September 22, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, on June 4, 1974, the Cleveland Indians hosted the Texas Rangers in what began as a regular MLB game and ended as one of the most infamous promotions in baseball history. Known as “Ten Cent Beer Night,” the evening promised cheap drinks to boost attendance. What followed was a riot on the field, a forfeit, and a chapter of baseball history that still stuns fans today. The History Guy recounts the unbelievable story of the night chaos replaced baseball in Cleveland.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show. Our next story comes to
us from a man who is simply known as the
History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands
of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy
is also heard here in Our American Stories. The June fourth,
(00:30):
nineteen seventy four night game between the Texas Rangers and
the Cleveland Indians was won for the record books. Trouble
was a bruin, the bleachers were loaded, and there was
a distinct buzz in the air. Here's the History Guy
with that story of the ten cent beer night riot.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Nineteen seventy four was a depressing news year in the
United States. President Richard Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal,
which would eventually force him to resign in November, the
first US president to do so. The United States enomy
was in a deep recession, the result of double digit
inflation in the ongoing energy crisis. Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter
of publishing magnet William Randolph Hurst, was kidnapped in February
(01:11):
and by April had claimed that she had joined her
captor's cause, leading to nightly news stories, and on June fourth,
in the event that perhaps best defined the trying times
of the day, beer was too cheap in Cleveland, Ohio.
It is history that deserves to be remembered. It was Tuesday,
(01:33):
June fourth, and the Texas Rangers were playing a night
game at Cleveland Stadium, the first of a three game series.
When configured for baseball, the stadium seeded seventy four than
four hundred fans, making it the largest and professional baseball
in nineteen seventy four. But Cleveland was a struggling city
noted for its river pollution. The Cioga River through the
city was famous for literally catching fire when such fire
(01:55):
in nineteen sixty nine had caught the attention of the
nation via Time magazine, prompting the creation of the Environmental
Protection Agency. The Cleveland area had been a flashpoint for
anti Vietnam War sentiment after shootings by the National Guard
at nearby Kent State University in nineteen seventy. The city
was in financial difficulty. Crime was on the rise. In
nineteen sixty two, there had been fifty nine murders in Cleveland.
(02:17):
In nineteen seventy two, there were three hundred and thirty three.
The city had a difficult reputation and people were leaving
in droves. The city lost roughly one hundred and seventy
seven thousand inhabitants between nineteen seventy and nineteen eighty, and
the Cleveland Indians simply weren't very good. They finished at
the bottom of the American League East in nineteen seventy three,
weren't doing much better in nineteen seventy four. Commentator Paul
(02:40):
Jackson of ESPN said of them, the seventy four Indians
were a smorgas board of mediocre and forgettable talent. Playing
in an open air mausoleum, it had become difficult to
fill the massive seventy four thousand, four hundred seat stadium.
A May thirteenth, a mere four thousand, two hundred and
thirty four had shut up on a chilli night for
(03:01):
a game against Boston. On average, eighty five percent of
the stadium's tickets went unsold, but the game against Texas
on the muggy night June fourth attracted a respectable twenty
five thousand, one hundred and thirty four crowd, twice what
was expected. The reason cheap beer. The club was running
a promotion twelve fluid ounce cups of Stroves three point
(03:22):
two percent beer for just ten cents each. There was
a limit of six beers per purchase, but no limit
on the number of purchases made during the game. Bud Tucker,
a calumnist for the Independent Press Telegram of Long Beach, California,
equipped as a Frenchman is inspired by flying wine or
a Russian by classic vodka, so does a Clevelander react
to ten cent beer. The late Tim Russer, known for
(03:44):
being the longtime moderator of the show Meet the Press,
was twenty four at the time and attended the game.
In a statement that perhaps defined much of the crowd
that night, he said, I had two dollars in my pocket.
You do the math. Perhaps there was more going on
that night than cheap beer. It was particularly HoTT in Muggy.
The June date caught the college aged crowd just as
they were coming home for summer, and as Anthony Castrovianz
(04:06):
of MLB dot Com noted in twenty fourteen, it was
a full moon that night. In fact, witnesses note that
much of the crowd seemed to have not waited for
the jeep beer, and many seemed to have arrived already
drunk or high, and for some reason, they also showed
up in their pockets stuffed with firecrackers. The crowd started
throwing them before the game even started, and they continued throughout.
