Fifty years ago, chaos descended upon Municipal Stadium on 10-Cent Beer Night. Now, the infamous events of June 4, 1974, when an alcohol-fueled crowd spilled onto the field, confronted players and forced a forfeit, are often viewed in a light-hearted manner, the stuff of commemorative T-shirts and parodied ballpark promotions.<\/p>\n
But at the time? Cleveland<\/a>\u2019s sports chroniclers considered it a black eye for Cleveland on a night that resulted in many of them.<\/p>\n Texas manager Billy Martin: \u201cThe fans showed the worst sportsmanship in the history of baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte: \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like that in all my life and I have played baseball all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Umpire Nestor Chylak: \u201cThey were uncontrolled beasts. I\u2019ve never seen anything like it except in a zoo.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s travel back in time and dig into the archives of The Plain Dealer to re-live one of the most surreal scenes ever to unfold on a baseball field.<\/p>\n \u2018They would have killed him. I guess these fans just can\u2019t handle good beer\u2019<\/p>\n The attendance that night: 25,134. Beers sold that night: 65,000. A Guardians spokesman estimated an average crowd today consumes about 23,500 beers.<\/p>\n Columnist Hal Lebovitz surmised that half of the fans \u201cdrank little or no beer,\u201d which meant those participating accounted for about five Stroh\u2019s each. \u201cI saw five fans stand in the beer line, each getting the maximum six cups,\u201d Lebovitz wrote. \u201cThat\u2019s 30 beers. Some of them drank two cups and the others inhaled nearly 10 apiece.\u201d For a buck, he added, a fan could snag a 50-cent bleacher seat and five beers. A security guard was quoted saying he saw \u201ckids that couldn\u2019t be more than 14 years old drinking beer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSmall wonder the bleachers were quickly sold out,\u201d Lebovitz wrote. \u201cNot even free soup or bread would have caused those long lines.\u201d<\/p>\n The team increased its security presence from the customary 32 guards to 48. Early in the game, it was merely a comedic spectacle, though one rated \u201cR.\u201d Dan Coughlin wrote: \u201cA woman walked up to the home-plate umpire Nestor Chylak and tried to kiss him. Compared to what followed, this was cute.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans breached the field of play in the middle innings. They showered Martin with beer when he disputed a call, and he blew kisses back at them. As beat writer Russ Schneider detailed: \u201cIn the sixth inning, one of the youths who raced across the outfield stopped and disrobed \u2014 then streaked back and forth until he escaped over the right-field fence and into the arms of a policeman.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe brew-propelled bleacher fans began to hop into the better seats, roam around the park, disturb the bullpens, jump over the fence and onto the field,\u201d Lebovitz wrote. \u201cThe hooliganism was not confined to bleacherites only, but they were in the vast majority.\u201d Umpires, ushers, security guards and the grounds crew spent much of their time herding fans off the field and scooping up their discarded clothing, empty beer cups and other trash.<\/p>\n In the seventh, fans tossed a string of firecrackers near the Rangers\u2019 bullpen, forcing the relievers to scamper across the field to the visitors\u2019 dugout. Cleveland\u2019s relievers followed suit a half-inning later. That led to Martin sticking with reliever Steve Foucault through the end of the game since the bullpen, as Schneider noted, \u201cwas barren of players.\u201d<\/p>\n Cleveland erased a 5-3 deficit in the ninth and appeared poised for a walk-off win when all hell broke loose. It was a ballpark riot, lasting nearly 10 minutes, players versus fans in one of the ugliest scenes ever to grace a baseball field. From Schneider\u2019s dispatch: \u201cA couple of spectators leaped onto the playing field and tried to steal the cap from the head of Jeff Burroughs, the Rangers\u2019 right fielder. Burroughs fought back and, quickly, scores of youths jumped over the railing and onto the field \u2014 while players from both the Indians and Rangers raced to the defense of the outfielder. This time the Indians and Rangers \u2014 who fought each other last Wednesday night in Arlington, Texas \u2014 joined forces to protect themselves from the unruly mob.\u201d<\/p>\n Cleveland pitcher Tom Hilgendorf absorbed a metal folding chair to the head. Chylak was cut on the hand. Police had caps and badges stolen. The bases were swiped \u2014 and not by some speedy infielder. There were a dozen arrests.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it was silly for us to go out there,\u201d Martin said after the game, \u201cbut we weren\u2019t about to leave a man out there on the field unprotected. It seemed that he might be destroyed. They would have killed him. I guess these fans just can\u2019t handle good beer. There were some knives out there, too. We\u2019re fortunate somebody didn\u2019t get stabbed.\u201d<\/p>\n Coughlin\u2019s story asserts that someone \u201cstanding in a mob on top of the Texas Rangers dugout punched a newspaper reporter in the side of the head several minutes after the riot at the Stadium apparently had subsided. \u2018I\u2019ll kill you,\u2019 said the youth, who seconds later blindsided the reporter again. \u2018And if Burroughs comes out on that field tomorrow night, I\u2019ll kill him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Burroughs, center, is escorted off the field after fighting with fans. (Paul Tepley Collection \/ Diamond Images \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n \u201cI could see that there was sort of a riot psychology,\u201d Burroughs said. \u201cYou have to realize all I had to protect myself with was my fists.