That Time an MLB Team had to Forfeit because Their Fans got Too Drunk
It happened on June 4, 1974, at bygone Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, when a promotion that promised beers for just 10 cents apiece went horribly, and predictably awry.
The event organizers for the then-Cleveland Indians had taken the idea from their scheduled opponent for that night: the Texas Rangers, who’d held a similar promotion earlier in the season. The fact that there hasn’t been much of anything written about the events of that night suggests it went off without a hitch.
Cleveland’s attempt at holding their own ‘Ten Cent Beer Night’ perhaps could’ve been equally successful, but the unfortunate events of just one week prior to the promotion made that a near impossibility.
When the same two teams met at the Rangers’ Arlington Stadium on May 29, a massive benches clearing brawl broke out in the 8th inning just after Cleveland pitcher Milt Wilcox, on orders from his teammate Gaylord Perry, intentionally threw at Rangers’ second baseman Lenny Randle.
Randle picked up a couple singles off of the future Hall of Famer Perry the night before, and had quite a bit to say to the media about it after the game. Among other boiler plate put downs, Randle said Perry, who was 34 at the time, was washed up, and that he couldn’t get anybody out unless he used his infamous ‘spitball,’ which was, then as now, an illegal pitch.
Well, the notoriously old-school veteran wasn’t particularly tolerant of that sort of behavior, and so, the next day, approached young Milt Wilcox, who was the scheduled starter for that night’s game, and asked for a favor.
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