The wild story of 10-cent beer night at Cleveland Stadium

Some fine sports writing here from Fredric J. Frommer at The Washington Post. He tells the story of the riot that occurred in Cleveland Stadium during a Cleveland Indians (now Guardians)-Texas Rangers game on June 4, 1974. This melee should make you think twice about the whole “Make America Great Again” mantra, especially the part about the hunting knife.

Here is a taste of Frommer’s piece:

Cleveland pitcher Tom Hilgendorf got hit in the head with a steel chair, and Chylak, the umpire, also got smacked on the head.

“I figured as long as they’re not shooting or anything like that, we’ll get it done,” Chylak later told Cleveland announcer Joe Tait, as Tait recalled. “All of a sudden, I felt some pressure behind the left heel of my shoe. I turned around, looked down and there was a hunting knife sticking in the ground right behind my shoe. That’s when I said: ‘Game. Set. Match. We’re out of here!’ ”

He declared a forfeit against Cleveland, meaning a 9-0 win for Texas. It was the first MLB forfeit since 1971, when the Senators gave up a victory to the Yankees in their final game in Washington as fans stormed RFK Stadium in another scene of mayhem.

“It’s just disgraceful,” Cleveland Manager Ken Aspromonte said after the 1974 game. “

“It’s not just baseball. It’s the society we live in. Nobody seems to care about anything.”

Chylak was even angrier.

“They were just uncontrollable beasts,” he said.

James T. Carney, Cleveland’s safety director, said the cheap beer turned young guys into “wild men” who didn’t know what they were doing. “They just went berserk. It’s just an act of God that nobody was killed.”

Read the rest here.