If I were to ask you which city held arguably the most comically bad promotion in sports history, which city would you guess, and why is it Cleveland?
Since the advent of stadium lighting and its ability to illuminate dark fields, only five professional baseball games have ever been forfeited. And when on June 4, 1974 the Cleveland Indians decided to sell unlimited beer at an 85% discount, the stadium lights weren’t the only thing that got fucking lit at the ballpark.
Before the booze let’s chug some context:
A week before the infamous June 4th meeting, the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians had actually played at the Rangers stadium in Arlington. Not only had Texas won the game in a decisive fashion, but there was an incident involving cleat spikes to the ankle and some elbows to the face that led to an all-out, bench clearing brawl between the two teams. The blood was bad.
And on top of that, here’s a concise breakdown of what had been going on in Cleveland itself for the past 5 years.
Economy: Bad
Jobs: No
Other Sports: Ass
River: ON FIRE
The vibes were, as scientists would say, “Not Gucci” in Cleveland. The people of ‘The Mistake On The Lake’ were looking for any kind of release, and if near-unlimited pissbeer ain’t gonna open the valve I don’t know what will.
What do I mean by ‘near unlimited pissbeer’? Welp, let take a look at the evening’s rules. The beers are a dime (61 cents in modern currency) down from 65 cents ($4.00 in modern currency{Still a fucking steal}). You are allowed to purchase 6 beers at once (Per person). You are allowed to return to the vendor as many times as your wobbly legs can carry you.
Yup.
So anyway, titties came out early and hard when an overweight, middle-aged lady made for the Cleveland batters circle, attempting to kiss the umpire. Shockingly, he fought off the proposition. Security got that pasty Midwestern torso off the field with relative ease, but human flesh would be a recurring theme in the innings to come.
While people in the audience were working up a solid BAC, a couple of early hits by the Rangers had brought the contest to a lopsided 5-1. It’s honestly kind of impressive anyone could hit the ball at all considering the tiny explosions going off all around them. Thousands of firecrackers had been smuggled in, popping off intermittently in the stands, on the field, and in the Rangers’ bullpen when somebody could hurl them with enough accuracy.
All this exploded gunpowder mixed with wafts of marijuana smoke (naturally) lead some people to look at the grey clouds drifting through the field and describe the scene as ‘warlike’. A pretty accurate description, especially considering when the Rangers pitcher took a line drive to the gut, dropping him to the ground in pain, the crowd began chanting “Hit ‘em again! Hit ‘em again! Harder! Harder!”. The desire for violence was growing to some Lord of the Rings Orc-level shit, and the game wasn’t even half over.
You’d think nobody would want to risk getting their genitals singed by the rapidfire crackle of the illicit boom booms I mentioned earlier, but you’d be quite wrong: 19 people wrong. In inning number 2, a completely nude man sprinted on the field and slid into second base wearing no protection on any part of his body. Innings later, a father son duo (wholesome!) stumbled onto the field to show their asses to God & everybody, but mostly the Rangers bench. At this point, if you’re playing naked bingo you’re exactly one 70’s groomed beaver away from blacking out the whole damn board.
Speaking of blacking out, by this point in the game, fans had been housing beers at such a breakneck pace that the staff literally could no longer get the beer from the trucks to the vendors fast enough. Fans who were still thirsty for that sweet sweet frat nectar were instructed to go around the outfield fence and get their beers poured straight from the truck spigot. The dream, tbh.
Oh, and by the way, the people running those truck spigots? Teenage girls. Out of self-preservation they understandably bailed, leaving the trucks unattended. What was once ‘cheap beer’ was now ‘free beer’, and what could once loosely be called a ‘baseball game’ was about to become a ‘crime scene’.
By this point in the game every sane person and family unit was starting to understand that this was, perhaps, not the best place to be. They slunk out to the parking lot to their steel-framed death traps, knowing goddamn well it was safer on a 70’s freeway than in the Cleveland stadium. Statistically speaking, this meant that whoever was left in the stadium by this point was there for blood and beer. And they were already full to the brim with one liquid.
It actually took until the ninth inning for the riot to break out, which even the pope would call ‘A fucking miracle’. By that point, the Indians had actually tied the game up at 5-5 and had a potential winning run standing on second base. However, fate, and untold gallons of 4.5 percent beer were about to intervene.
Yet another fan had made their way onto the field, running over to the outfielder, Jeff Borroughs and stealing the hat right off his head. When Borroughs tried to chase the fan down and steal his hat back, he stumbled, falling to the turf. The Rangers’ manager, Billy Martin, whose blood was likely at a low boil by this point, mistakenly read this as an assault by the intoxicated fan. He rallied his boys to go out onto the field to rectify the situation.
Bad move.
The fans, finally seeing what they deemed a reasonable excuse to murder the Rangers, took to the field with their weapons. What weapons? Some they brought, some they stole. Mainly chains, knives, and clubs made from pieces of stadium seats they had managed to rip out of the ground. As more and more (possibly naked) fans poured over the edges of the field, Billy Martin and the Rangers had no choice but to circle up and prepare for the worst.
Given the bad blood, the Indians manager Ken Aspromonte probably watched this scene from his dugout and enjoyed a few seconds of “Haha. Nice!” before switching to “Oh, fuck!”. He knew he had to act or some lucky fan was leaving that stadium with a necklace of Ranger ears. Figuring that the fans might respond to seeing some of their own boys on the field, Ken rallied the Indians and got them to carry their bats in defense.
The crowd really responded to that.
Kind of.
I guess?
Not really, to be honest.
Fans had actually begun indiscriminately hurling metal folding chairs like fucking ninja stars. One of the chairs struck Indians relief pitcher square in the head. The chief umpire also took some stadium chair to the dome, causing him to bleed profusely. A local reporter who was simply trying to ask people questions got punched in the face. Twice.
From above, the Indians announcers got an eagle-eyed view of their security staff doing exactly jack shit about the situation. And to be fair, there were not enough of them. Realizing there was nothing to be found on the field but stadium shrapnel, the two teams decided to join forces and circle up back to back in the diamond. They swatted their way off the field in small groups, retiring into their respective clubhouses, barring their doors and praying for the best.
With no more baseball players to accost, the fans got to thieving anything that wasn’t bolted down, and, quite frankly, some shit that was. Ripping up more of the stadium and literally stealing the bases. To be honest, it’s what most of us want to do when we our team gives up a late lead to the league punching bag.
Speaking of punching, eventually the riot police got there and got to work, using tear gas and, presumably, blunt objects to to break up the hammered revelers. This heavy shit took about 20 minutes while, reportedly, the organist was playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”.
Fuck me, where is this 30 for 30 at?
When the marijuana smoke and the tear gas had cleared, no bases remained. The field was strewn with cups, rocks, bottles, radio batteries, wine jugs, hotdogs, popcorn containers, folding chairs, and one can only imagine the human excretions. In a shocking turn only nine people were actually arrested for the incident. Likely because the cops had no intention of doing all that paperwork.
As far as policy aftermath goes, you can bet they didn’t do that shit again. Over forty days later a ten cent beer night was held again, but you could only get two beers for that reduced price. Effectively, the events of Ten Cent Beer Night really harshed the mellow for the rest of us degenerates. But as a thinking man I’d have to posit that we’re probably better for it.
I could try to give you some kind of saccharine turn of phrase that really encompasses the events of 10CBN, but I’ll let the words of somebody else do that for me. Of the event, American League president Lee MacPhail said ”There was no question that beer played a part in the riot”.
Gee fuckin’ thanks, Lee.
I Did This To Me 
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