Celebrity Guardians Fans

Acclaimed and award-winning actor Tom Hanks and baseball go together like peanut butter and jelly. The star of the hit comedy A League of Their Own may have been born in Concord, California, but he is a die-hard Cleveland Guardians fan, who reps his fandom as loud and as often as he can. During the 2022 season, Hanks was invited to throw out the opening pitch, and he brought a very special friend with him which can be seen in the image here.

Comedian and game show host Drew Carey wears his love of Cleveland on his sleeve, his own television show had the theme song “Cleveland Rocks," so it should come as no surprise that Carey is a huge fan of the Guardians. in 2022, he was asked to throw out the first pitch for the team, which he happily obliged to do.

A native daughter of Cleveland, Ohio, actor Monica Potter grew up a die-hard fan of all things Ohio-sports, and this includes the Guardians. Consistently rocking the merch and attending games, Potter was able to achieve a lifelong dream in 2014 when she threw out the opening pitch for the Guardians.

A self-proclaimed Cleveland Guardians superfan, prolific rapper Kid Cudi was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and his fandom continues to burn strong to this very day. In 2014, Cudi impressed the world when he actually threw out a slider as an opening pitch for the team.

One of Cleveland, Ohios native sons, NBA superstar LeBron James always takes the time to rep and support his hometown. While the Guardians may not be his absolute favorite MLB team, James always makes it a point to stop and cheer on his hometown Guardians.

Star of the hit films Encanto and In the Heights, Stephanie Beatriz was never a big sports fan, and being born and raised in Argentina, she really didn't have too much exposure to baseball. That is, of course, until she met her husband Brad Hoss. Hoss was a huge Cleveland sports fan, so in turn, Beatriz became a fan as well, but over time, her fandom even overshadowed her husband as she grew to truly love the Guardians, going so far as participating in the team's Celebrity Softball Game.

Drake is widely known and regarded as the ultimate bandwagon fan, and while he will occasionally hop from team to team to support, he did love the Cleveland Guardians when he was still just an up-and-comer. The prolific rapper and singer even threw out the first pitch for the team in 2011.

During her Gold Over America Tour, Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles was invited to throw out the opening pitch for the Cleveland Guardians. Biles made sure to ensure that it was a memorable throw, and gave the fans a show.

Hailing from the great Cleveland, Ohio, celebrity chef and television personality Micahel Symon has loved the Cleveland Guardians his entire life. Symon continues to attend games, rock the merch, and even take to social media to hype his team up.

Singer Kane Brown may have been born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but when the Cleveland Guardians invited him as a special guest while he was on tour in the City, Brown jumped at the opportunity. Brown has since fallen in love with the city, even donating to the local Cleveland Boys and Girls club

Acclaimed actor and comedian Yvette Nicole Brown was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and she loves herself some Cleveland Guardians. Brown has been a lifelong fan of the team, and most notably, she helped rally the charge for the franchise to change its name from the disrespectful “Indians” into what we know as the guardians today.

Former NBA sixth man of the year and 2016 NBA champion J.R. Smith took to the Cleveland Guardians to celebrate winning the Cavaliers a title. He was welcomed with open arms and has even since returned to play in the Celebrity All-Star Game in Cleveland.

Acclaimed actor Kevin Costner isn't just a huge baseball fan in his hit films Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, and Field of Dreams, he is actually a huge fan of the sport in real life. While he may be most notable for his Braves fandom, he simply loves the sport as a whole, and when invited to stop by the Cleveland Guardians game, he more than happily obliged.

Musician Machine Gun Kelly spent his adolescence growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, and while he was there he fell in love with the Cleveland Guardians. He would attend games in his youth, and in 2015, he released a song dedicated to his team entitled “World Series,” which hyped up his team and became an anthem for them during the 2010s.

Cleveland Browns players Denzel Ward and Baker Mayfield made a very special appearance to Progressive Field when they made the NFL playoffs in 2021. The Guardians celebrated the achievement with the players and wished them good luck in the playoffs.

Cleveland Browns players Denzel Ward and Baker Mayfield made a very special appearance to Progressive Field when they made the NFL playoffs in 2021. The Guardians celebrated the achievement with the players and wished them good luck in the playoffs.

Born and raised in Euclid, Ohio, professional mixed martial artist Stipe Miocic grew up loving the Cleveland Guardians, and in 2019 the team asked him to throw the ceremonial first pitch, which he happily did.

