Ten Cent Beer Night
The Ten Cent Beer Night was a marketing campaign as part of the Major League Baseball -Spiels between the host Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers on June 4, 1974. The game was advertised by the organizer with the announcement that 12-ounce cups of beer ( about 350 ml) for a price of 10 cents with a maximum of 6 cups per person. The regular price was 65 cents. At the start of the ninth inning , the pitch was stormed by heavily drunk fans, which led to violent riots and the game being abandoned.
prehistory
Beer nights had been around at baseball games for several years. The Cleveland Indians had already carried out a similar campaign with Nickel Beer Day in 1971 , but there were no major problems. However, there was a trend to proclaim more and more spectacular quantities and low prices. The game in June 1974 was also preceded by a public dispute between those responsible for both clubs. In the match a week earlier, there had been a wild brawl between players on the pitch in Texas, the Indians substitute bench was thrown from Rangers fans with fast food and beer mugs . The general manager (GM) of the Rangers, Billy Martin , was asked by journalists after the game if he was afraid of the upcoming match in Cleveland and the corresponding reactions from the fans there, whereupon he replied that he could not imagine that there would be enough spectators to worry.
He was alluding to the low average attendance of the Indians, which at the time was due to the club's very long dry spell with many defeats and negative seasonal results. The city of Cleveland also suffered from the migration of various industrial companies and the resulting high unemployment. Those responsible for the Indians reacted to the provocations from Texas with aggressive announcements to make the upcoming game hell for their opponents, which was also picked up by the local newspapers and radio stations. In addition to the beer promotion, this meant that over 25,000 spectators had found their way to the Cleveland Municipal Stadium on the evening of the game , about twice as many as in the home games before.
The game and the riots
Even before the game started, large quantities of the cheap beer were sold and consumed. The planned serving limit per person was not checked with consumption cards or the like and in many cases not adhered to, which meant that numerous spectators were completely drunk during the game. After the course of the game did not meet the expectations of the home viewers - the Indians were early 5-1 behind - there were a number of aggressive expressions of displeasure and an ever increasing number of interventions by the audience on the game. Several rioters and speedsters subsequently had to be tamed and captured by folders, a woman ran onto the lawn and bared her breasts. Players from both teams were thrown and spat at with objects as soon as they were near the spectator stands. Spectators also set off fireworks, some of which landed on the pitch.
When the Indians had just equalized to 5: 5 and the game was in the decisive phase in the ninth inning, a fan ran onto the court and tried to tear his cap off a ranger's head. Billy Martin, who could not see the scene clearly and feared the fan might have hit the player, stormed onto the pitch with substitute bench players in the wake to support his player. This in turn meant that numerous spectators climbed into the interior of the stadium and stormed the square as well. Some of them were armed with knives, iron chains, beer bottles and torn out seat shells. Ken Aspromonte, the Indians GM, urged his players to take their baseball bats onto the pitch and protect the Rangers players. He wasn't the only one who feared that the guest players might be lynched.
As a result, various hunting and beating scenes occurred. Among the later injured were various spectators, players from both clubs - Cleveland's Tom Hilgendorf suffered a concussion after being hit in the head from a stadium seat - as well as the referee Nestor Chylak, who sustained a laceration on the head and a cut in the hand. Chylak later said that the rioters behaved like "uncontrollable animals", something he had only seen in the zoo so far. The game was abandoned and later scored for Texas. Only several units of heavily armored police officers were able to end the riots. The interior was completely devastated, base stones and accessories stolen from the bench and coaching zone.
Reactions
Only around a dozen rioters were arrested by the police and sentenced accordingly. Cleveland GM Aspromonte was shaken and spoke of a shameful day for the whole city. The fact that the police were initially barely present in and around the stadium in terms of personnel was subsequently inflamed with severe criticism, which led to the fact that the emergency services for similar risk games were drastically increased. Lee MacPhail , the responsible president of the American League , said there was no question that the cheap beer serving had contributed significantly to the riots and initially banned all similar planned actions. A few weeks later they were re-admitted under strict conditions. Another Beer Night took place in Cleveland a month later on July 18th, but only two cups per person were sold for 10 cents, which this time was also checked. There were no incidents.
Tim Russert , who was a student in Cleveland at the time, was in the audience of the 10 Cent Beer Night and later described his own experience as follows: “I came with two dollars in my pocket. You can do the math. " (I went with $ 2 in my pocket. You do the math.)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jim Braham: Here's beer in your eye? Could be for Texas' Martin , The Cleveland Press, May 30, 1974
- ↑ Hal Lebovitz: Where was the warning? The Plain Dealer dated June 6, 1974
- ↑ a b c The night beer and violence bubbled over in Cleveland , ESPN.com, June 4, 2008
- ↑ Alcohol puts a damper on fun and games , USA Today on April 17, 2003
- ^ Sanity reigns at Beer Night II , The Plain Dealer, July 19, 1974
- ↑ Russert returns to Cleveland State for debate ( Memento of June 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), The Plain Dealer of February 23, 2008