Restoration of Cleveland Indians' first home at League Park targets Opening Day in July

We're recreating history here.

CLEVELAND, Ohio Lounging in Viola Super's porch swing and gazing at the ornate and slightly bowed brick wall of League Park, it's possible to squint and imagine fans pouring down East 66th Street in 1891, eager to watch Cleveland Spiders ace Cy Young throw the first pitch in the new stadium.

Sit still long enough and one can listen for echos of cheering throngs who witnessed the only Indians World Series championship clinched at home, in 1920, or the crack of Babe Ruth's 500th career home run over the 60-foot Great Wall onto Lexington Avenue nine years later.

Those days, of course, are long gone. But baseball is not dead on this quiet, historic corner of Cleveland's Hough neighborhood, and Super said she could not be more pleased to see a bright future finally nearing realization at League Park after decades of neglect and decay.

As the Indians celebrate their 114th home opener Friday three miles away at Progressive Field, a $6.3 million restoration and renovation of League Park is about 75 percent finished and continues, now that winter has thawed, toward a mid-July completion target.

I'm very excited about it. I really can't wait,'' said Super, a retired RTA driver who five years ago with her husband, Lucius Oldham, built the first of four large new homes which stand together as an oasis on the block next to an abandoned cement block building with a tree growing through the roof.

It can only be a positive for the neighborhood. I'm hoping it will be very encouraging for the inner-city youth to participate in baseball.''

The two-fold focus of the project is a historical restoration of what little remains from the original 1891 stadium the East 66th first baseline grandstand wall and the three-floor ticket house on the corner of Lexington Ave. coupled with an artificial turf baseball field and a new building that will house concessions, bathrooms and possibly a shop or conference room near home plate.

Beyond the outfield fence, a clay and grass softball/baseball field and paved walking path were finished last year, and it was named Fannie Lewis Community Park at League Park, in honor of the late councilwoman who proposed and campaigned for the entire project more than a decade ago.

The city-owned League Park is to be an enclosed facility used for recreation and possibly high school softball and baseball games, and is to be available for adults who want to play on the same lot with the same quirky dimensions where Joe DiMaggio rapped the final hits of his record 56-game hitting streak, and where the Cleveland Buckeyes won the 1945 Negro League World Series.

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Restoration of Cleveland Indians' first home at League Park targets Opening Day in July