Ten Cent Beer Night: When Cheap Beer Sparked Chaos in MLB
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? |
| 0:15.1 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:18.5 | From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:23.9 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:27.4 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:33.4 | You're up! This is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show. |
| 0:49.7 | Our next story comes to us from a man who is simply known as the history guy. |
| 0:55.2 | His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy |
| 1:00.5 | is also heard here at Our American Stories. The June 4th, 1974 night game between the |
| 1:07.6 | Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians was one for the record books. |
| 1:12.1 | Trouble was a brewing. The bleachers were loaded, and there was a distinct buzz in the air. |
| 1:18.0 | Here's the history guy with that story of the 10-cent beer night riot. |
| 1:23.3 | 1974 was a depressing news year in the United States. President Richard Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal, |
| 1:29.1 | which would eventually force him to resign in November, the first U.S. President to do so. |
| 1:33.5 | The United States economy was in a deep recession, the result of double-digit inflation in the ongoing energy crisis. |
| 1:40.3 | Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped in February, |
| 1:45.0 | and by April had claimed that she had joined her captor's cause, leading to nightly news stories. |
| 1:51.0 | And on June 4th, in the event that perhaps best defined the trying times of the day, |
| 1:58.0 | beer was too cheap in Cleveland, Ohio. It is history that deserves to be remembered. |
| 2:06.6 | It was Tuesday, June 4th, and the Texas Rangers were playing a night game at Cleveland Stadium, |
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