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A mistake by the lake: Remembering the 10-cent Beer Night riot

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Via: larry-hampton • 11 years ago • 5 comments

A mistake by the lake: Remembering the 10-cent Beer Night riot

Tuesday marks the 39th anniversary of one of the more colorful or dubious, depending on your (in)take events in baseball history: the 10-Cent Beer Night Riot. On June 4, 1974 , a promotion at Clevelands Municipal Stadium went awry, producing one of the rare instances in modern major league history where umpires ruled a game as a forfeit.

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Professor Quiet

seeder Larry Hampton 11 years ago

That night, 25,134 paying customers showed up to Municipal Stadium, about twice the Indians season average. The marquee attraction at the cavernous ballpark wasnt the matchup between two .500-ish teams, the Rangers and Indians, but rather the Cleveland front offices ploy to goose attendance by offering customers of drinking age 10 ounces of Strohs beer for 10 cents. For some reason, common sense took a vacation, as even a Cleveland Press pregame writeup gleefully proclaimed, Rinse your stein and get in line. Billy the Kid and his Texas gang are in town and its 10-cent beer night at the ballpark.

Tensions already ran high between the two teams because six days earlier in Texas, the Rangers Lenny Randle had set off a bench-clearing brawl bygiving a forearm shove to a pitcher fielding his bunt and then crashing into the first baseman, having already slid overly hard into second base earlier in the game. Rangers fans threw beer on Indians players during the scrum, thus priming the pump for what ensued in Cleveland.

Aided by a poorly-considered purchase limit of six cups of beer at a time, many fans were already inebriated prior to first pitch, and a circus-like atmosphere prevailed. In the second inning, a woman jumped into the Indians on-deck circle and lifted her shirt. In the fourth, a completely naked man slid into second base while the Rangers Tom Grieve circled the bases after homering, and in the fifth, a father-son pair mooned the crowd after jumping over an outfield wall. Late in the game, fans climbed onto the field and pestered Rangers rightfielder Jeff Burroughs, some even shaking his hand.

Professor Quiet

seeder Larry Hampton 11 years ago

On the commuter train from Hopkins Airport into downtown it became clear that something really special or at least different was looming at the ballpark on 10-Cent Beer Night. At each stop the train was filling with young people obviously headed for the game to take advantage of the promotion. Everybody was wearing Indians baseball caps and Indians batting helmets. As a court-certified expert on brain abuse, it was my educated guess that most of these fans were already loaded on Wild Turkey and whatever medicine it is that truck drivers take to stay awake on long hauls. Their condition suggested that they might be on their way home from, and not on their way to, a 10-cent Beer Night game.
If it is true the decade of the Seventies was earmarked by behavioral residue of the spirit of the late Sixties, then Beer Night in Cleveland was the archetypal illustration of what all of that was to represent.
When the game reached the bottom of the ninth inning, the temperament of the crowd became strikingly like that of Billy Martin when he reached his hour of belligerence in the cocktail lounge. What had been a largely congenial gathering turned combative. Woodstock had become Kent State.
From my safe haven in the pressbox I was delighted by the entire spectacle since my dispatch to the newspaper back in Texas would offer something out of the ordinary and I figured that the players post-game quotes might not be as clichd as usual.
When I talked to the Rangers, most of them appeared rather shaken by what they had clearly regarded as an ordeal. Billy Martin was predictably verbose. We got hit with everything you can think of, Martin recounted with an air of seeming wonderment. Chairs were flying down out of the upper deck. Cleveland players were fighting their own fans. First they were protecting the Rangers and then they were fighting to protect themselves. Somebody hit Tom Hilgendorf [Indians pitcher] with a chair and cut his head open.
About a dozen players were in the bar when I got there. One Burroughs pulled me aside. Hey, he wondered, do the stats count in a forfeit? I hope not. I went 0-for-4, but the marijuana smoke was so thick out there in rightfield, I think I was higher than the fans.

Freshman Silent

Tex Stankley 11 years ago

A bad idea from the get go. What did they expect was going to go down?

I played in a Rugby Tournament decades ago in Memphis sponsored by Jack Daniels. The Old No. 7 Tournament, if I recall. I like whiskey as much as the next goober but I don't get drunk, preferring other medicinals to hard liquor. I remember thinking prior to the trip, why would you give a bunch of Rugby players hard liquor unless you were comfortable with golf carts in the motel swimming pool. That's what our guys did. Drove em right into the pool. We were scheduled to play for the number one spot in the tourney but got run out of town on a rail prior to the match. Rightfully so, I suppose.

Professor Quiet

seeder Larry Hampton 11 years ago

Great story Tex!

What, golf carts don't float?

Freshman Silent

Tex Stankley 11 years ago

Apparently not. Our guys left three of em, cold and lonely, on the bottom of the pool. I did not participate, though I suppose I was an accessory after the fact. I did watch, with my pard Dave from Argentina, who also preferred herbal remedies. We just watched, "tsked tsked", and sed, "No good can come from this."

No one was jailed, bless the heart of Memphis, but we were asked politely to absquatulate in a hurry. It was mentioned that Memphis probably shouldn't be the destination of choice for us for awhile. Dave and I were still standing there when the Sheriff showed. I'm no rat, so when the fellow walked up to us I pointed at the pool and sed, "Looks, some fools drove the golf carts into the pool. I just can't feature who'd do such a thing." The culprits at that time were long gone.

So much for winning a fine match. Or, losing.

Free liquor/Rugby players. Bad idea.

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