“As God is my witness, I thought baseball fans were unflappable!”

Ten-Cent Beer Night (1974)
The Free Dictionary

Ten Cent Beer Night was a promotion held by Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians during a game against the Texas Rangers at Cleveland Stadium on Tuesday, June 4, 1974. The idea behind the promotion was to attract more fans to the game by offering 12 U.S. fl oz (354.9 ml) cups of 3.2% beer for just 10 cents each (regular price was 65 cents) with a limit of six per purchase.

Note: “Per purchase,” not per person or per game.

During the game, fans became heavily intoxicated, culminating in a riot in the ninth inning which caused the game to be forfeited due to the crowd’s uncontrollable rowdiness and because the game could not be resumed in a timely manner.

Background

Although the Indians had previously held such promotions without incident, beginning with Nickel Beer Day in 1971, a bench-clearing brawl in the teams’ last meeting one week earlier at Arlington Stadium in Texas left some Indians fans harboring a grudge against the Rangers. . . .

The game

. . . Cleveland’s Ten Cent Beer Night promotion drew 25,134 fans to Cleveland Stadium for the Indians/Rangers game, twice the number expected. Many attendees arrived at the game drunk and/or stoned.
. . . throughout the game, the inebriated crowd 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.
As the game progressed, more fans ran onto the field and caused problems. Ranger Mike Hargrove, who would later manage the Indians and lead them to the World Series twice in 1995 and 1997, was pelted with hot dogs and spit, and at one point was nearly struck with an empty gallon jug of Thunderbird.
. . .Someone tossed lit firecrackers into the Rangers’ bullpen.
. . . with a crowd that had been consuming as much beer as it could for nine innings, the situation finally came to a head.

The riot

After the Indians had managed to tie the game, a fan ran onto the field and attempted to steal Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs’ cap. Confronting the fan, Burroughs tripped. 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, and portions of stadium seats that they had torn apart—surged onto the field, and others hurled bottles from the stands. Hundreds of fans surrounded the outnumbered Rangers.
Realizing that the Rangers’ lives might be in danger, Ken Aspromonte, the Indians’ manager, ordered his players to grab bats and help the Rangers, attacking the team’s own fans in the process. 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. The two teams retreated off the field through the dugouts in groups, with players protecting each other.
. . .
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 later called the fans “uncontrollable beasts” and stated that he’d never seen anything like what had happened, “except in a zoo.”

. . . And now, the punch line:

They did it again a month later.

The next Beer Night promotion on July 18 attracted 41,848 fans with beer again selling for 10 cents per cup but with a limit of two cups per purchase. American League president Lee MacPhail commented, “There was no question that beer played a part in the riot.”