50th Anniversary of "The 10¢ Beer Night Massacree"

June 5, 2024 11:06 AM

"During a scary ninth inning, Texas manager Billy Martin, never one to back down from a fight, turned to his players in the dugout and told them to grab bats before leading a charge onto the Municipal Stadium field and into mayhem." June 4, 1974: Baseball on a warm late-Spring evening! Texas vs. Cleveland! Beer's only ten cents a cup tonight! What could possibly go wrong.
posted by not_on_display (10 comments total)

This is part of a chain of events that include Disco Demolition Night that designated for assignment all the fun and wacky promotions to the minors.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:30 AM on June 5 [2 favorites]

An acquaintance of mine, a longtime Cleveland sports and culture writer, just did an oral history of this clearly well-thought-out event.
posted by martin q blank at 1:08 PM on June 5 [11 favorites]

This is part of a chain of events that include Disco Demolition Night that designated for assignment all the fun and wacky promotions to the minors.

Read Ron Luciano's account of this in "Strike Two." It is hilarious; among other things he describes how an umpire needed to go back onto the field that was currently on fire, so he "wrote a letter in case anything happened to him."
posted by Melismata at 2:22 PM on June 5 [2 favorites]

Billy Martin did nothing to try to temper his reputation.
posted by plinth at 2:37 PM on June 5 [1 favorite]

Has this had the Jon Bois treatment? It needs it!
posted by TedW at 2:49 PM on June 5 [3 favorites]

Ooh, thank y'all for these articles! Saw a social media thread about it that was hilarious but cumbersome to share, and these links are just what I needed.

From Carl Fazio, director of sales, in the oral history link from martin q blank: We were going to leave no stone unturned, and my approach in Year One was that we were going to try everything, be aggressive and figure out what works and what doesn’t work and then we’ll know what to do in ensuing years.

I legit strive for that level of zenlike acceptance of my fuck-ups.
posted by the primroses were over at 4:55 PM on June 5 [3 favorites]

"it was the bottom of the ninth and everyone was loaded."

Beautiful
posted by gingerbeer at 8:35 PM on June 5 [10 favorites]

If you haven't listened to the episodes about these epic baseball events from "The Dollop" podcast, do yourself the favor and tuck in, because it is hilarious and insane.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 9:33 PM on June 5 [1 favorite]

I follow baseball at all, but that oral history is a gold mine.

“I wasn’t concerned, but the Cleveland PR guy said, ‘Lock the damn door and nobody gets in,’” Galloway recalls.

We walked to home plate about five minutes before game time, and there was kind of a cloud over home plate. I had no idea what it was. Two of the younger umpires said, “Don’t you know what that is? That’s marijuana.

I heard a guy on the radio say later, “I brought a couple batteries and a golf ball to throw at Billy Martin.”

They couldn’t have resumed the game anyway. There were no bases. People had walked off with all of them.

My father thought it was a success. It got more fans than a typical Tuesday night.

They put in what they said was a small charge of dynamite. Well, it was too big a charge, and it blew a hole in the field. I was out in the outfield warming up, and the concussion almost knocked me down, and people started streaming on the field.
posted by whir at 11:09 PM on June 5 [1 favorite]

I am seconding the Dollop episode. It makes a good double feature with their Disco Demolition episode. The 1970s were another country.
posted by LindsayIrene at 7:30 AM on June 6 [1 favorite]