CLEVELAND — The beer flowed and some blood and bruising followed. There was some baseball played in between.
On a warm spring night along Lake Erie five decades ago, a well-intentioned promotion intended to attract fans to the perpetually bad Cleveland Indians turned ugly and triggered an alcohol-fueled riot, now known as one of the most famous in the history of American sports.
On Tuesday, 10-cent beer night turns 50 years old.
Cheers. Burp.
A game that began with a handful of fans drunk on cheap beer running across the grass field – some of them naked – descended into chaos.
During a frightening ninth inning, Texas manager Billy Martin, never one to back down from a fight, turned to his players in the dugout and told them to grab their bats before charging onto the Municipal Stadium field and causing chaos. .
Looking back to June 4, 1974, it’s hard to imagine anyone thought it would be a good idea to sell beers for just a dime. But then it was a different world, perhaps not innocent, but certainly naive.
By the time the Rangers escaped to their clubhouse with a forfeit victory, after surviving hundreds of fans storming the field as the Indians recovered, it was clear that this was a huge mistake.
“It kind of fit with the times,” said former Cleveland manager Mike Hargrove, who was a 24-year-old rookie first baseman for the Rangers. “They had Disco Demolition Night in Chicago, and to me it was almost a sign of what was to come 50 years later with everything that’s going on in the world right now.”
Even before the first keg was opened or 300 ml of beer was served, there was already simmering tension between the Rangers and the Indians. A week earlier, the teams had brawled in Texas, where Rangers fans threw debris at Indians players.
After the skirmish, Martin lit the proverbial fire when asked if he feared reprisals on a trip to Cleveland.
“They don’t have enough fans to worry about,” he joked.
The comment didn’t sit well in Cleveland, where civic pride runs deeper than the Cuyahoga River and passionate fans aren’t averse to drinking a beer or two while watching their professional sports teams.
In the week leading up to 10 Cent Beer Night, local radio host Pete Franklin fanned the flames by vowing revenge on the Rangers. Martin was booed when he presented the lineup card.
Hargrove felt trouble long before he was attacked with dozens of hot dogs thrown from the stands. He barely dodged being hit by a wine bottle.
“Around the second inning, fans started running back and forth across the outfield, from the left-field bullpen to the right-field bullpen,” Hargrove told The Associated Press in a phone call last week. “It started with a few people doing it and then it was five, then 10 and then it was a bunch.”
From his seat in the upper deck, Jack Barno, who attended the game with high school friends, could tell things were getting worse.
“When people ran across the field and the police chased them, they laughed and said, ‘You can’t catch me,’” the 67-year-old Westlake, Ohio, resident recalled. “There were a handful of police officers on the other side with batons. And when they jumped over that fence, they found them with some blows to the head and dragged them out.”
Other problems spread throughout the giant stadium.
With long lines making the wait too long to get a refill, unruly fans, some of them college students who had just arrived from summer vacation, drove out the concession workers who were driving the beer trucks set up beyond the center field wall. The beer was now free.
Stadium security was outnumbered and overwhelmed by the crowd of 25,134, the second largest of the season.
Still, it was good-natured fun – Morganna, the famous “kissing bandit” of the 1970s, ran onto the field and tried to kiss referee Nestor Chylak.
Then came the ninth and a scene from a low-budget horror film.
After trailing 5-3, the Indians scored twice to tie the score and brought the runners into action when a fan scaled the outfield wall, ran toward Rangers right fielder Jeff Burroughs and attempted to steal the player’s cap. .
On the bench, Martin shouted for his players to follow him. Hargrove headed to the right to help Burroughs, who was now surrounded. The Indians came out of hiding to help the Rangers.
“A big, drunk guy grabbed Jeff’s hat and I was one of the first ones there,” Hargrove said. “I tackled him and took him down and it took three police officers to handcuff him. Thank God he was on the ground. I left – or else.”
The rest is a kind of hazy blur.
“I don’t remember anything about the game except that inning when we were in trouble,” Hargrove said. “They had runners and it looked like they were getting ready to score and move on and then all of a sudden all hell broke loose.”
As the players escaped serious injury, Chylak’s head was split open by a thrown chair as fights broke out across the field.
Even half a century later, Hargrove can remember the emotions of that unforgettable night.
“I don’t remember being scared,” he said. “I don’t remember feeling threatened. I didn’t feel like that when it was all happening, until we got to the clubhouse and looked at what happened and could have happened.
“So I was a little shaky.”
Although the night was yet another blow to the city’s already battered image, most Clevelanders shrugged it off. Today, the ugly event is commemorated with throwback t-shirts marking the night mixing beer, blood and baseball.
The rest of the country was outraged.
The Indians held another beer night a month later.
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This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
