A large framed photograph unearthed by a waitress in the basement of a defunct downtown Cleveland sports bar and restaurant is displayed in Jess Ennis' man cave unless he takes it somewhere for show-and-tell.
The black-and-white photo features Ennis standing atop the Texas Rangers dugout alongside friends from Firestone High School and other baseball enthusiasts at the old Cleveland Stadium .
Rain is falling on them. Wait a minute. It's not rain! This picture was taken June 4, 1974, which means ...
"It's raining beer," Ennis said.
Ennis and fellow 1975 Firestone graduates Greg Miller, Randy Clar and Paul Nasrallah attended the infamous 10-cent beer night together.
With Tuesday's 50th anniversary looming, Ennis, Miller, Clar and Rick Marks, another one of their buddies and Firestone classmates, gathered May 17 at Lock 15 Brewing Co. in Akron to celebrate Ennis' 67th birthday, bust each other's baseballs and share stories about 10-cent beer night.
Beer was served at Lock 15, but don't worry. It was not of the dime variety.
Ennis brought the framed photo. It used to hang in Alice Cooper'stown until another restaurant moved into the spot on East Ninth Street and eventually removed the historic image from a wall. Roughly 15 years ago, a waitress found the picture and gave it to Ennis. It evokes memories of a wild night under a full moon on Cleveland 's lakefront.
"We're right behind the Texas dugout," Ennis said. "These fans come onto the field, and they're surrounding [Rangers outfielder] Jeff Burroughs in right field, and somebody grabs his cap and there's this melee.
"[Rangers manager] Billy Martin right in front of us charges out of the dugout with his bat in his hand ready to whack someone. All of the Texas Rangers followed him, and it's a full-scale riot on the field. I remember fans were pouring onto the field, and these security cops with their billy clubs were just trying to swat flies."
Mike Hargrove manned first base as a Rangers rookie on 10-cent beer night. He went from scrapping with Cleveland fans a half-century ago to becoming a longtime player and manager with their favorite team.
"My first impression of Cleveland was that I would have died of shock if somebody had told me I'd end up making a home here," Hargrove said by phone.
Hargrove, 74, had never been to Cleveland before 10-cent beer night. He had no choice but to learn much more about the city after the San Diego Padres traded him for outfielder Paul Dade on June 14, 1979. Hargrove said the move "resurrected my career because things weren't going well at all in San Diego." He played six-plus seasons for Cleveland (1979-85), worked as its first-base coach (1990-91) and managed the team (1991-99). He and his wife, Sharon, still live in Richfield when they're not wintering in Arizona .
"I've got one bad memory of Cleveland and tens of thousands of great memories," Hargrove said. "So Cleveland won out."
However, Hargrove's future ballclub did not prevail on 10-cent beer night.
When everything spiraled out of control in the ninth inning, Cleveland had runners on first and third base with two outs after rallying to tie the score 5-5. The chaos prompted umpire crew chief Nestor Chylak to rule Cleveland had lost by forfeit, resulting in a 9-0 score in the record books.
Some of these numbers vary depending on which news outlet reported them, but this is a scorecard compiled using the Beacon Journal's coverage of 10-cent beer night:
25,134 in attendance
50 police officers working the game, an increase from the usual 28
60,000 cups of beer poured (10 ounces each)
seven fans treated at hospitals
nine arrests
Ennis and his entourage bought tickets in the upper deck for $4 apiece. They worked their way down to a few rows behind the Rangers dugout by the second or third inning.
"We got on the dugout as soon as Billy Martin charged onto the field with all his troops and everybody was pouring onto the field," Ennis said. "But good citizens that we were, we did not go onto the field."
In a small-world coincidence, Hargrove has a granddaughter who graduated from Firestone on May 29, and he attended the high school's graduation ceremony the same day he spoke to the Beacon Journal for this look back. When Hargrove was told some Firestone alumni were among the dozens of fans who stood on the Rangers dugout during 10-cent beer night, he quipped, "So one of them spit on me, huh?"
The strange scene occurred in the era of "lower-power beer" — 3.2% alcohol by weight — and the legal drinking age in Ohio was 18 years old. Nevertheless, Ennis and his Akron friends who had just finished their junior years at Firestone and were 17 had no problems obtaining beer. The lines they encountered on beer runs weren't too long.
Each customer was "limited" to six beers per trip. Drink carriers were made available to maximize each haul. Accounting for inflation, 10 cents in 1974 is equal to about 64 cents nowadays.
Beer promotions weren't new to Major League Baseball or Cleveland. The team held a nickel beer day in 1971. There were four 10-cent beer nights planned for 1974. It was a way to boost attendance for a perennial loser.
The Firestone guys were die-hard fans, yet they agreed they probably wouldn't have gone to a Cleveland game on a typical Tuesday night.
"Beer was an attraction," Miller said.
Something else had been brewing. On May 29, 1974, six days before 10-cent beer night, the Rangers hosted Cleveland in Arlington, Texas, and the benches cleared for a full-fledged brawl between the teams. Rangers fans threw food and beer at Cleveland players.
