Soundtrack to a Real Mistake on the Lake
Namely, Ten-Cent Beer Night in Cleveland . . .
Pregame Pepper
. . . Bad blood between the Cleveland Indians and the Texas Rangers entering Ten Cent Beer Night started with a bench-clearing brawl in Arlington a week earlier.
. . . The trigger: Rangers infielder Lenny Randle plowing Indians pitcher Milt Wilcox while running out a bunt up the first base line.
. . . Municipal Stadium fans ran on and off the field throughout much of the Ten Cent Beer Night game, starting after Indians outfielder Leron Lee’s liner up the middle hit Hall of Fame Rangers pitcher Ferguson Jenkins in the stomach—and drunk, rowdy fans in the stands chanted “Hit him again! Hit him again!”
. . . The riot broke out in full in the bottom of the ninth, after the Indians tied the game at five. It started when a fan ran out to Rangers outfielder Jeff Burroughs and tried to steal Burroughs’s hat, causing Burroughs to trip and fall—and prompting Rangers manager Billy Martin, fearing his player had been assaulted, to lead his team out to help Burroughs.
. . . That led Indians manager Ken Aspromonte to lead his team out to aid the Rangers against the fan onslaught.
. . . One rioter picked a fist fight with Mike (The Human Rain Delay) Hargrove, then a Ranger, while another hit Indians relief pitcher Tom Hilgendorf with a seat ripped somehow from the stands. And, yet another rioter hit umpire Nestor Chylak with a stadium seat.
. . . Chylak ended up calling the game a forfeit to the Rangers.
. . . Indians outfielder Rusty Torres ended up surviving his second of three fan riots that happened during his playing career. His first: the ninth-inning RFK Stadium riot that forced a forfeit to his Yankees in the final Washington Senators home game, 1971—before the team moved to Texas. His second: the eventual disaster of Disco Demolition Night in Comiskey Park, Chicago.
Leading Off
Soundtrack to a Real Mistake on the Lake
The music that actually did accompany Cleveland’s infamous Ten Cent Beer Night.
By Paul Jackson
Ten Cent Beer Night (the proper-noun one) happened in Cleveland 51 years ago today. To commemorate this anniversary, I thought I’d explore a neglected corner of the experience. By now the details of what people saw that night are well-covered, but what did people hear?
When I first wrote about it back in 2009, I was captivated by a report that the stadium organist played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” while hundreds of fans rioted on the field and engaged in running battles with some of the Texas Rangers and Cleveland Indians (whose bad blood had been set aside in the face of a common foe: Clevelanders). It was an absurd, Kafkaesque detail, one that added a whole new sensory facet to the dystopia.
The stadium organist has the most challenging task during a riot. The park security and ushers know what they’re supposed to be doing, as do the public address announcer and signage operator. The players and coaching staff basically just have to flee. But the organist role is a paradox. He or she have a means through which to communicate, but no voice with which to speak. All they have is music, and a desire to do something constructive.
During Disco Demolition at Comiskey Park in 1979, organist Nancy Faust was largely quiet as the situation on the field devolved. But once Sox owner Bill Veeck stepped behind home plate to try and get the marauding rock fans back in their seats, Faust tried to help by playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” accompanied as always by then-White Sox announcer Harry Caray on vocals. The idea was to try and put fans back in a baseball frame of mind. But Faust and Caray were just another amusement for the rollicking crowd on the field.
Shea Stadium organist Jane Jarvis had an interesting opportunity on July 13, 1977, when the Great New York Blackout hit right in the middle of a game between the Mets and the Chicago Cubs. It was initially unclear how long the blackout would last, and fans were asked to remain in their seats. A backup generator at Shea kept the PA system and the organ operational, so Jarvis entertained the crowd with “God Bless America,” “Jingle Bells,” and “White Christmas,” which proved to be a karaoke favorite.* While parts of New York broke down into riots and looting, the crowd in Shea Stadium stayed calm.
The Cleveland Municipal Stadium organist in 1974 was named Art Broze, and in researching Ten Cent Beer Night over the years I have paid careful attention to what people remembered Broze playing during that chaotic night. In a tough spot, the organist had his detractors.
One of them was Brad Corbett, the owner of the Texas Rangers, who was present at the game (with his children, unfortunately), and in his remarks the next day Corbett said he felt Broze had been part of the problem: “It certainly didn’t help when the organist, at the height of the trouble, kept playing ‘charge’.”
To be fair to Broze, “the height of the trouble” coincided with a game-tying Cleveland rally. In a rally situation, playing the universally recognized six-note fanfare is a sports organist best-practice.
There is another possibility, too: Back when the United States Navy relied on bugles to sound alarms across a ship, the same fanfare used to signal a cavalry charge on land was used to alert sailors to a “man overboard” emergency—much like what was happening to Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs out in right field.
One eyewitness who wrote me with his memories of the event heard something much weirder than “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”: “I recall the organist playing the Stroh’s beer jingle—‘…from one beer lover to another, Stroh’s...’—repeatedly in the background.”
Naturally, we had to find that jingle. We located a radio spot from the period and the singer does the aforementioned jingle twice at the end.
Both of these accounts make Broze seem like a bit of a musical anarchist, making wry sonic quips and doing little to try and pacify the crowd. But it’s not fair Broze to make him wear that on the basis of a few unfriendly reports. What we really need is to hear from the man himself—what was he playing (and thinking) that night?
