The 39th Anniversary of the "Mistake on the Lake"...
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 Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium went awry, producing one of the rare instances in modern major league history where umpires ruled a game as a forfeit.
That night, 25,134 paying customers showed up to Municipal Stadium, about twice the Indians’ season average. The marquee attraction at the cavernous ballpark wasn’t the matchup between two .500-ish teams, the Rangers and Indians, but rather the Cleveland front office’s ploy to goose attendance by offering customers of drinking age 10 ounces of Stroh’s 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 it’s 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 by giving 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.
http://mlb.si.com/2013/06/04/a-mistake-by-the-lake-remembering-the-10-cent-beer-night-riot/?sct=hp_t2_a12
= new reply since forum marked as read
I was only in sixth grade at the time but I remember listening to the game on the radio and talking about it afterwards. We thought it was so cool.
Only in the seventies...Shropshire's memoir is great:
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.
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.”
I think they should reinstate !0 cent beer night for the entertainment value. They could pair it with Free Batting Helmet Night. Sponsored by Girls Gone Wild.
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.
I can't wait to celebrate the 34th anniversary of the "Disco Demolition Night" promotion in Chicago on July 12th!
