The Cleveland Indians

For our Senior Project, John and I have been at Progressive Field working with the merchandising department of the Indians. It has been eye-opening to see how involved the Indians Company has to be in making everything go smoothly for every game. John and I have also noticed that there are two distinct sides of the employees at Progressive Field. There are the white-collar personnel that work in the Executive Offices at Progressive Field on Ontario Avenue. This is where people like General Manager Mark Shapiro and owner Larry Dolan have their offices. It is also where accounting, personnel, ballpark operations, and other divisions have their primary offices. In the basement of the Executive Offices is the Merchandising Office, which is where John and I are interning. Out one door of the Merchandising Office is the elevators to the white-collar world of the Executive Offices and out the other door is the massive underground tunnel that is the highway for vendors, warehouse workers, and other blue-collar personnel, as well as the access to the clubhouses, dugout suites, and batting cages for the players. Therefore, it has been interesting because John and I have worked in both the Executive Offices in the accounting department surrounded by salaried professionals and also worked in the Distribution Center alongside blue-collar warehouse workers. It has been one of the most interesting aspect of the project for me so far to see how these two different sides of the Indians Baseball Company interact and work together to make the gameday operations successful.

Above is a picture of the Distribution Center at Progressive Field. In this massive warehouse, all the merchandise that is sold in any of the Northeast Ohio team shop locations is first delivered here in massive cardboard boxes. Each order has to be processed by hand to make sure the delivery is accurate, that the merchandise is recorded into the Indians records, and then stored in the warehouse section of the distribution center to await shipment to anywhere from South Park to Great Lakes to the Progressive Team Shop 30 feet above the warehouse. In the middle of the picture there is a pallet of merchandise waiting to be received. During the first week of our project, the Indians were receiving about a dozen of those pallets a day, all needing to be received, recorded, and stored. It is a massive undertaking that requires many hours of hands-on labor. John and I have spent a few days in the Distribution Center and have gotten a taste of what is needed to make the merchandise move for the Indians. That combined with our work in the Executive Offices has made the first half of our project very engaging and interesting on a daily basis.