They still talk about it, laugh about it now and then, occasionally watch videotape of the infamous game, but they vividly remember 50 years ago hilarity being replaced by anger, fear and panic.
“I’ve never really talked about this before,” Dave Duncan, who was on the Cleveland Municipal Stadium field that night, tells USA TODAY Sports. “It was just too crazy. Dangerously crazy. Stupid, really.”
It was the night of June 4, 1974.
Two months after Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, two months before Richard Nixon resigned as president after Watergate, and four months before Tommy John surgery was introduced to the baseball world, it was 10 Cent Beer Night.
The promotion that led to one of the most chaotic nights in…
