Cleveland Municipal Stadium Opens

July 1, 1931 - Cleveland Municipal Stadium officially opened on this day. The first event, though, did not happen until a couple of days later, and it wasn't an Indians game either, according to the site BallParksofBaseball.com. According to an article in the Coshocton Tribune in Coshocton, Ohio, on July 10, 1931, the Indians did not even have a lease with the new stadium, called Lakefront Stadium then, when it opened, though negotiations were in progress. The Indians played their first home game at Municipal Stadium on July 3, 1932. Lakefront Stadium was used as a venue for professional football too.

Wikipedia states that before the Browns' arrival, the stadium was briefly the home field for two other NFL teams: the Cleveland Indians in 1931 and the Cleveland Rams from 1936 to 1937 and again from 1939 to 1941. The football Indians played two home games in their 1931 season, a 6-0 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers and a 14-0 loss to the Chicago Cardinals.

The Rams were founded in 1936 as members of the second American Football League and joined the NFL in 1937. They played home games at the stadium their first two seasons, before moving to the smaller Shaw Stadium in 1938. The Browns called it home in 1946 in their inaugural season in the AAFC. The stadium was the home of the Indians and the Browns until it closed in 1993.

According to an article by the UP in the Akron Beacon on July 1, 1931 the first event that the old stadium saw was the Heavy Weight Boxing tilt between Max Schemling and Young Stribling.