(04:26):
The rowdiness may have had something to do with the
team's last meeting a week earlier on May twenty ninth
in Arlington, which had a bench emptying brawl. During the
eighth inning of what would be a Rangers three to
zero victory. Rangers fans had thrown beer and food at
the Indians teams they were returning to the dugout. The
Indians were furious. Catcher Dave Duncan had to be restrained
to keep him from going into the stands to brawl
with the crowd. Indian second baseman Jay Brohammer, who had
(04:49):
been at the bottom of the pile, promised revenge. Rangers
manager Billy Martin added to the fuel. After the game.
A Cleveland reporter asked him if he was afraid of
fans retaliating in Cleveland. He responded, nah, they don't have
enough fans to worry about. Cleveland media kept to see
riled over the course of the next week. Roehemmer was
quoted as saying that he had cooled down and wasn't
(05:09):
looking for a fight. Instead, he hoped to get revenge
by winning all three games of the upcoming series. The
Cleveland fans, on the other hand, might have been making
plans of their own. Texas quickly cooked the lead in
the second inning after a home run by outfielder Tom Greave,
but a buzz was in the air, or rather in
the crowd. The end of the second inning, a woman
hopped the fence, ran over to the Indians on deck circle,
(05:32):
ripped off her shirt, bearing her breast to the raucous
approval of the crowd, and then tried to kiss the umpire. Amazingly,
it wasn't the weirdest thing that would happen that night,
nor the only act of exhibitionism. The fund was not
all good natured. Not only was the crowd throwing firecrackers
and keeping the groundscrew busy throwing garbage under the field,
but when Ranger's pitcher Fergie Jenkins got hit in the
(05:54):
stomach with a line drive, the crowd started chanting hit
him again. Meanwhile, the beer kept flowing. Unable to keep up,
the vendors reportedly gave up trying to check id's and
started filling up whatever container was handed to them. A
night of whitest of crediting. Nineteen year old van Terry
Yerkik recalled, I had a big dog and son's mug
(06:15):
maybe thirty two ounces, looked like a mini keg. Another
witness said that as the crowd, which he described as
notably younger and longer haired than usual, grew progressively more drunk,
there were some antiques. Every half inning or so, young
fans ran unto the field and not security. When Greeve
hit a second home run in the fourth extending the
Rangers lead to five to one, a naked man ran
(06:35):
out of the field and slid into second base. Running
around of the outfield. In the fifth inning, a father
son team jumped onto the field and boomed the crowd.
Another streaker ran across the field, carrying his clothes with
him but still wearing his left sock. As he approached
the fence, he threw his clothes over, planning his escape.
(06:56):
The crowd could see what he could not. A Cleveland
police officer was on the other side of the fence,
catching both the clothes and the offender. The game had
to be halted in the sixth says the crowd was
throwing firecrackers into the bullpen. Umpire Nester Shylack cleared the
bullpen but was trying to let's play continue. Fans were
no longer just throwing beer and firecrackers, but also rocks
(07:18):
batteries in any part of the stadium that wasn't bolted down.
A group of fans started trying to tug the padding
off the left field wall, drawing the grounds crew away
from picking up the growing pile of trash that was
landing on the field. Despite the antics, the game continued
and Cleveland managed to tie the game at five all
in the bottom of the ninth with two out in
the winning run on second. But then nineteen year old
Terry Yerkick, the fan with the dogs and thuds mug,
(07:40):
decided that he wanted a souvenir. He's not a good decision.
He jumped the fence, ran up behind Texas outfielder Jeff Burrows,
and grabbed his hat. There's some controversy regarding what happened next.
According to Yerkick, Burrows kicked him, but because of the
slope of the diamond from the Rangers dugout all Billy
Martin could see was Burrow's legs and it looked like
he had been knocked down. More fans were climbing onto
(08:01):
the field, and Martin thought Jeff was out there all
by himself. I saw knives and other things. We just
couldn't let our teammate get beat up. He orders team
onto the field carrying bats to protect Burroughs. It was
not a good decision. Seeing the Rangers leave the dugout
sparkly already riled and ineebraated, mob fans stormed the field,
greatly outnumbering the players.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Not the full scale Ryan. There have to be two
hundred people and more coming out of the.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Field and recalled. Now I know how the people of
the Alamo felt. The crowd was carrying knives, chains, clubs
made from stadium seats. Stadium security was overwhelmed, although it's
hard to see what they could have done in any case,
and no one had considered asking for a greater police presence.
