It’s been 50 years and umpire Nestor Chylak is still
not in a kissing mood…It wasn’t a great time back then in Cleveland. The city was gasping for air—literally as the Cuyahoga River burned—business, industry, jobs, and therefore residents fled the city en-masse. Just about the only thing left in the city was their
truly terrible baseball team, today known as the Guardians (and like the city of Cleveland itself, in a much better state of affairs today than then.) Less than ten thousand fans—in a stadium that could seat over 74,000—would turn up to see their awful team lose, and the attendance figures were only going down: irrespective to win percentage. Something
had to be done to bring in fans, or the team would have to be sold and leave the city as well…
Management came up with a promotion: they contracted Stroh’s brewery of Detroit to offer twelve ounce cups of their Bohemian-style Pilsner for only ten cents, with a limit on six cups per purchase. With no limit on the number of purchases…
Over 25 thousand thirsty Clevelanders—over double the highest attendance of the season so far—showed to the
Tuesday night game versus the Texas Rangers—themselves recently relocated from Washington DC—and their ten cent cups of beer. With a rivalry brewing both on and off the field with the Rangers, this would go about as well as you can imagine…
Join Cleveland Center as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of one of the wildest baseball games of all time. While we don’t envision the takeoff queue to wrap around the outfield like the beer line, if traffic gets as bad as the demand for beer got, we won’t call the game forfeit in the bottom of the 9th. Gates open 7:30PM EST
p.s: please return any stolen bases found to the CLE ATCT. Thank you.
