Remembering the “Mistake By the Lake”: 10 Cent Beer Night Turns 40

Forever known as “The Mistake by the Lake”, 10 Cent Beer Night is a fond reminder of how much of a lovable shithole Cleveland can be.

by Shimbo

As the old song goes, “Everything looks worse in black & white.”

There isn’t much left depicting the events that took place in Cleveland, Ohio the night of June 4, 1974 where the lowly Cleveland Indians took on the Texas Rangers outside of some newspaper photos and small amounts of audio. Despite the lack of physical evidence, that night, 40 years ago today will always be remembered by its proper name:

10 Cent Beer Night.

For the record, 10 Cent Beer Night was a half-assed attempt by the Indians organization to fill some of the empty seats at Cleveland Stadium by offering 12 oz cups of beer for, you guessed it, just 10 cents each (regular 1974 prices for beer was at 65 cents) with a limit of six per purchase.

That’s six per purchase, not six beers total. Meaning that a guy was limited to six per visit to the concession stand.

Although things went relatively well through the duration of the game (with attendance ballooning somewhere upwards of 25 thousand people) at some point the beer is just going to catch up on a person, which meant that naturally, fans got drunk off their asses (which let’s face it, was the reason they showed up in the first place), culminating in a riot in the ninth inning which led to officials forfeiting the game to the Rangers, once they realized there was no way in hell the game could be restarted in a timely or safe manner, especially once fans started to attack the players.

I was born in ’77, so I wasn’t around when 10 Cent Beer Night happened, but that didn’t stop my years-long fascination with what turned out to be one of the best/worst nights in baseball history, at least from the fan’s perspective. Although it lives in infamy, it would be surpassed five short years later by an event in Chicago’s Comiskey Park, where a local DJ thought it would be a good idea to invite 50,000 of his closest friends to the ballpark…to blow up Disco records. Disco Demolition Night had the benefit of more people showing up and live video to shore up its legend, but that doesn’t diminish the Cleveland legend, which enjoys continued life via an oral history passed on from people who were there to those who weren’t.

I first heard about 10 Cent Beer Night back when I was maybe 11 or 12. I used to vacation with my grandparents at their summer trailer located at Lake James, just outside of Angola, Indiana. All the people in the little lake community known as “Four Corners” were nice enough, and often many would get together to grill out and sit around to shoot the shit. There was a guy by the name of Steve, who had a summer trailer near ours. He hailed from Northern Ohio, and one night, as we’re all hanging out during one of the usual BBQs, he told a story about the time him and his buddies got absolutely shitfaced and thought it was a good idea to fight a baseball team.

To the ears of a young kid who barely knew his ass from third base, Steve’s story sounded like some glorious tale of adventure in a far off land. The way he told it, he could’ve been talking about his days fighting gladiators and lions in the Colosseum for all I knew.  I never saw Steve again after the summer he told us all about 10 Cent Beer Night. Gossip circulated around the cottages and trailers that Steve managed to get arrested on suspicion of child molestation. He never seemed like much of a perv when I knew him, but then, who does?

Years came and went, but I was still tremendously fascinated by the story I heard that night. Now mind you, I never even knew what the night was called, or even if the whole thing or even part of the thing was even real. It wasn’t until 2008 when I came across an article on ESPN’s Page 2 that all the memories from a story told to me almost 20 years ago came back to the fore.

Written by freelance columnist Paul Jackson, his account of 10 Cent Beer Night was to date the most comprehensive and dare I say it, haunting tale of bad ideas and wanton debauchery on a night that for some seemed like the night civilization would be driven right into the ground, never to rise again. As with many stories such as this, it started out with hope, and then descended deep into madness. It would be an article that I would share numerous times over the years, particularly because it wasn’t some YouTube video or other excerpt that could be digested quickly. Reading the account forced it to play out in your mind, as you tried to process the madness of a night where all hell broke loose, lubricated by plenty of cheap beer. What started out fun turned macabre, and maybe a little cautionary. An excerpt:

“Then the riot began. Indians manager Ken Aspromonte, his own defining moment upon him, realized that the Texas franchise might be on the verge of decimation. He too ordered his players onto the field. The bat racks in the home dugout emptied as the Indians mounted their own rescue.

The sight of 50 angry professional athletes slowly killed the buzz, and the tide in the outfield turned. Taking advantage of what might be their only opportunity to escape alive, [Rangers Manager Billy] Martin and Aspromonte led their players out through the dugouts and down the tunnels, assisting their wounded as needed, with bench players forming a rearguard. After the teams departed, the mob found itself alone on the diamond, with many securing souvenirs to mark the occasion.

They stole more than just the bases. Anything not secured or already taken disappeared. The mob swarmed like locusts as the doors to both clubhouses were shut and locked…[Head Umpire Nestor] Chylak then had a moment of profundity in which he realized that there will be days when the mail just does not go through. A hunting knife has landed, blade down, in the grass behind his leg. He forfeits the game to the Rangers and runs.”

The account by Jackson deftly takes readers on a roller coaster ride through hell that night in Cleveland, and as bad as it all sounded, accompanied by pictures of players holding their heads in pain, umpires bleeding and fans running around like the Apocalypse was just next door, it serves as a reminder of just how fragile humanity can be when treated to really cheap beer. For their part, ESPN revisited 10 Cent Beer Night earlier this week with a segment filmed and aired on SportsCenter:

Personally, I’ve always felt that 10 Cent Beer Night deserved a movie made about the fateful night. It had all the elements such as drama, comedy, struggle, boobs, action, suspense, horror and stark perspective. It also represented a time when going to the ball park was cheap entertainment and a place where friends got together and made memories, for good or ill.

While still a good time for some, the overall experience today is a bit more antiseptic, and selective, since going to a Major League Baseball game in 2014 is a hell of a lot more cost restrictive than going to a game in 1974. The late great Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press said it best when recalling going to 10 Cent Beer Night while a student at the Cleveland–Marshall College of Law. “I went with $2 in my pocket…You do the math.”

I’ve wondered over the years what exactly was my fascination with a night that went so wrong so quickly. I guess it’s a bit of nostalgia mixed with a sense that once upon a time, before we lost ourselves to Facebook and Twitter and Xbox and all the things that keep us separate in groups, we actually did things together. We partied together, we hungout together and we enjoyed simple things like baseball, which for so many years served as a common denominator between people. When you hear old timers talk about hanging out with friends at the stadium, they aren’t talking about football, basketball or hockey. They’re talking about baseball, and baseball always had the best stories.

As we look back on the “Mistake By the Lake”, it’s clear baseball still does.

Hashim R. Hathaway (Uncle Shimbo) is the host of the Never Daunted Radio Network, and proud father to NeverDaunted.Net. You can reach him on Twitter @NeverDauntedNet