Seeing the melee and Rangers players being injured, Espermont, he
ordered the Indians onto the field. Marverl there's got something
(08:47):
to get on the granity.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Here's really admitting every he couldn't sit filling him up
in them behind, and what happened?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The two teams who have been fighting each other so
recently made common cause against the mob. Ah, this is
the trageting. I have never seen anything as disgusting as
they haven't either outnumbered, they fought their way back to
the dugouts, or retreated into the locker rooms behind locked doors. Shylack,
bleeding from a cut on his head from a thrown bottle,
called the game as soon as the players made it inside.
(09:14):
He said he didn't do it earlier for fear. When
spark retaliation against the players, the game was called a forfeit.
Going into the record books, this's a nineteen zero loss
for the Indians. Fans kept rioting, stealing everything they could take,
including literally stealing the stadium's bases. So really the organists
played take me up to the ballgame. Director of stadium
Operations Dan Zerbi, ordered the lights shut off, and the
(09:36):
Cleveland police arrived and restored order. They turned the lights out.
Everybody's gone except for fifteen teenagers standing on top of
the Rangers dugout, chatting for the Rangers to come out
and fight. And so I went up there and asked them,
what do you what do you want trying to prove
because the Rangers are gone, So some kid behind another
one reaches out and punches me right in the job.
(09:58):
He didn't even stagger like a girl. Despite the apparent violence,
there were no serious injuries and less than a dozen arrests.
Area hospitals reported seven people treated and released. Ten Cent
Beer Knight perhaps sunned up well in the dismal decade
for Cleveland and their baseball team. The prospects for both
would eventually improve, but not really until the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And you've been listening to the history guy, tell well,
just a great American story. Not a good one, but boy,
a great one. And my goodness, I love what Tim Russert,
the former host of Meet the Press, said, I had
two dollars in my pocket. You do the math the
story of the ten cent Beer Night riot in Cleveland.
Here on our American Stories
This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show. Our next story comes to
us from a man who is simply known as the
History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands
of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy
is also heard here in Our American Stories. The June fourth,
(00:30):
nineteen seventy four night game between the Texas Rangers and
the Cleveland Indians was won for the record books. Trouble
was a bruin, the bleachers were loaded, and there was
a distinct buzz in the air. Here's the History Guy
with that story of the ten cent beer night riot.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Nineteen seventy four was a depressing news year in the
United States. President Richard Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal,
which would eventually force him to resign in November, the
first US president to do so. The United States enomy
was in a deep recession, the result of double digit
inflation in the ongoing energy crisis. Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter
of publishing magnet William Randolph Hurst, was kidnapped in February
(01:11):
and by April had claimed that she had joined her
captor's cause, leading to nightly news stories, and on June fourth,
in the event that perhaps best defined the trying times
of the day, beer was too cheap in Cleveland, Ohio.
It is history that deserves to be remembered. It was Tuesday,
(01:33):
June fourth, and the Texas Rangers were playing a night
game at Cleveland Stadium, the first of a three game series.
When configured for baseball, the stadium seeded seventy four than
four hundred fans, making it the largest and professional baseball
in nineteen seventy four. But Cleveland was a struggling city
noted for its river pollution. The Cioga River through the
city was famous for literally catching fire when such fire
(01:55):
in nineteen sixty nine had caught the attention of the
nation via Time magazine, prompting the creation of the Environmental
Protection Agency. The Cleveland area had been a flashpoint for
anti Vietnam War sentiment after shootings by the National Guard
at nearby Kent State University in nineteen seventy. The city
was in financial difficulty. Crime was on the rise. In
nineteen sixty two, there had been fifty nine murders in Cleveland.
(02:17):
In nineteen seventy two, there were three hundred and thirty three.
