June 4, 1974: Ten-Cent Beer Night In Cleveland

Number 1 at the left is Billy Martin.

Number 36 at the right is Gaylord Perry.

This wasn't the kind of lubricant Perry was looking for.

June 4, 1974, 50 years ago: The Cleveland Indians host the Texas Rangers at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It's a promotion: Ten Cent Beer Night. This turns into a problem.

Based on history, it shouldn't have been. In 1971, they held Nickel Beer Day, without incident, either on the field or in the stands. So, with individual cups of beer going not for the usual price of 65 cents, but for 10 cents -- with inflation factored in, about 63 cents in 2022 money -- they didn't expect to have an issue.

The problem was, the Rangers were then managed by Billy Martin. Although he had not yet managed the New York Yankees, the team with which he spent most of his playing career, he already had a reputation as a dirty manager.

A week earlier, at Arlington Stadium in the suburbs of Dallas, there was a brawl between the same 2 teams, followed by the Texas fans throwing things at the Indians. The Rangers won, 3-0, the game was not forfeited, and no one in uniform was ejected, or even fined.

After the game, a Cleveland reporter asked Martin, "Are you going to take your armor to Cleveland?" Martin said, "Naw, they won't have enough fans there to worry about." He had a point: The Indians were averaging 12,626 fans per home game up until June 4.

During the week, Cleveland sports-talk radio host Pete Franklin made inflammatory comments. The day of the game, Cleveland's biggest newspaper, The Plain Dealer, printed a cartoon showing mascot Chief Wahoo with boxing gloves on. The caption read, "Be ready for anything."

It should be pointed out that the beers being offered for a dime each were low-alcohol beers, 3.2 percent, with most beers being between 4 and 5 percent. And there was a limit of 6 beers per purchase. However, there was no limit on the number of purchases during the game. Drink enough low-alcohol beer, and it adds up. And this was before the era when beer sales were cut off at the 7th inning stretch.

Tim Russert, later the host of NBC's Meet the Press, came from Buffalo, nearly 200 miles away. He was a staunch Buffalo Bills fan, but the Indians were the closest Major League Baseball team to Buffalo at the time. (The Toronto Blue Jays arrived in 1977, and are now closer. During the COVID restrictions of 2020 and 2021, they even played "home games" in Buffalo.) Russert was then attending law school at Cleveland State University, and later said, "I went with two dollars in my pocket. You do the math."

The Rangers quickly took a 5–1 lead. Meanwhile, throughout the game, the increasingly inebriated crowd grew more and more unruly. Early in the game, Cleveland's Leron Lee hit a line drive into the stomach of Rangers pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, dropping him to the ground. Fans in the upper deck of the stadium cheered, then chanted, "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again! Harder! Harder!" A woman ran out to the Indians' on-deck circle, flashed her breasts, and then tried to kiss umpire Nestor Chylak, who "was not in a kissing mood."

The Spring of 1974 was the time of the "streaking" craze: People taking off their clothes and running naked through public places. It even happened during the Academy Awards ceremony, on live national television, on April 2. In this game, as Rangers outfielder Tom Grieve hit his second home run of the game, a naked man ran to 2nd base, and slid in, "probably getting dirt in places unsuitable for speculation," in the words of Paul Jackson, writing an article on the incident for ESPN.com in 2008. An inning later, a father-and-son pair ran onto the outfield, and mooned the fans in the bleachers.

Hundreds of fans had brought firecrackers, which they set off in the stands at random. As Jackson wrote in his ESPN.com piece, the firecrackers were "lending the game a war-zone ambiance that would seem increasingly appropriate." As the game progressed, more fans ran onto the field and caused problems. Ranger 1st baseman Mike Hargrove -- later to play for the Indians, and later still to manage them to 2 Pennants -- was spit on, pelted with hot dogs, and, at one point, was nearly struck by an empty gallon jug of Thunderbird fortified wine.

