Progressive Field | Photo by John B | Pixabay.com
Major League Baseball spring training started on Feb. 25. The league has been a part of American culture for nearly 150 years; in the 1970’s, many teams instituted promotional tactics to boost attendance. Here are two promotions that went tremendously wrong.
10 cent beer night
The Cleveland Indians had a poor run in the 1970’s. The club had not been in the playoffs since 1954 and were drawing low attendance numbers. On June 4, 1974, the club instituted 10 cent beer night and attracted 25,134 fans for a game against the Texas Rangers.
The promotion came with a six-beer limit of eight-ounce cups. The club did not anticipate the high demand, so it could not regulate the six-beer limit. The concession stands became so crowded that beer trucks directly filled fan cups just outside the ballpark.
As the contest reached the middle innings, the game took a backseat to the wild behavior of the increasingly inebriated fans. In the fifth inning, two fans jumped onto the field and mooned the crowd.
Finally, in the ninth inning, with the score tied 5-5, two fans jumped onto the field and tried to grab right fielder Jeff Burroughs’s hat. A fight ensued between Burroughs and the fans, and Rangers manager Billy Martin led his team to the drunken fans, resulting in a brawl between players and fans.
The 50-person security staff on hand was unable to control the mob as more and more fans rushed the field. In all, ballpark security arrested 12 people, and the umpires called the game a 9-0 forfeit win for the visiting Rangers.
Disco demolition night
The Chicago White Sox hosted the Detroit Tigers for a double-header that was anything but ordinary. At the midway point of that season, the White Sox were 35-45 and only drawing around 10,000 fans per home game. The baseball club’s promotional team came up with an idea to bring in more fans with the help of a local DJ.
In 1979, disco was increasingly the most popular music in America. Steve Dahl, a Chicago DJ, was not a fan of this trend. Dahl would often destroy disco records during broadcasts, which eventually led to the DJ being fired from the Chicago radio station.
The White Sox caught on to the popularity Dahl received from destroying disco records and decided that it would be a good idea to jump on this trend. The organization offered any fan to attend the game for only 98 cents if the fan also brought a disco record, which Dahl would destroy between the games. The promotion worked, as over 48,000 fans showed up with disco records.
After the White Sox lost the first game, Dahl drove onto the middle of the field in full army fatigues and set ablaze the thousands of disco records the fans provided. In the mayhem, an estimated 7,000 people ran onto the field, essentially destroying the field before the second game of the double header. As a result, the league forced the White Sox to forfeit.
Although the White Sox lost the game, the promotion had a large impact on the music industry. July 12, 1979 would become known as “The night disco died.”