The city had a difficult reputation and people were leaving
in droves. The city lost roughly one hundred and seventy
seven thousand inhabitants between nineteen seventy and nineteen eighty, and
the Cleveland Indians simply weren't very good. They finished at
the bottom of the American League East in nineteen seventy three,
weren't doing much better in nineteen seventy four. Commentator Paul
(02:40):
Jackson of ESPN said of them, the seventy four Indians
were a smorgas board of mediocre and forgettable talent. Playing
in an open air mausoleum, it had become difficult to
fill the massive seventy four thousand, four hundred seat stadium.
A May thirteenth, a mere four thousand, two hundred and
thirty four had shut up on a chilli night for
(03:01):
a game against Boston. On average, eighty five percent of
the stadium's tickets went unsold, but the game against Texas
on the muggy night June fourth attracted a respectable twenty
five thousand, one hundred and thirty four crowd, twice what
was expected. The reason cheap beer. The club was running
a promotion twelve fluid ounce cups of Stroves three point
(03:22):
two percent beer for just ten cents each. There was
a limit of six beers per purchase, but no limit
on the number of purchases made during the game. Bud Tucker,
a calumnist for the Independent Press Telegram of Long Beach, California,
equipped as a Frenchman is inspired by flying wine or
a Russian by classic vodka, so does a Clevelander react
to ten cent beer. The late Tim Russer, known for
(03:44):
being the longtime moderator of the show Meet the Press,
was twenty four at the time and attended the game.
In a statement that perhaps defined much of the crowd
that night, he said, I had two dollars in my pocket.
You do the math. Perhaps there was more going on
that night than cheap beer. It was particularly HoTT in Muggy.
The June date caught the college aged crowd just as
they were coming home for summer, and as Anthony Castrovianz
(04:06):
of MLB dot Com noted in twenty fourteen, it was
a full moon that night. In fact, witnesses note that
much of the crowd seemed to have not waited for
the jeep beer, and many seemed to have arrived already
drunk or high, and for some reason, they also showed
up in their pockets stuffed with firecrackers. The crowd started
throwing them before the game even started, and they continued throughout.
(04:26):
The rowdiness may have had something to do with the
team's last meeting a week earlier on May twenty ninth
in Arlington, which had a bench emptying brawl. During the
eighth inning of what would be a Rangers three to
zero victory. Rangers fans had thrown beer and food at
the Indians teams they were returning to the dugout. The
Indians were furious. Catcher Dave Duncan had to be restrained
to keep him from going into the stands to brawl
with the crowd. Indian second baseman Jay Brohammer, who had
(04:49):
been at the bottom of the pile, promised revenge. Rangers
manager Billy Martin added to the fuel. After the game.
A Cleveland reporter asked him if he was afraid of
fans retaliating in Cleveland. He responded, nah, they don't have
enough fans to worry about. Cleveland media kept to see
riled over the course of the next week. Roehemmer was
quoted as saying that he had cooled down and wasn't
(05:09):
looking for a fight. Instead, he hoped to get revenge
by winning all three games of the upcoming series. The
Cleveland fans, on the other hand, might have been making
plans of their own. Texas quickly cooked the lead in
the second inning after a home run by outfielder Tom Greave,
but a buzz was in the air, or rather in
the crowd. The end of the second inning, a woman
hopped the fence, ran over to the Indians on deck circle,
(05:32):
ripped off her shirt, bearing her breast to the raucous
approval of the crowd, and then tried to kiss the umpire. Amazingly,
it wasn't the weirdest thing that would happen that night,
nor the only act of exhibitionism. The fund was not
all good natured. Not only was the crowd throwing firecrackers
and keeping the groundscrew busy throwing garbage under the field,
but when Ranger's pitcher Fergie Jenkins got hit in the
(05:54):
stomach with a line drive, the crowd started chanting hit
him again. Meanwhile, the beer kept flowing. Unable to keep up,
the vendors reportedly gave up trying to check id's and
started filling up whatever container was handed to them. A
night of whitest of crediting. Nineteen year old van Terry
Yerkik recalled, I had a big dog and son's mug
(06:15):
maybe thirty two ounces, looked like a mini keg. Another
witness said that as the crowd, which he described as
notably younger and longer haired than usual, grew progressively more drunk,
there were some antiques. Every half inning or so, young
fans ran unto the field and not security. When Greeve
hit a second home run in the fourth extending the
Rangers lead to five to one, a naked man ran
(06:35):
out of the field and slid into second base. Running
around of the outfield. In the fifth inning, a father
son team jumped onto the field and boomed the crowd.