\u201d<\/p>\n The game was ruled a forfeit in favor of the Rangers, the first forfeit since September 1971, when the Senators played their final game in Washington D.C. before relocating to become \u2026 the Rangers. Cleveland pitcher Dick Bosman, a member of that 1971 Senators team, said the fans in Washington \u201cwere only looking for mementos\u201d when they disrupted the game. After 10-Cent Beer Night, Bosman said: \u201cThis was a mean, ugly, frightening crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n Cleveland\u2019s players, bloody, bruised and shouting in frustration, returned to the home clubhouse. Aspromonte collected himself for 10 minutes before telling reporters in a soft voice: \u201cThose people were like animals. But it\u2019s not just baseball, it\u2019s the society we live in. Nobody seems to care about anything.\u2019 We complained about their people in Arlington last week when they threw beer on us and taunted us to fight, but look at our people. They were worse. I don\u2019t know if it was just the beer.\u201d<\/p>\n GO DEEPER<\/p>\n Beers in the hot tub, holes in the wall: Tales from Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium clubhouse<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Martin called Aspromonte to thank the Indians for coming to his team\u2019s defense. The Rangers remained in their locker room for nearly two hours before returning to their hotel with a significant police presence. Umpires exited in a private car that pulled up outside their locker room.<\/p>\n Frank Ferrone, chief of stadium security, shook his head and acknowledged it was the worst incident in the history of Cleveland baseball as he spoke with reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would have needed 25,000 cops to handle this crowd,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u2018I don\u2019t know who to blame, but I\u2019m scared\u2019<\/p>\n Lebovitz wrote: \u201cThey weren\u2019t baseball fans. They wanted the beer. Thus, in essence, the Indians\u2019 management wasn\u2019t promoting baseball. It was pushing beer.\u201d<\/p>\n The cheap-beer marketing ploy wasn\u2019t unique to Cleveland. The Brewers<\/a> and Rangers had used similar promotions. The Indians had a nickel-beer night a few years earlier. The previous summer, Clevelanders could swig 10-cent beers at a variety of downtown events, including a rib burnoff, an art show and the All Nations Festival, where the libations were so popular that \u201cmore than 1,000 gallons were pumped in just a couple of hours,\u201d according to a Plain Dealer article.<\/p>\n In fact, the Rangers held the same promotion a week earlier, the night they tangled with the Indians in an eighth-inning brawl. Lenny Randle dropped down a bunt and ran several feet inside the baseline to collide with Cleveland reliever Milt Wilcox. Randle had leveled infielder Jack Brohamer to break up a double play, so Wilcox greeted him with a pitch uncomfortably inside. Cleveland\u2019s John Ellis tackled Randle, and the dugouts and bullpens emptied. As the Indians left the field, fans pelted them with beer.<\/p>\n Schneider wrote: \u201c(Dave) Duncan, still wearing his catcher\u2019s equipment, shouted at one of the fans, who, in turn, challenged the Cleveland player to fight. As Duncan stood there arguing \u2014 and with the total absence of any policemen or security agents \u2014 another man threw a cup of beer in Duncan\u2019s face. It incensed Duncan and he attempted to climb over the roof of the dugout to reach the fan while his teammates, coaches and Aspromonte clung to his body to keep him away from the spectators. At the same time, several fans crawled on the roof of the dugout and continued their taunts and insults. After nearly five minutes, three policemen rushed to the dugout with hands on their pistols.\u201d<\/p>\n For a week, the hype built. Pete Franklin fanned the flames nightly on his popular Cleveland radio show. Lebovitz chided broadcaster Joe Tait for urging fans to \u201cCome out to Beer Night and let\u2019s stick it in Billy Martin\u2019s ear.\u201d Tait called Lebovitz to say he only made that declaration once, and only did so because Martin insisted there would be no hostile environment in Cleveland because the team didn\u2019t have enough fans.<\/p>\n \u201cThe impression may not have been the one Joe intended,\u201d Lebovitz wrote. \u201cBut that\u2019s the inference the listeners got. Joe, with his high-voltage delivery, conceivably helped create an atmosphere that led to the final scene.\u201d<\/p>\n Tait, though, pointed out a visual in the sports section the morning of the game that had a team mascot wearing boxing gloves. Lebovitz admitted that was a mistake. \u201cIn retrospect,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI felt ill over our contribution to the night\u2019s events.\u201d Lebovitz opted not to pen a column pleading with the team to postpone Beer Night because of the previous scrap between the teams. He didn\u2019t think his words would have carried much weight.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people probably came out with sort of a chip on their shoulders,\u201d said Rangers catcher Duke Sims, \u201cand then got beered up.\u201d<\/p>\n There were other culprits, too. Chylak said he \u201csaw trouble coming as early as the seventh inning\u201d and Lebovitz wrote the umpires began plotting their own exit, but \u201cdidn\u2019t think beyond personal safety.\u201d<\/p>\n Cleveland\u2019s executive vice president, Ted Bonda, told Schneider he considered handing Gaylord Perry a microphone to deliver a calming message to the fans in the seventh inning, \u201cbut I talked to somebody who talked me out of it. I wish now I had obeyed my gut feeling, but hindsight is better than foresight.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/GettyImages-464204019-scaled.jpg\")
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