All of my children chimed in within the last couple of days, chuckling over an ESPN.com story that recalled the infamous Dime Beer Night Riot of 1974 at the old Stadium.
The 38th anniversary was last week and, darn, we forgot to celebrate. (The only way to properly celebrate such a bizarre event is to get arrested.)
What caught the fancy of my children is that the author of the story, a young Chicagoan named Paul Jackson, gave me a nice plug, much more than I deserved.
He wrote that I was punched in the face twice during the melee. He’s half-right. I was punched only once.
“Oh, I’m glad,” said my daughter, who called from Cincinnati. “If you get punched once, you’re an innocent victim. If you stick around to get punched twice, it’s your fault.”
Since Paul Jackson already raised the issue — he plans to write a book about it — let me share my perspective. Is there a better way to get people’s attention? Baseball and beer. That covers my circle of friends.
Dime Beer Night was a proven promotion for the Indians by 1974. The Indians actually introduced the concept a couple of years earlier as Nickel Beer Day, a charming Sunday afternoon promotion with a Gay Nineties theme.
Musicians dressed in vintage striped blazers and straw hats roamed through the stands playing banjos. I even hosted a beer-drinking contest among four legendary beer drinkers from Lakewood. They drank a lot, but nobody abused the product. Maybe some people left the Stadium with bleary eyes, but no black eyes.
In 1974 the Indians doubled the price of beer and held Dime Beer Night in the middle of the week when the Indians were hosting the Texas Rangers, who were managed by the colorful Billy Martin, a man known to occasionally wet his lips.
The problem was the night game. When it was held on Sunday afternoon, most people came to the game sober. At night they arrived with a snootful and after that it was Katy bar the door. With long lines at the beer stands, there was no time to check IDs. For high school kids it was the party of the year.
A fad at that time was “streaking.” Some guy would take off his clothes, leap onto the field and “streak” across the outfield. Usually alcohol was involved and sometimes pot, which you might remember as marijuana. The subsequent chase involving the old cops and the young streaker invariably was hilarious. It seemed harmless.
Early in the game the first streaker darted across the field. The next inning, two streakers. By the seventh inning I sensed that this game was getting out of control. They were coming in dozens. Indians president Ted Bonda had broadcaster Herb Score take the public address microphone and plead for order. That was like locking kids in a candy factory and telling them not to eat the chocolates.
In the bottom of the ninth the Indians had the tying and winning runs on second and third with one out when hundreds of fans charged the field and drove the Rangers into their dugout. Metal folding chairs were flung from the stands onto the field. I seem to remember Jeff Burroughs of the Rangers picking up a folding chair and using it to defend himself. Mike Hargrove, a rookie with the Rangers at the time, had one kid down on the ground and was working him over pretty good.
Later, Hargrove’s wife, Sharon, told me that she listened to the game on the radio and was terrified. In order to pick up the game on the Rangers radio network in their small Texas town, she had to listen on the car radio because it picked up distant signals better than a radio in the house. She said that the radio description sounded like a war.
It was hopeless to resume the game. The umpires called it a forfeit in favor of the Rangers. The PA announcer told everyone to go home. They turned off the stadium lights.
About 15 kids, representing the last bastion of insanity, refused to leave, stomping around on top of the Rangers dugout, challenging them to come back out and fight.
By this time the Rangers were showered and dressed and were planning their escape to Pat Joyce’s Tavern.
With notebook in hand, I climbed up on top of the dugout in search of a wild quote that would put perspective in my story.
“What are you guys trying to prove?” I asked.
The answer came with five-knuckle clarity. A kid reached through the tightly bunched group and planted a punch perfectly on my jaw. Not my lip, nose or eye — not a mark was left, not a drop of blood shed. Furthermore, the kid had nothing behind his punch. I didn’t even blink.
But suppose the kid in front of him knew how to throw a punch?
With the interview going nowhere except maybe the emergency room, I departed the scene and filed my first report from a war zone.
It was left for Indians president Alva T. (Ted) Bonda to provide the perfect quote to put the night into perspective. Facing a battery of unfriendly reporters, Bonda said: “You guys are giving beer a bad name.”
Dan Coughlin is a columnist for The Chronicle-Telegram and a sportscaster for Channel 8. Contact him at ctsports@chroniclet.com. 

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