As it turns out, Broze answered these questions in a letter to the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer that ran on June 8, 1974. The organist comes off as a bit of a homer and a Cleveland apologist, putting the blame for what happened on Texas Rangers manager Billy Martin, for leading his team “charging out of the dugout with bats in hand.”
In Broze’s mind, the trouble had been winding down until this inflammatory gesture “The game should have been forfeited to the Cleveland Indians,” Broze wrote, “because of the Texas team taking the law into its own hands. They promoted the riot. Billy Martin wanted to win that game by forfeit, and he also wanted to show up our fine police department. If the Texas Rangers get away with this scot-free, there is no justice.”
Having said his piece on Martin, Broze addressed his own part in the affair, providing a delightful revelation to at least one writer 50 years later:
Until the adults got in on the act, the tune I was playing during the juvenile disruption was ‘Kids,’ from the show Bye Bye, Birdie. That piece of music didn’t cause any hostility during the musical and I don’t think it caused any feeling of hostility at Municipal Stadium. I could have tried ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ after the adults came on the scene, but I didn’t think of it at the time and for this I apologize.
Another piece of history falls perfectly into place.
( * Jane Jarvis—also a Muzak staff composer/arranger and jazz pianist—had a choice number to play for the Shea Stadium crowds whenever the Mets got involved in brawls on the field: Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple from the Apple.”—Ed.)
Paul Jackson writes about baseball, history, and culture on Substack at Project 3.18 and on Instagram. He has previously written for ESPN.com. Paul can be reached via email at pjacks2@gmail.com.
Extra Innings: What They Said . . .
As cited by Cleveland magazine’s Vince Guarnieri, on the 50th anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night:
When the Indians went back to the dugout, our fans were screaming at them. (Indians catcher) Dave Duncan got so mad that he jumped up on top of the dugout and tried to go into the stands. They had to pull him back in. And then after the game, they asked (Rangers manager) Billy Martin if he was concerned about going to Cleveland the next week. He said, “Ahh, nobody goes to the games anyway.”
—Tom Grieve, Rangers outfielder, after the Rangers-Indian brawl in Texas a week before Ten Cent Beer Night.
My father and his group were struggling to get people to the games. We used to sit in the old Stadium Club and literally count the people coming over the West Third Street Bridge . . . We tried everything. We had the Great Wallenda walk across the stadium on a tightrope. I was actually up there. It was scary being on the roof. We brought in the King and his Court, a softball team.
—Tom Bonda, the son of then-Indians owner Ted Bonda.
We walked over [to Municipal Stadium] from the Hollenden House, and you could tell. There people headed to the ballpark—and they were pumped up. It wasn’t an atmosphere you were expecting on a Tuesday night in Cleveland against the Rangers.
—Randy Galloway, sportswriter, Dallas Morning News.
After we saw batting practice, I saw a lot of people in the stands I hadn’t seen before. I said, “Wow, we’ve got a big crowd tonight.” They were already drinking beer.
—Ken Aspromonte, Indians’ manager.
I was on the (disabled list) that night, so I was actually sitting upstairs watching the game. I had a great view. I’m looking down into the dugouts, and the players are yelling at the fans and the fans are throwing stuff into the dugout.
—Buddy Bell, Indians third baseman.
We got the wives out of the stands, I think, in the seventh inning, and got them into the locker room. We brought the bullpen into the dugout. Something was brewing.
—Ken Sanders, Indians pitcher.
Any Cleveland police car not on assignment respond to Cleveland Stadium for a riot.
—Radio call as Cleveland police officer Bill Leonard remembered hearing it.
We were going to lose that game. They had the winning run on base.
—Jim Sundberg, Rangers catcher.
The crowd was going nuts. I don’t think anyone had run on the field in a while. We look out in right field, and here comes a fan. He approaches Jeff Burroughs in right field, and I thought, He shouldn’t do that. Players are going to react. He reached for Burroughs’ hat, Jeff pushed at him. The kid went back and Jeff fell down.
—Galloway.
Billy Martin led the charge of the light brigade out of the dugout and all hell broke loose. The field was just full of people.
—Dick Bosman, Indians pitcher.
I said, “We gotta go help Billy.” We figured his 25 and my 25 could take care of it. The people were on the field swinging like hell, but mostly missing because they didn’t know where they were.
—Aspromonte.
You could tell order was not going to be restored. Pretty soon after (Tom Hilgendorf, Indians pitcher) got hit, someone jumped out of the upper deck onto the foul screen and fell through. And we said, “We might as well go to the clubhouse.” So we retreated and sat there. You could hear it roaring out there. Word came down I guess about 45 minutes later that the game was forfeited.
—Bosman.
There was this big guy who was threatening to kick my ass, and Dave Duncan—who was on the Indians—tackled him and before I knew it, Billy Martin was kicking him in the face.
—Sundberg.
They lure people into the park by offering a beer giveaway. So crowds go there to tank up, not to watch baseball. What do the Lords of Baseball expect?
—Dick Young, New York Daily News columnist.
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HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles the Monday issue. Dan Freedman [dfreedman@lionsgate.com] edits Tuesday. Jeff Kallman [easyace1955@outlook.com] has the helm Wednesday and Thursday, and original editor Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com], does the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Former editor Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] is now co-director [with Benjamin Chase and Jonathan Becker] of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, which publishes this newsletter and the annual ACTA book of the same name. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HtP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.