each of the Indians' other players, one by one; a bunch of charts; and a list of every game this season, with the outcomes. Fascinating stuff. I wonder if I could get them to email those materials to me before every game. (Special thanks to my wife for bringing her printout home; I forgot mine in the suite.)

Anyway, we watched the game from the seats around the deck, rather than sitting in the air-conditioned suite. Eight of the ten Tribe Social Deck guests did that; two ladies, whom I never actually met, chose to sit in the suite, which I kind of understand on some level, because it was certainly more comfortable in there, temperature-wise, but I don't go to games to sit inside.

And it started out well for the Indians, with Talbot on fire out of the gates. He tied a team record by striking out six hitters in a row — and it should have been seven, but a third strike was called a ball. But Talbot apparently wore out around the fifth inning, when he gave up a three-run home run to Ben Zobrist. The umpires originally said it was in play, and Zobrist appeared to have a triple, but I could see from our suite on the third-base side that it bounced off the railing, not the fence. Since baseball now has replay for possible home run calls, the umpires looked at it and got it right. The wheels came off for Talbot after that, and everybody was hitting him hard until Manny Acta finally took him out in the sixth.

Rays starter David Price went in the opposite direction, struggling early and giving up three runs in the first two innings, the last two of which came via a two-run homer by Shelley Duncan. But Price really settled down, and the Tribe hitters couldn't get anything going after that.

The loss was the Indians' first to the Rays at home since 2005, which is astounding, given that the Rays have been one of the best teams in baseball the last couple of years, and the Indians have been one of the worst. Still, the Tribe is playing good baseball right now, and is 7-2 since the All-Star break. Justin Masterson starts against Wade Davis in the rubber match at 1:05 today, and while Masterson's had a very up-and-down year, he's capable of shutting a team down.

So ... yeah, huzzah for the Tribe Social Deck. May it last for eons.