Photo Credit: Associated Press
***
``Rinse your stein and get in line. Billy the Kid and his Texas gang are in town and it's 10-cent beer night at the ballpark.’’
So wrote Cleveland Press beat writer Jim Braham in his run up to the Cleveland Indians’ showdown with the Texas Rangers, scheduled for June 4, 1974, 40 years ago.
What seems so reckless and irresponsible today in the 21st century, in 1974-well before there was Mothers against Drunk Drivers (MADD), strong appeals for designated drivers and other drink responsibly slogans popping up like toasters, having a 10 cent beer night wasn’t as crazy as it sounded.
It certainly wasn’t unprecedented.
When the Indians’ Executive Vice President Ted Bonda pressed his board to think of ways to increase sagging attendance, the suggestion of a 10 cent beer night, similar to the one the Texas Rangers successfully held was quickly embraced with plans to hold four 10 cent beer nights during 1974, including June 4. The others were July 18, August 20th and another date yet to be announced in September.
But on this warm June evening with a full moon hanging over Cleveland Municipal Stadium, bizarre behavior from inebriated fans quickly erupted into a full-blown riot with an understaffed police security ill-equipped to handle the mob violence which ensued.
The evening began innocently enough, as 23, 134 fans filed through the turnstiles with a good number of them clearing a path to the beer truck set up right behind the home run fence, looking much like a U-Haul truck with kegs inside and spigots coming out the side. For nothing more than a shiny dime, customers were served a 12-ounce cup of 3.2 Stroh’s beer with a limit of six per customer. By the time the dreadful evening ended, about 65,000 cups were consumed.
Retired junior high school teacher for the City of Cleveland, Richard Pavol, who has been a Cleveland Indians usher since 1970 (long since retired), took time to share his memories of that infamous night. ``As I recall,’’ Pavol says, ``I was working at Gate D and was instructed to hand out two tickets for two 10 cent beers per adult entering the stadium. As the evening wore on , it became apparent to Pavol and his fellow ushers that the attendance would be much less than what they anticipated; leaving them with a surplus of 10 cent beer tickets. So with the ushers saddled with rolls and rolls of beer tickets, they quickly found themselves overwhelmed with ticket requests, especially from the thirsty patrons. ``Rightly or wrongly,’’ Pavol explained, ``we complied, the rest is history!’’
As the unlimited supply of beer began to take hold, trouble and mayhem began brewing everywhere.
First, a buxom female made her appearance into the Indians’ on-deck circle, bearing her breasts. By the sixth inning, fans were flinging objects onto the field with one fan running on the field picking up a tennis ball and throwing back into the crowd.
As the disorderly behavior from drunken fans quickly became the main attraction, public address announcer Bob Kiefer warned the crowd to stop throwing objects. But such warnings fell on deaf ears as it only whet their appetites.
Before the 7th inning stretch, more and more fans began parading across the field, some disrobing, others streaking. Meanwhile, as Ranger players approached their dugout they were splashed with beer and whacked with glass bottles hidden in fans’ cups, while in the Rangers bullpen, players were being pelted with firecrackers, forcing home plate umpire Nestor Chylak to move the relief pitchers into the visitors’ dugout with assurances they would have as much time as they needed to warm up. An unruly mob then took to the left field fence, hoping to rip off the padding for a souvenir.
What made matters so unmanageable on this drunken filled summer night was that Cleveland Police were typically in low supply at Cleveland Indians' games. If there was discipline to be meted out, it was largely left to the ushers to maintain order. Having never witnessed such a mob scene before, the stadium personnel simply didn’t have the necessary training to maintain order amid such mass chaos, with a battalion of fans armed with firecrackers, cherry bombs, knives, and bottles; the air thick with gunpowder and plumes of marijuana smoke.
Fans spilling out onto the field were matched by endless fist fights taking place in the stands. Families could be seen everywhere gathering the kids and heading to the exits as if a category 5 hurricane was about to land on the shores of Lake Erie.
The most dispiriting part of this frightful night was that it was a terrific ball game. Trailing 5-1 in the 6th inning, the Indians stormed back and thanks to John Lowenstein's sac fly in the bottom of the 9th, scoring Ed Crosby from third, the game was tied up. But just as the tying run crossed home plate, all hell broke loose. That’s when a fan hopped over the right field fence, and took off Rangers outfielder Jeff Burroughs hat. As Burroughs turned around to grab his hat, he stumbled and fell to the ground. Rangers’ manager Billy Martin thinking his right-fielder had been assaulted, ordered his players to grab a bat and follow him out to right field. Even with the Rangers fully armed with lumber, they were met with mobs of drunk fans, estimated to be as many as 300, many equipped with chains, knives and pieces of stadium seats they had broken off. Tribe manager Ken Aspromonte fearing the Rangers players were in danger-instructed his team to grab bats and head out to the outfield.