Another streaker ran across the field, carrying his clothes with
him but still wearing his left sock. As he approached
the fence, he threw his clothes over, planning his escape.
(06:56):
The crowd could see what he could not. A Cleveland
police officer was on the other side of the fence,
catching both the clothes and the offender. The game had
to be halted in the sixth says the crowd was
throwing firecrackers into the bullpen. Umpire Nester Shylack cleared the
bullpen but was trying to let's play continue. Fans were
no longer just throwing beer and firecrackers, but also rocks
(07:18):
batteries in any part of the stadium that wasn't bolted down.
A group of fans started trying to tug the padding
off the left field wall, drawing the grounds crew away
from picking up the growing pile of trash that was
landing on the field. Despite the antics, the game continued
and Cleveland managed to tie the game at five all
in the bottom of the ninth with two out in
the winning run on second. But then nineteen year old
Terry Yerkick, the fan with the dogs and thuds mug,
(07:40):
decided that he wanted a souvenir. He's not a good decision.
He jumped the fence, ran up behind Texas outfielder Jeff Burrows,
and grabbed his hat. There's some controversy regarding what happened next.
According to Yerkick, Burrows kicked him, but because of the
slope of the diamond from the Rangers dugout all Billy
Martin could see was Burrow's legs and it looked like
he had been knocked down. More fans were climbing onto
(08:01):
the field, and Martin thought Jeff was out there all
by himself. I saw knives and other things. We just
couldn't let our teammate get beat up. He orders team
onto the field carrying bats to protect Burroughs. It was
not a good decision. Seeing the Rangers leave the dugout
sparkly already riled and ineebraated, mob fans stormed the field,
greatly outnumbering the players.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Not the full scale Ryan. There have to be two
hundred people and more coming out of the.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Field and recalled. Now I know how the people of
the Alamo felt. The crowd was carrying knives, chains, clubs
made from stadium seats. Stadium security was overwhelmed, although it's
hard to see what they could have done in any case,
and no one had considered asking for a greater police presence.
Seeing the melee and Rangers players being injured, Espermont, he
ordered the Indians onto the field. Marverl there's got something
(08:47):
to get on the granity.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Here's really admitting every he couldn't sit filling him up
in them behind, and what happened?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The two teams who have been fighting each other so
recently made common cause against the mob. Ah, this is
the trageting. I have never seen anything as disgusting as
they haven't either outnumbered, they fought their way back to
the dugouts, or retreated into the locker rooms behind locked doors. Shylack,
bleeding from a cut on his head from a thrown bottle,
called the game as soon as the players made it inside.
(09:14):
He said he didn't do it earlier for fear. When
spark retaliation against the players, the game was called a forfeit.
Going into the record books, this's a nineteen zero loss
for the Indians. Fans kept rioting, stealing everything they could take,
including literally stealing the stadium's bases. So really the organists
played take me up to the ballgame. Director of stadium
Operations Dan Zerbi, ordered the lights shut off, and the
(09:36):
Cleveland police arrived and restored order. They turned the lights out.
Everybody's gone except for fifteen teenagers standing on top of
the Rangers dugout, chatting for the Rangers to come out
and fight. And so I went up there and asked them,
what do you what do you want trying to prove
because the Rangers are gone, So some kid behind another
one reaches out and punches me right in the job.
(09:58):
He didn't even stagger like a girl. Despite the apparent violence,
there were no serious injuries and less than a dozen arrests.
Area hospitals reported seven people treated and released. Ten Cent
Beer Knight perhaps sunned up well in the dismal decade
for Cleveland and their baseball team. The prospects for both
would eventually improve, but not really until the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And you've been listening to the history guy, tell well,
just a great American story. Not a good one, but boy,
a great one. And my goodness, I love what Tim Russert,
the former host of Meet the Press, said, I had
two dollars in my pocket. You do the math the
story of the ten cent Beer Night riot in Cleveland.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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