Defensive end for the Cleveland Browns Myles Garret has made Cleveland more than just his home during his illustrious 6 years playing for the city, he has made himself one of their own. Garrett openly roots for all Cleveland teams, including the Guardians, and he even threw out the first pitch for the team.

A native son of Cleveland, Ohio, comedian and talk show host Arsenio Hall loves all things Cleveland sports. Whether he is talking about the team online, attending games, or simply watching them from the comfort of his own home, Hall is the ideal Guardians fan.

John Kasich was the 69th governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019. Back in 2016, Kasich expressed his fandom for the Indians via a bet with Illinois governor Bruce Rauner over the outcome of the World Series between the Indians and Cubs. The Indians ended up losing but fans will love how the governor showed his support.

The Cleveland Guardians have the scariest supporter of them all -- horror author Stephen King. King was vocal on Twitter during the team's 2016 World Series run with a message for baseball fans: “Enough with the Cubs! How about some love for the Cleveland Indians? GO, TRIBE!"

After appearing in the 1989 sports comedy film Major League as Indians unpredictable reliever Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, actor Charlie Sheen developed a real fandom of the team over the years, showing up to support the team frequently, including taking the field for a hello during the 2016 World Series.

Carter Bays is the co-creator, writer, and producer of the show How I Met Your Mother. He’s from Shaker Heights, Ohio, and back during the show's first run, he would occasionally throw in references to the Cleveland Indians via his alter-ego, Ted - as shown here.

You may know Scott Raab as the author of The Whore of Akron. But he’s also a Tribe fan. As a writer-at-large for Esquire in the 90s and 00s, Raab once wrote a great essay about his Chief Wahoo tattoo on his forearm. In his own words: “The Tribe has been a part of my life longer than I can actually remember; I literally can not recall a time when the team was not part of my world. I grew up in the mid-1950s, when Sunday double-headers against the Yankees at Municipal Stadium sometimes drew more than 80,000 fans. My dad took me to see them play once in a while, but no particular game or moment stands out. It’s the kind of fanhood that feels genetic, not acquired. In short, I don’t know if I ‘became’ an Indians fan. Feels like I was born that way.”

Novelist Mary Doria Russell has lived in Cleveland for over 30 years and became an Indians fan (and a baseball fan) in the mid-1990s. Describing her fandom: “To understand how and why I fell in love with the Indians, you have to start with the Jake. Remember the years it took to cobble together the real estate the new ballpark would sit on? Remember the dark, self-loathing jokes? (“So, is it going to be underground? Because that’s where the Indians play – in the basement.”) Now remember what it was like to walk up to the stadium in the spring of 1994… My son Dan was finishing second grade, and his elementary school got a block of discounted tickets. We are not a sports-oriented family, but we decided it might be fun to go see Jacobs Field after all the publicity. Must have been a 4 PM game because it was still daylight when we drove to the city. Found a free parking spot on Carnegie. Bought peanuts cheap on the corner of East 9th. Gave a buck to the panhandler because it might be good karma. All of those things would become our personal baseball traditions – which is to say the superstitions we observe, to this day. All around us: smiling families converging on the stadium. Laughing, quiet, purposeful. For some reason, it struck me that this was the modern equivalent of medieval peasants headed for market day at a cathedral, and then we turned down Larry Doby Way and entered that graceful, lacy, white and green structure and my jaw actually did drop. It was, unexpectedly, a place of great beauty. The seats themselves were way the hell up in section 511, but that was good, too. Sit in those seats at sunset, and you’ll see the sky above the home run porch turn gold and pink and lavender and amethyst, embraced and framed by the ballpark itself. By the second inning, we were learning baseball terms of art from the parents of other second-graders. (“Watch – he’s going to pitch around Thome.”) The early innings were disappointing, but the 1994 team would become famous for its come-from-behind theatrics. We were down by 6 and won by 2, and it was glorious. My husband enjoyed the game, but Danny and I were hooked and the Indians reeled us in with years of exciting play and two trips to the Series. By the time Dan turned 15 and I turned 45, we could recognize each player from his stance at the plate. There aren’t a lot of enthusiasms that a teenage boy and middle-aged woman can share on a completely equal basis, but that’s what baseball was for us. We had opinions about bench players and guys in AAA. We discussed trades and mourned injuries. Night after night, we sat and watched the games on TV. A few years later, Dan’s first date with the woman who’d become his wife was a baseball game, and Jessie was hooked, too. They even thought about having their wedding reception at the Terrace Club. On our own 30th anniversary, I asked my husband what surprised him most about our marriage so far. He said, “You read the sports pages. I never saw that coming.” But even Don likes to go to a few games a year, and we even bought season tickets with a bunch of people from his office a couple of times. The Indians honeymoon has ended. Like lifelong Clevelanders, we know the taste of ashes. We don’t ask for much. If they play .500 ball, I’m not thrilled but it’s worth taking a chance on tickets. “That’s it!” I often declare. “I’m giving up on these guys! I’m never going to let them break my heart again.” But every spring… I can’t help myself. With other teams, it’s “Wait’ll next year.” With the Indians, it’s “Maybe this time… They could turn it around. This might be a good year.”