The Rangers later argued a call in which Lee was called safe in a close play at 3rd base, spiking Jenkins with his cleats in the process, and forcing him to leave the game. The Rangers' angry response to this call enraged Cleveland fans, who again began throwing objects onto the field. Someone tossed lit firecrackers into the Rangers' bullpen. An atmosphere made hazy by "clouds of exploded gunpowder and marijuana smoke" contributed to the unsettling mood.

By the 7th inning, families and those fans who remained sober had mostly left the ballpark, while the remaining crowd continued to grow more inebriated. As Jackson described in his 2008 article:

Early on, the demand for beer surpassed the Indians' capacity to ferry it to concession stands, and a luminary, perhaps the same person who suggested the promotion in the first place, decided to allow fans to line up behind the outfield fences and have their cups filled directly from Stroh's company trucks. The promotion achieved critical mass at that moment, as weaving, hooting queues of people refilled via industrial spigot.

In the bottom of the 9th, the Indians managed to rally, tying the game 5–5, and had Rusty Torres on 2nd base, representing the potential winning run. However, with a crowd that had been drinking heavily for 9 innings, the situation finally came to a head.

A 19-year-old fan named Terry Yerkic ran onto the field, and attempted to steal Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs' cap. Confronting the fan, Burroughs tripped. Thinking that Burroughs had been attacked, Martin charged onto the field, with his players right behind, some wielding bats. A large number of intoxicated fans -- some armed with knives, chains, and clubs fashioned from portions of stadium seats that they had torn apart -- surged onto the field, and others hurled bottles from the stands. Two hundred fans surrounded the 25 Rangers, with more fans coming.

Realizing that the Rangers' lives might be in danger, Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte ordered his players to grab bats and help the Rangers, attacking the team's own fans in the process. Rioters began throwing steel folding chairs, and Cleveland relief pitcher Tom Hilgendorf was hit in the head by one of them. Hargrove, after subduing one rioter in a fistfight, had to fight another on his way back to the Texas dugout. The two teams retreated off the field through the dugouts in groups, with players protecting each other.

The teams fled into their clubhouses, and closed and locked the doors. The crowd pulled up and stole the bases and anything else it found. Rioters threw a vast array of objects including cups, rocks, bottles, batteries from radios, hot dogs, popcorn containers, and folding chairs.

Chylak, realizing that order would not be restored in a timely fashion, forfeited the game to the Rangers, since it was the home team's duty to keep the field playable. He, too, was a victim of the rioters, as one struck and cut his head with part of a stadium seat, and his hand was cut by a thrown rock. He later called the fans "uncontrollable beasts," and stated that he'd never seen anything like what had happened "except in a zoo."

The rioting continued for 20 minutes. As Joe Tait and former Indians pitcher Herb Score called the riot live on radio, Score mentioned the security guards' inability to handle the crowd. Tait said, "Aw, this is absolute tragedy." The Cleveland Division of Police finally arrived to restore order, arresting 9 fans. Indians players escorted the Rangers to the team bus.

Cleveland general manager Phil Seghi blamed the umpires for losing control of the game. The Sporting News wrote that "Seghi's perspective might have been different had he been in Chylak's shoes, in the midst of knife-wielding, bottle-throwing, chair-tossing, fist-swinging drunks." American League President Lee MacPhail commented, "There was no question that beer played a part in the riot."

The Indians refused to cancel their next Beer Night promotion, on July 18. They needed the money, badly. They did, however, put on a limit of 2 cups per person. A crowd of 41,848 fans came out. There were no incidents.

Rusty Torres had been with the Yankees when they were the beneficiaries of the previous MLB forfeit, the last Washington Senators game in 1971, when fans rushed the field with 1 out to go, ruining what stood to be a Senators victory. And he would be a beneficiary of the next MLB forfeit, as a Detroit Tiger, following the Chicago White Sox' Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979.