Media members ate it up. Ennis remembers the late sports talk radio legend Pete Franklin inciting the Cleveland fan base on his WWWE show in the buildup to 10-cent beer night.
"He was talking constantly about, 'We've got to take it to those Rangers! We've got to let them have it! We've got to pack the ballpark,'" Ennis said. "He was stirring up all of this emotion."
Martin provided plenty of fodder for sports talk radio. When the Rangers manager was asked about the potential for retaliation in Cleveland on the heels of the two ballclubs fighting in late May, he told reporters, "They won't have enough fans there to worry about." Although Martin changed his tune upon being informed the rematch would fall on 10-cent beer night, it was too late.
Opinions vary on how much the punches thrown in Texas contributed to the riot the next week in Cleveland — some blame everything on the alcohol — but Ennis said he went to 10-cent beer night with an expectation something spicy would happen because of the preexisting tension.
"The whole atmosphere was just kind of heated from the beginning," he added.
It was bizarre from beginning to end. Fans threw items when they disagreed with a call. Many of them reached the field. A woman tried to kiss an umpire. There was a streaker. People attempted to rip padding off the outfield wall. Two fans mooned everyone in tandem and raced away.
"It started out just two or three people running from one bullpen across the field to the other bullpen in between innings," Hargrove said. "It went from two to three to five to a hundred later in the game."
Firecrackers were thrown into the Rangers bullpen and dugout.
"It was helter-skelter," Clar said. "There were explosions and people running."
Clar conceded he has been afraid at a sporting event because he's attended a Browns-Steelers game in Pittsburgh while donning Cleveland gear. However, he and his pals insisted they didn't feel as if they were in danger on 10-cent beer night.
"It was all entertaining," Miller said. "It was just a whole circus going on in front us."
Of course, the perspective from the field was different.
"That was the closest you're ever gonna be to seeing someone get killed in this game of baseball," Martin said, according to the Beacon Journal's front-page story on June 5, 1974.
Burroughs' clash in right field escalated everything in the bottom of the ninth inning. After clobbering each other less than a week earlier, the ballclubs fought off fans together.
"If [Cleveland's] players hadn't come on the field and helped us, I don't know where that would've gone," Hargrove said. "I've always been real appreciative of the fact that they came out to help and certainly made a bad situation a lot better — not much better, but better — and allowed everybody to get off the field relatively unhurt. So I've always kind of had a warm and fuzzy feeling for that team that was here in '74."
In an ESPN SportsCenter segment about the 40th anniversary of 10-cent beer night, a Richmond Heights man named Terry Yerkic said he grabbed Burroughs' hat, whereupon Burroughs kicked him in the thigh and fell. The teams and a mob estimated in the hundreds rushed the field.
"I don't ever remember feeling threatened or scared out there with all the fans on the field and everything that was going on," Hargrove said. "But I know that when I got back into the clubhouse and started thinking back and looking back on things, realizing how much more wrong it could have gone, then [I got] a little shaky."
The Rangers wound up battling on the pitcher's mound and backed into their dugout to escape.
"The police escorted us back to our hotel, the old Hollenden House, and we were told not to come down to the lobby until noon the next day," Hargrove said. "I remember going to bed hungry that night. I didn't much appreciate that, but I survived it."
Cleveland relief pitcher Tom Hilgendorf had a bigger problem than an empty stomach. He had been hit in the head with a flying chair. Chylak suffered a scalp wound.
Sure, there was beer sold for 10 cents, but there was also a bevy of cans and bottles of alcohol smuggled into the stadium. Evidence eventually littered the field. Someone threw a gallon jug of Thunderbird wine at Hargrove but missed. Other weapons lurked. Martin said some fans carried knives.
"When you have to fight to protect your life, you have to wonder if it's worth it," Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte said in a Beacon Journal story under the headline "Beer And Blood At The Old Ball Game."
The day after the riot, Cleveland baseball president Ted Bonda downplayed the mayhem, defended the 10-cent beer night promotion and stated his vote would be to keep the other ones the club had planned.
"It was an embarrassment, a national embarrassment, and they said, 'Let's do it one more time!'" Marks said.
When Ennis heard the sequel to 10-cent beer night would still be held on July 18, 1974, his reaction was essentially, "We're in!"
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Marks had missed the June 4 beer night. His parents would not allow a Cleveland adventure because he had a final exam at Firestone the next day. His buddies were done with their exams and joined the revelry.
"All I heard for the next month was about the game," he said. "[My friends] were there, and I wasn't. It killed me."
Marks attended the July 18 game with Ennis and Co. The Beacon Journal reported there were some 180 police officers at the second 10-cent beer night after 50 had worked the one a month earlier. Coupons were required to purchase beer, with a limit of four being redeemed at a time. Some firecrackers were set off in the stands, but no other obvious incidents materialized. People showed up just be certain they didn't miss anything crazy. The attendance was 41,848.
As for the notorious beer night 50 years ago, the teenagers from Firestone were hardly Akron's only representatives. Mayor John S. Ballard was also in attendance. After witnessing how the night had unfolded, he told the Beacon Journal the promotion "was probably worth 10 cents."
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Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich .
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cleveland baseball's 10-cent beer night recalled on 50th anniversary
