This Week for Happy Hour: If You Brew It, They Will Come (But May Not Willingly Leave)

 The day was June 4^th.  The year, 1974.  Cleveland Indians vs. Texas Rangers, at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. 

Storm clouds loomed.  The sound of metal on plastic ticked and echoed down the stadium’s halls like the steady rush of hail fall.  And the natives were restless that day, my friends.  And angry, like a drunk old man trying to send back soup in a deli.

The previous week, the same two teams had met on Texas soil, and the outcome had been bleak.  The trouble had started in the bottom of the fourth inning with a walk to the Rangers' Tom Grieve, followed by a Lenny Randle single. The next batter hit a double play ball to Indians third baseman John Lowenstein; he stepped on the third base bag to retire Grieve and threw the ball to second base, but Randle disrupted the play with a hard slide into second baseman Jack Brohamer, who had to leave the game with an injury.  “Oh no he dih’in’t!” the crowd exclaimed.

The Indians retaliated in the bottom of the eighth when pitcher Milt Wilcox threw behind Randle's head. Randle eventually laid down a bunt. When Wilcox attempted to field it and tag Randle out, Randle hit him with a forearm. Indians first baseman John Ellis responded by punching Randle, and both benches emptied for a brawl. As Rangers players and coaches emerged from the dugout, they were struck by food and beer hurled by Cleveland fans (in Texas).  The crowd eventually began to storm the field, and WJW-TV, Cleveland's then CBS affiliate, suspended their live telecast of the game.  They may as well have cut to black with a caption that read, “To be continued….”

So the stage was set for a rematch in Cleveland.  Six days later, on June 4^th, they got it. 

There was a quiet that morning, they say.  Not peace, but a quiet, and one which could not last, because the marketing director at Cleveland’s stadium had made a fateful and irreconcilable mistake: “Tonight, we will sell beer for 10 cents,” he declared.  “If you brew it, they will come,” said the voice of Luke’s father, and the “This is CNN” guy, and the superficially menacing but ultimately kind and gentle hermit from The Sandlot.  “They will come, Ray.  And they will pay good money for tickets, as long as that means they can drink beer for only a dime.”

And brew it they did, and sell it on the cheap they did, and stadium seats filled with fannies, and the coffers filled with coins, and the bellies and bladders of the fans did overfloweth.

But there was a problem, go figure.

The cheap beer promotion drew about 25,000 fans to the park that day – 3x the average attendance that season.  And every one of them (even pregnant women and children and people on antibiotics and designated drivers and the radio announcers) was completely pickled and boiled rotten.

So what happened?

Well, a beer-fueled baseball riot broke out, of course.

Early in the game, the Rangers took a 5-1 lead. Meanwhile, throughout the contest, the crowd in attendance, which was already heavily inebriated, grew more and more unruly. A woman ran out to the Indians' on-deck circle and flashed her breasts, and a naked man sprinted to second base as Grieve hit his second home run of the game. A father and son pair ran onto the outfield and mooned the fans in the bleachers one inning later. The ugliness escalated when Cleveland's Leron Lee hit a line drive into the stomach of Rangers pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, after which Jenkins dropped to the ground. The fans in the upper deck of Municipal Stadium cheered, then chanted "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again! Harder! Harder!"

As the game progressed, more fans ran onto the field and caused problems. Ranger Mike Hargrove (who would manage the Indians and lead them to the World Series 21 years later) was pelted with hot dogs and spit, and at one point was nearly struck with an empty gallon jug of Thunderbird (cheap, fortified wine which was presumably smuggled in to save on cost of concessions).

The Rangers later argued a call in which Lee was called safe in a close play at third base, spiking Jenkins with his cleats in the process and forcing him to leave the game. The Rangers' angry response to this call enraged Cleveland fans, who again began throwing objects onto the field.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Indians managed to rally and tie the game at five runs apiece. However, with a crowd that had been consuming as much beer as it could for nine innings, the situation finally came to a head.

In the ninth inning, a fan attempted to steal Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs' cap. Confronting the fan, Burroughs tripped, and Texas manager Billy Martin, thinking that Burroughs had been attacked, charged onto the field, his players right behind, some wielding bats.  A large number of intoxicated fans – some armed with knives, chains, nunchaku and portions of stadium seats that they had torn apart – surged onto the field, and others hurled bottles from the stands. WJW producer Tony Lolli then suspended the station's live telecast of the game. Realizing that the Rangers' lives might be in danger, Ken Aspromonte, the Indians' manager, ordered his players to grab bats and help the Rangers. Rioters began throwing steel folding chairs, and Cleveland relief pitcher Tom Hilgendorf was hit in the head by one of them. Hargrove, involved in a fistfight with a rioter, had to fight another on his way back to the Texas dugout.

Among the Indians players suddenly running for their lives was Rusty Torres, who was on second base at the time, representing the winning run.

The bases were pulled up and stolen (never to be returned) and many rioters threw a vast array of objects including cups, rocks, bottles, batteries from radios, hot dogs, popcorn containers, and folding chairs. As a result, umpire crew chief Nestor Chylak, realizing that order would not be restored in a timely fashion, forfeited the game to Texas. He too was a victim of the rioters as one struck him with part of a stadium seat, cutting his head.  His hand was also cut by a thrown rock. He later called the fans "uncontrollable beasts" and stated that he'd never seen anything like what had happened, "except in a zoo".  Eventually, the CPD brought in their riot control guys, who finally put the extravaganza to rest.

I’m really not sure what to make of the tale.  Or how to comment on it, exactly.  Ultimately, since no one was killed, I suppose it’s an exceptionally exclamatory example of beer making life more interesting and, in hindsight, lots of fun.  At least to hear about.

So cheers to America’s favorite pastime: getting drunk and watching the stranger-than-fiction human drama unfold.  The catalyst to catalyze all others.  Drink beer.  And do it at Rhino.  Half price everything Friday for Happy Hour, 5-9pm.  And if you're thirsty now, come drink upstairs, Thursday starting at 7:30.  Woo!

-Finnegan