MLB's Greatest Disaster: Disco Demolition or 10 Cent Beers

[The Gun Of Bavaria]

Ten-Cent Beer Night

Cleveland Municipal Stadium June 4, 1974

10-Cent Beer Night was the Indians' most desperate stunt

in the club's most desperate era.

Billy Martin began the night blowing kisses to Indians fans.

A few hours later, armed with a bat, he was running from them.

Beer and blood flowed when Cleveland fans, many drunk on 10-cent beer,

turned a seemingly harmless promotion into a night of violence

that left players, fans and umpires bloodied.

Memories of "10-cent Beer Night" at Cleveland Stadium still shake Jim Fregosi.

"There were a lot of punches thrown," said the Toronto manager,

who was playing first base for Martin's Texas Rangers that night.

"A lot of people got hurt. Players got hit with chairs over their heads. It was nasty."

Fans fought with fans; with police; with the Rangers and the Indians,

many of whom ran onto the field to protect their Texas counterparts.

Umpire Nestor Chylak and Indians reliever Tom Hilgendorf were both struck in the head with chairs.

"It was like we were in a battle zone," said umpire Joe Brinkman.

A crowd of 25,134 showed up that warm Tuesday night enticed by the chance to drink as many beers as they could handle for 10 cents a piece.

By the end of the night, it was estimated that over 60,000 cups were drank.

Trouble had been brewing between the teams after Rangers second baseman

Lenny Randle intentionally ran over Cleveland pitcher Milt Wilcox a week earlier.

Rangers fans doused the Indians with beer afterward.

So when Texas arrived in Cleveland, Indians fans were ready and the cheap beer was additional fuel. When Martin delivered his lineup card before the game, he was booed. Never one to back down, he responded by tipping his cap and blowing kisses.

Current Indians manager Mike Hargrove, a rookie with the Rangers in 1974,

said nothing prepared him for the violence he would later witness.

"I remember a father and son going out to center field and mooning everybody," said Hargrove. "Streakers were running across the field and I remember one woman coming out and running over to kiss an umpire."

By the sixth inning with the Rangers leading 5-1, the crowd

had gotten drunker, rowdier and bolder.

Umpire Joe Brinkman still has the picture.

"I remember holding on to a guy who had been kicked in the head. I'm holding him and blood is running down his face."

Groups of fans began running onto the field, they dashed out between innings,

then between outs and finally between pitches.

Some were escorted off the field by a badly outnumbered security force.

The Indians rallied to within 5-3 in the sixth, fireworks and projectiles were being launched toward the Texas dugout.

"I remember getting spit on a lot and having a lot of hot dogs thrown at me," said Hargrove,

who has a photograph of the infamous night hanging in his Jacobs Field office.

"Somebody threw a gallon jug of Thunderbird wine at me."

Sensing things were getting worse in the seventh, the Rangers pitchers vacated their bullpen

and headed to the relative safety of the dugout.

Then came the ninth, and mayhem.

Cleveland scored two runs to tie it 5-5.

After the field had been showered with golf balls, rocks and batteries,

all-out war broke out between the fans and Texas outfielders.

More fans poured on the field and one man threw a punch at Texas right fielder Jeff Burroughs.

Burroughs punched back, and in an instant, he was surrounded by a dozen fans.

"Rangers manager Billy Martin grabbed a bat and led the rest of the team into the outfield to supply reinforcements.

They started going after that guy and before you knew it, there were thousands of fans all over the field.

Brinkman said. "I think there were about 10,000 people on the field at one time. It was scary."

Once he knew all the players had escaped the field, Chylak gave the Rangers the 9-0 forfeit,

one of the only eight forfeited games since 1901.

While wiping away blood, Chylak said, "We went as far as we could go, but you can't pull back uncontrollable beasts.

The last time I saw animals like that was in the zoo."

The game was the first forfeit in the major leagues since the Rangers (then the Washington Senators) last game

at RFK Stadium, when a horde of souvenir-hungry fans took the field and refused to leave.

----------------------------------------------------

July 12, 1979, Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park.

Mike Veeck figured the sight of a radio DJ blowing up disco records

in the outfield might attract more people to Comiskey Park

The records would be burned between doubleheader games

with the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers.

Fans stormed, thousands of them, turning "Disco Demolition Night"

into one of the most infamous promotion in major league history.

"Dave Phillips, an umpire and crew chief that night.

"It looked like a spaceship took off from center field.

It was smoldering."

By the time police cleared everyone out, the field was littered with album pieces and charred turf.

Phillips canceled Game 2 of the White Sox-Tigers doubleheader.

Today, the event maintains a hold on everyone who saw or even heard about it.

It was July 12, 1979, a time when ball parks didn't look anything like the sparkling wonders of today.

There was only the game and teams looking for ways to draw bigger crowds.

For the White Sox, that job fell to Mike Veeck, the son of the team owner's owner,

Bill Veeck, the man who once sent a midget to bat in the majors.

On the Chicago airwaves that summer, WLUP-FM disc jockey Steve Dahl had

been pretending to blow up disco records. Mike Veeck invited him to Comiskey to do it for real.

"I was dreading the whole thing," Dahl said.

The White Sox were losing more games than they won and were on their way to a dismal fifth place division finish.

"It seemed to me if I drew 5,000 people,

I would be parading around in a helmet and blowing up records in what looked like an empty stadium."

But by the time the first game ended, the stands were jammed.

Thousands more people milled outside,

and they weren't your typical baseball fans.

"It was just a bad atmosphere," said White Sox manager Don Kessinger.

Kessinger's 11-year-old son was so worried about what he saw

when he got to the game that he asked to sit in the press box rather than the stands.

Late in the first game, disco records started flying from the stands.

Fans got into the game for 98 cents if they turned in a record, but not all the records had been handed over at the gate.

"Some of them were just knifing in the grass and others were exploding on the infield,"

said White Sox second baseman Alan Bannister.

"They called down to the bullpen to (reserve catcher) John Wockenfuss to start warming someone up,"

said Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych. "He went out there and an M-80 went off next to him and he said, 'I'm packing it in."

Following the Sox' 4-1 loss. The field was so overrun that Phillips couldn't start the second game.

"There's nobody in the stands, (so) we walk in the stands in our uniforms and watch," the umpire said.

People were tossing records onto fires, starting new fires and knocking over a batting cage.

They ignored the pleas of then-White Sox announcer Harry Caray to stop.

People who didn't have tickets scaled the walls to get in.

It looked like medieval times when they go after a castle, pouring over a wall".

Police had seen enough and came out on horseback to disperse the crowd.

In all, there were only minor injuries and about three dozen arrests.

"They were all stoned," Veeck said. "It made them much easier to handle."

Veeck resigned in disgrace, started drinking and didn

[Thor99]

I vote for C.

The 2005 NY Mets.