Retired Plain Dealer Travel Editor David Molyneaux who was at the game, tells me, ``In all the years of attending baseball games, I've never before, nor since, seen a baseball crowd in Cleveland act like a crazed mob, as they did on 10-cent Beer night in 1974.’’ Molyneaux who was a Plain Dealer city hall reporter in 1974, recalls he was sitting in the Upper Reserve in right field, next to The Plain Dealer's City Editor, David Hopcraft, who made a beeline for a pay phone to call the newspaper for re-enforcements, to write about the bloodbath they knew was coming.
Here is how Indians' radio announcers Joe Tait and Herb Score described the bedlam.
Joe Tait: ``Tom Hilgendorf has been hit on the head. Hilgy is in definite pain. He's bent over, holding his head. Somebody hit Hilgendorf on the head, and he is going to be assisted back into the dugout. Aw, this is absolute tragedy. Absolute tragedy...I've been in this business for over 20 years and I have never seen anything as disgusting as this.''
Herb Score: ``I don't think this game will continue, Joe...The unbelievable thing is people keep jumping out of the stands after they see what's going on!''
Tait: ``The whole thing has degenerated now into just-now we've got another fight going with fans and ball players. [Mike] Hargrove has got some kid on the ground and he is really administering a beating."
Score: ``Well, that fellow came up and hit him from behind is what happened.''
Tait: ``Boy, Hargrove really wants a piece of him and I don't blame him.''
Score: ``I'm surprised that the police from the city of Cleveland haven't been called here, because we have the makings of a pretty good riot. We have a pretty good riot.''
Tait: ``The security people they have here just are totally incapable of handling this crowd. They just-well, short of the National Guard; I'm not sure what would handle this crowd right now. It's just unbelievable. Unbelievable...''
Score: ``[As soon as] people go back in the seats, others jump down and take their place.''
Tait: ``The bases are gone. Both teams are back in their respective dugouts...''
The unrestrained riot mercifully brought a public address announcement that the game has been declared a forfeit, which was quickly followed by a cascade of boos and jeers reverberating through the stadium. After the night was over and lights had gone dark, there were nine arrests and seven hospitalized. Home plate umpire Nestor Chylak was dripping in blood after being whacked on the head from part of a chair ruthlessly administered from drunken thugs.
Plain Dealer sports reporter Dan Coughlin was punched on the side of the head and subsequently blind-sided again by a fan standing on top of the Rangers dugout, ``I'll kill you,'' the youth shouted at Coughlin, ``and if Burroughs comes out on that field tomorrow night, I'll kill him.''
``That was the closest you're ever gonna to be to seeing someone get killed in this game of baseball,'' said Texas Ranger skipper Billy Martin in a post-game interview.
As nightmarish and destructive as that 10 cent beer night was, the Indians management initially were planning to plunge ahead with three other beer night promotions. They held a 10 cent beer night a month later, with a limit of two per customer, but that would be the very last 10 cent beer night in Cleveland as AL President Lee MacPhail intervened, bringing such reckless promotions to a screeching halt.
If June 4, 1974 wasn’t bizarre enough with full moon and a full-scale riot, Plain Dealer reader representative Ted Diadiun, who back in 1974 was a sportswriter for the News Herald, attended the game as a fan, and shared with me a truly peculiar anecdote of that villainous night. ``The oddest tale from the Texas locker room came from three players -- Joe Lovitto, Rich Billings and former Indian Duke Sims -- who had gone out on the town the night before’’ Diadiun tells me. `` At one of the places they stopped, they encountered a young woman who claimed to be a witch, and informed them they'd all be killed the following night. "We all laughed at her," said Lovitto, "but after this maybe I won't laugh so hard at anyone who tells me she's a witch. She wasn't too far off, was she?"
Footnote: On the morning of June 4, 1974, the Indians and the Baltimore Orioles were tied for third place, three games behind the Boston Red Sox with a 24-25 record in the AL East. The Indians finished in fourth place that year with a 77-85 record.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
Columnists take on the disastrous 10 cent beer night promotion in Cleveland
- ``After what happened last night, to have another Beer Night would indicate that the people running the Indians are suffering from stupidity...if they can't learn by experience that baseball and 10-cent beer don't mix with some of the fans they are getting these days, then they can't learn much more.’’
--Bob August, Cleveland Press Columnist.
- ``Kill the umpire!'' has been as American as ``In God We Trust'' and ``I can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby''-but they got ridiculous about it in Cleveland, bouncing a chair off the noble head of Nestor Chylak.''......``What was [Phil] Seghi operating out there with his 10 cent beer night promotion-a barroom or a ball game? I can't wait until he stages Switchblade Night, Or Pistol Day.''
--Bud Collins, Boston Globe Sports Columnist
- `Surely the nation needs a good 5-cent cigar but baseball doesn't need 10-cent beer night.''
--Dave Anderson, New York Times Sports Columnist
- ``Hungry for customers, they decide to sell beer, not baseball. They lure people into the park by offering a beer giveaway, 10 cents a cup. So, crowds, go there to tank up, not to watch baseball. What do the Lords of Baseball expect to happen?''
--Dick Young, New York Daily News Sports Columnist
