Ten Cent Beer Night (eBook)

The Beer Truck Line Starts Here!

I just flew in from Cleveland - and boy are my arms tired!

Ba-dum-bum-CHING!

In order to finish writing a book about Ten Cent Beer Night, I had to stop drinking beer.

Ba-dum-bum-CHING!

(That last one is actually true).

Sorry - I just couldn’t resist those. There’s something about Ten Cent Beer Night that seems to lend itself to stand up comedy. Please think of these feeble jokes as a nod to Cleveland native and comedy writing legend Jack Hanrahan, who is honored in this book that I thank you for reading. Researching and writing about Ten Cent Beer Night has been a party. It started as kind of a lark and has been part scavenger hunt, part scholarly adventure, part oral history, part pandemic diversion. Hanrahan, a Clevelander who wrote for the famous show Laugh In, is one of the many fun rabbit holes I went down. My basic aim was simply that: fun. Was it necessary to try to figure out the name of the left-handed knuckleballer on the 1972 Rangers? I’ll answer that with another question. Did Terry Yerkic, who jumped out onto the field to snatch the hat off of Rangers’ right fielder Jeff Burroughs, need another beer on the night of June 4, 1974?

Of course he did.

Should the organist have continued to play as the riot unfolded?

Of course he should have.

Ah…beer and baseball: like Abbott and Costello, Baerga and Vizquel…like a Municipal Stadium hot dog and Bertmann’s Stadium mustard. You get the idea. These two have been friends for over a century, but really became chummy when baseball began to broadcast games on TV. Then, baseball, beer, and TV created a perfect threesome. In 1946, half of the television sets sold in Chicago went to bars. In the ‘50s, though, beer advertising on TV broadcasts took off like a Mickey Mantle home run - and with the ads came those catchy beer jingles. Stuff like, “Baseball and Ballantine, Baseball and Ballantine/ What a combination,/ All across the nation/ Baseball and Ballantine.”

I grew up a Cleveland fan in Tiffin, Ohio. Naturally, I had always heard about Ten Cent Beer Night here and there. It is a baseball legend and a quick punchline - along with the burning Cuyahoga River, The Mistake by the Lake, and so on and so forth. But is that a fair analysis of what happened on the evening of June 4, 1974? In fact, lots of baseball teams - from the big league squads to the smallest independent teams - offered Ten Cent Beer Night…and, a few years earlier, several of them had Nickel Beer Nights. (Damn you, inflation!) After the riot, some around Northeast Ohio noted that in the Summer of ‘74, the Growth Association of Cleveland also hosted nickel beer nights at Chester Commons without any trouble. Of course, Billy Martin and baseball weren’t there for those gatherings. And many teams also had something called “Hot Pants Nights,” encouraging women to parade around in “itty bitty shorts.” Can you imagine having a Hot Pants Night at a modern sporting event? Maybe the only thing close to it today is the Victoria’s Secret Runway show.

But isn’t there often much more to history than those oft-repeated, involuntary, and dismissive summaries? My esteemed professors at Kenyon College always suggested as much and wouldn’t it be a disservice to them, myself, and baseball history if I didn’t try to dig a little deeper? Besides, it would be fun. In this book, I wanted to try to give as accurate a reflection of what happened as possible. Although, like the day after a party that had spun out-of-control, there were and are different versions of what really went down. And maybe that’s why it has reached legendary status. Ten Cent Beer Night sort of reminds me of one of my favorite Jean Shepherd stories1 - a baseball tale - where he reflects near the end of it, “It did not appear in the box score, my friends. You’ll not see it in the record books. There’s two kinds of history: there’s the kind that’s written down, and there’s the kind that really happened.” In the past 50 years, the infamy of the evening also continues to be shrouded in misunderstanding. Quick internet searches of it will turn up headlines like this: “Ten Cent Beer Night: The Dumbest, Most Dangerous Day In Baseball History,” and “The Cleveland Indians’ Ten Cent Beer Night: The Worst Idea Ever.” It’s certainly understandable how Ten Cent Beer Night could be reduced to a gagline and swiftly labeled as a horrible “what-were-they-thinking?” idea. But, as is often the case, there was definitely a little more to the story. Yes, at its peak, maybe Ten Cent Beer Night was a little like that fight scene in Anchorman2 - things got a little bit crazy - and if you were out there you probably had to keep your head on a swivel. But no one was out there throwing a trident - or were they? Well, not that we know of! Everyone who was there does seem to agree upon at least one concept: on June 4, 1974, in Cleveland, Ohio, a perfect storm - centered around beer - gathered, then unleashed uncontrollable beasts, leading to one of the most infamous nights in baseball history.

The First Beer (is on me)

Poor Cleveland. The Mistake By the Lake. The city where the river actually caught on fire - frequently. The place where the mayor’s hair caught fire. Once. The supposedly dreaded destination for a bunch of innocent and colorful fish, including Dory’s parents, in Finding Dory, the Pixar movie that you may not have seen. (Don’t worry if you haven’t caught that one…it’s nowhere near as good as Finding Nemo). And, oh yes, Cleveland: the scene of what almost now seems unimaginable - Ten Cent Beer Night - arguably one of the worst promotions in sports history - or a happening driven by a perfect storm of events?

On a sultry late spring night in Cleveland - one of the first such evenings in the summer of 1974 - fans of the Cleveland Indians drank an awful lot of cheap beer then rioted. Some were angry - perhaps about the Vietnam War and a lack of leadership in America. Maybe some were angry about jokes about their beloved city and the increased challenge of finding a job there. Some were certainly angry about the visiting Texas Rangers and their pain-in-the-ass manager, Billy Martin. Martin was that guy - great if he was on your side, but a real jerk if he was on the other. And he never liked the Cleveland Indians, especially that greaseball throwin’, cheatin’ hick named Gaylord Perry. They were also angry because a local DJ had told them to be angry. “Stick it in Martin’s ear!” And why not? Combine it all with cheap, virtually limitless, 3.2 ABV beer, aka “near beer,” a full moon on a steamy summer night, and you arrive at Ten Cent Beer Night.

But the tale of Ten Cent Beer Night is much more than just an angry and drunken mob. It’s also the tale of a small and focused “front office” trying to save baseball in an American city in the post-Vietnam, Nixon-era ‘70s. It’s the tale of a once-great city trying to regain some smatch3 of glory. It’s partly the tale of promotions, now so much part of the fabric of sports that not having them - bobbleheads to the first 10,000, Dollar Dog Night!, seat cushion giveaways, and on and on - would be unheard of. It’s the story of trying to keep your baseball team, which has been there for nearly 75 years, from moving to another city. And Ten Cent Beer Night is also certainly the tale of two ball professional clubs and the quirky personalities that made ‘70s baseball so great.

So, grab yourself a cold one, relax, and enjoy.

Bottoms up!