Jerry “The King” Lawler is a friend of ex-Indians player Travis Hafner a.k.a “Pronk” and has called himself an Indians and Cavs fan, but who knows if his fandom remains once Pronk retired.

John Adams is a dedicated fan of the Cleveland Guardians. Adams played his bass drum in the bleacher seats during nearly every Indians home game from late August 1973 through 2019, which brought him positive recognition from the Indians and other organizations. The Indians pay for two season tickets for Adams and his drum, he was involved in two ceremonial first pitches, and he is the only fan for whom the Indians have dedicated a bobblehead day.

A native of Cleveland, Bob Hope grew up as a fan of the Indians and jumped at the chance to own a small stake of his hometown team in1946, and he held onto it for most of the rest of his life.

In the 1950s, a part-owner of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, Bob Hope did a guest appearance in I Love Lucy centered around his attending a Yankees-Indians game at Yankee Stadium. Sighting Bob Hope at Yankee Stadium, Lucy hopes to persuade him to appear at Ricky’s club. To get close enough to him, she disguises herself first as a hot-dog vendor, then as a tobacco-chewing baseball player. When Lucy disguises herself as a baseball player, she wears a Cleveland Indians uniform with #19 on it. This was the number worn by Bob Feller (1918-2010), who, like Al Rosen, also played his entire career for the Indians and also retired the day before this episode was first aired. Lucy probably didn’t know it, but had Ricky not tipped off part-owner Bob Hope that this was Lucy in disguise, he certainly would have known it was not Feller! In the end of the episode, she joins Hope and Ricky to perform at Ricky’s nightclub, the newly-re-named Club Babalu.

You might be surprised to learn that there is a rich piece of Black history attached to the former Jacobs Field, along with a connection to actress Kym E. Whitley’s family. In the early 60s, the award-winning Whitley/Whitley Architects and Planners LLC was formed by Kym Whitley’s father, William, his brother James, and their late sister Joyce, who served as the company’s VP. The company spearheaded several major projects including the Cleveland Public Library, the Tower City Center building, and the John F. Kennedy Recreation Center, among other notable projects. The firm joined with architecture giants HOK Sports to build the $175 million Jacobs Field for the Indians. The stadium, nicknamed “The Jake,” officially opened in 1994 and was renamed in 2008 after it was sold. Needless to say, the Whitley's ties to the city, the stadium, and the team run very deep.

Nathan Followill, drummer for the rock band Kings of Leon, threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the start of the baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox in Cleveland, on May 13, 2009.

Katie Nageotte is a Cleveland kid through and through. She grew up in the nearby suburb of Olmstead Falls and graduated from Ashland University about an hour from home. Nageotte won the gold medal in women’s pole vault at the 2021 Summer Games in Tokyo. When she returned home, the Guardians invited their native daughter out to Progressive Field to throw out the first pitch.

Back in 2014, the former Cleveland Cavaliers point guard made an appearance at Progressive Field to show of a different set of skills than his basketball ability. Irving took BP and shagged some fly balls with the Indians outfielders. He apparently held his own as catcher George Kottaras tossed a few over the plate for him.

After their first NBA championship together, LeBron and Cleveland Cavaliers power forward Kevin Love were known to get around town a bit. When the Indians made the World Series in 2016, the hoopers showed up to support their fellow Cleveland sports figures title ambitions.