It was a night when fans were admitted to the bleachers at old Cleveland Stadium for 50 cents. It also was a night when a 12-ounce cup of beer was sold for a dime. What could you buy for 60 cents? Try six cups of beer, the purchase limit for one person. How's that for restraint? You are limited to a mere six cups ... 72 ounces ... of beer. Of course, you could get into another line at another concession stand and buy six more beers, assuming you had another 60 cents. So for $1.70, you could buy a bleacher seat to a Tribe-Texas Rangers game ... and drink a dozen beers.
"But it was only 3.2 [percent alcohol] beer," the Indians would later plead, as if it were unsweetened Kool-Aid. It was June 4, 1974. Joe was calling the game on the radio with Herb Score.
Most Tribe fans know what happened. Drunken fans stormed the field in the ninth inning, starting a riot. The game was suspended. But for several innings before that, drunken fans staggered onto the field. This was in the era of streakers, and a few folks shed their clothes and dashed across the outfield. At one point, a gallon jug of Thunderbird -- yes, someone smuggled a gallon jug of cheap wine into Beer Night -- was heaved out of the stands and landed near Texas first baseman Mike Hargrove. Yes, that's the same Mike Hargrove who later played for and managed the Indians. Joe watched it all, and when remembering it 36 years later, he shook his head and said: "I was sick to my stomach. It was the worst thing that I ever saw during a broadcast." This is not to stumble down memory lane of a beer-soaked event that lives in infamy in the memory of many Cleveland fans. It's to tell the story behind the story
"I called Beer Night a riot," said Joe. "I said it was 'a disgrace to the game and to the Indians.' I said the Indians 'have only themselves to blame because it was a STUPID promotion. ... Members of the front office left early.'" Joe paused and shook his head again. "When I first heard about the 10-cent promotion, I knew it was stupid," Joe said. "Whoever is going to show up for 10-cent Beer Night was going to be there to get drunk. If he's not drunk before he gets there, he will be when he leaves. ... We first had two streakers ... then five streakers. ... I think I counted about 20 by the end of the game. ... Never knew why, but running around naked was a big deal back then."
Umpire Nestor Chylak called the game in the ninth inning, awarding a victory to Texas. By then, fans were on the field, trying to steal caps, gloves and anything else they could from the players. Some threw up on the grass, a few passed out.
"Even Herbie [Score] said this was getting totally out of hand," said Joe. "Then we saw some of the Indians hierarchy bailing out in the sixth inning.
It got serious when a fan took [Texas outfielder] Jeff Burroughs' cap. Burroughs ducked and sort of stumbled. ... [Texas manager] Billy Martin was worried about Burroughs, and he came out of the dugout with a fungo bat. A bunch of players went with him.
"Fans stormed the field ..." Joe shook his head yet again. "Fans were swinging chains -- don't ask me where they got to chains from. They broke off pieces of chairs ... [Indians manager] Ken Aspromonte led his players to the field, and you had the picture of the Indians and Texas players fighting together, retreating back into the first base dugout ... [Tribe pitcher] Tom Hilgendorf had his head split open when someone threw a chair out of the upper deck and it hit him."
The national publicity was horrible, a game in Cleveland destroyed by a bunch of beer-soaked fans. The team had a ridiculous promotion and not much extra security. "[Tribe President] Ted Bonda wanted me fired because I called it a riot," said Joe.
"Well, it was a RIOT. The only reason that it wasn't a worse RIOT is because I called it a RIOT on the radio, and a bunch of police heard me, and they came down to the Stadium to see what was going on. Some of them told me that they called the station house and said they better send reinforcements down to the Stadium to check it out."
So when Bonda confronted Joe about calling it a riot, Joe said, "That's because it was a RIOT!" Joe said it's important to remember what life was like for Cleveland in the 1970s. "Every week, the Laugh-In show did Cleveland jokes," he said. "It was when the mayor's hair caught on fire, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Cleveland was a butt of national jokes."
And then there was Beer Night. Plain Dealer columnist Hal Lebovitz wrote this: "Joe Tait, who is going to get a National Basketball Association referee killed some night with his highly charged criticisms, didn't help on the Indians play-by-play broadcasts by his repeated huckstering 'Come out to Beer Night and let's stick it in Billy Martin's ear.'"
Reading the story 36 years later, Joe said, "What I said on the air was, 'Let's make a lot of noise and stick it in Billy Martin's ear.' For that, he wanted to blame me for what happened." The Indians had a few near brawls with Martin's Rangers before Beer Night when they played in Texas. Martin had said his team had nothing to worry about when they came to Cleveland "because nobody goes to the games." He didn't know about Beer Night.
Lebovitz wrote: "The impression may not have been one that Joe intended, but that's the inference the listeners got. Thus, Joe, with his high-voltage delivery, conceivably helped create an atmosphere that led to the final scene." Joe countered with a charge about a cartoon in Lebovitz's own sports section of an Indian holding boxing gloves, as if preparing to fight the Texas players.
Lebovitz came back with a second column, admitting the problem was not the cartoon or Joe's remarks. It was "only because the fuel was there ... the alcohol. Without the fuel, it's impossible to have a fire."
The Indians sold 65,000 beers that night. Lebovitz estimated the average adult had about five beers. Bonda wanted to fire Joe to take the heat off what had happened on his watch. He was team president. The team was being ripped by nearly every media outlet across the country.
Comedians used it for an endless series of jokes. "Nick Mileti owned the team back then," said Joe. "He was out of town during the riot. He came back, talked to me on the phone about what happened. He talked to the ushers, the police and the players -- anyone he could who was at the game. He also listened to the tape of the broadcast. He told Bonda something along the lines of 'I can't see anything wrong with what Joe said. It obviously was a riot.' That was it. I kept my job."
Joe said he listened to the game tape "several times. ... I don't regret a thing I said." Then Joe remembered this story, meeting Chylak. They talked about Beer Night, and the umpire mentioned how the Indians were down, 5-0, then came back to tie up the game.
"Joe, I figured as long as they're not shooting or anything like that, we'll get it done," said Chylak. "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 outta here!'"
