by Bruce Nash
Even before the Series began, Loes issued a different kind of excuse while trying to talk his way out of a touchy situation. Trouble erupted when a newspaper quoted him saying the Yankees would beat the Dodgers in six games. Because that wasn’t the smartest thing to say about a team you’re pitching for, Brooklyn manager Chuck Dressen read him the riot act for his careless statement. In his warped defense, Loes blamed the reporter. “I told him the Yankees would win it in seven,” the pitcher said, “but he screwed it up and had me saying they would win it in six.”
Well, at least Loes was right about one thing. The Yankees did win it in seven.
JESSE BARNES
Pitcher · New York, NL · 1922
Jesse Barnes came up with a phony excuse for missing a bed check, but it turned out great for him. He was perhaps the only curfew violator in baseball who made money because he did get nabbed for breaking the rules.
Barnes, then one of the New York Giants’ best pitchers, just never could see why anyone should be in bed by midnight. So most every chance he got, he sneaked out for some late-night fun. More often than not, he made it back without anyone being the wiser. But occasionally, he was caught and fined by manager John McGraw.
During the 1922 season, McGraw snagged Barnes sneaking back to his room after curfew and fined him $100. “Next time I catch you, it’ll be $200,” snapped the manager.
A few weeks later in Philadelphia, Barnes partied until the wee hours of the morning. Rather than risk going through the lobby of the team’s hotel, Barnes tried climbing the fire escape to his room. But he slipped and fell on one of the iron rungs and badly bruised his shins.
Later that morning, he walked into the clubhouse with a noticeable limp. McGraw stared at Barnes coldly and asked, “What happened to you?”
Barnes screwed up his face in pain and hobbled toward his locker. “I slipped on a cake of soap in the bathtub,” he replied.
The answer was too glib to fool an old pro like the Little Napoleon. “Slipped on a cake of soap, huh? Well, that’s pretty dumb. You’re fined $200—and next time, don’t use soap.”
The following day the newspapers ran the story of Barnes’s fine and his bogus excuse. One of the executives of a company that made rubber bath mats read the article and had a brainstorm. He phoned Barnes and offered to pay him $1,000 for a testimonial. Barnes agreed in a flash.
Within a week, an ad appeared in the papers showing a photo of the smiling pitcher with one leg over the tub. Underneath, the caption read, “If Jesse Barnes had used a NON-SKID BATH MAT, he wouldn’t have slipped in his tub.”
Thanks to his lie, Barnes walked, or rather limped, away with a tidy $800 profit.
TURNSTILE
TURN-OFFS
For the Most Undignified Ballpark Promotions of All Time, The Baseball Hall of Shame™ Inducts:
CLEVELAND INDIANS'
TEN-CENT BEER NIGHT
June 4, 1974
It probably wasn’t the best promotion that the Cleveland Indians management ever conceived. Okay, it was by far the worst: Fans were offered all the beer they could guzzle at 10 cents a cup.
Was it any surprise that this idea turned into a colossal mistake that would drive one—or in this case, most everyone—to drink? The promotion was nothing more than an open invitation for fans, including under-aged teens slipping money to adults who could buy the beer for them, to get rip-roaring and raucously drunk and riot.
At first, management seemed pleased when more than 25,000 people—twice the usual crowd—showed up for the game against the Texas Rangers. Of course, some of them showed up already drunk or stoned, or both. Among them were those who smuggled in hundreds, if not thousands, of firecrackers, even though it was June 4, not July 4. And they brought in their pot. So by the early innings, the stadium was shrouded in a cloud of gunpowder and marijuana smoke.
As the drinking increased, the inhibitions diminished. A heavyset woman ran onto the Indians on-deck circle and bared her breasts to tremendous cheers. She tried to kiss umpire crew chief Nestor Chylak, but he wasn’t in a smooching mood. In the fourth inning, a naked man ran onto the field and slid into second. In the next frame, two men jumped the wall and mooned the Rangers outfielders before being chased by stadium security.
The exhibitionists seemed to inspire the drunks to act more boisterously. When Texas pitcher Ferguson Jenkins was doubled over in pain after being hit in the stomach by a line drive, the sloshed crowd chanted, “Hit him again, hit him again, harder, harder!” And when Rangers manager Billy Martin came out to argue a call, they tossed cups—many still full of beer—at him. He responded by blowing kisses to them.
Midway through the game, the vendors couldn’t keep up with the demand, so in the infinite wisdom of the Indians’ management, fans were allowed to line up behind the outfield fences and have their cups filled directly from the beer trucks. With the same kind of thinking—or lack of it—management never thought to request additional police for the beer bash.
By now, mothers and fathers had scooped up their young and fled the ballpark as a constant barrage of beer, rubbish, and firecrackers rained down on the field between innings—and between dashes by an ever increasing number of streakers.
When firecrackers were bursting in the Rangers’ bullpen, Chylak ordered both bullpens evacuated and told relievers they could get extra warm-up tosses on the mound.
In the ninth inning, the Indians rallied to tie the game 5–5 with the winning run on second base. But the team never had a chance to drive him in. A fan jumped from the outfield seats and knocked off the cap of Rangers right fielder Jeff Burroughs. That was the signal for all hell to break loose. Fueled by more than 60,000 10-ounce cups of beer, drunken fans poured onto the field, some surrounding Burroughs, trying to rip off his glove.
Ten-Cent Beer Night: boozers and losersRon Kuntz
That’s when Billy Martin grabbed a fungo bat and led a charge of Texas Rangers on a rescue mission only to be ambushed by hundreds of angry, soused fans wielding knives, chains, and pieces of stadium seats. Now it was the Indians’ turn to rescue the rescuers. Armed with bats, Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte and his players sprinted out of the dugout, joining forces with police who had finally showed up. They soon cleared a path of safety for both teams and the umpires.
Understandably, although some say belatedly, Chylak ordered the game forfeited to Texas. Nine people were arrested and seven were treated at nearby hospitals for minor injuries. Chylak, whose hand and head were bleeding from flying debris, called the fans “uncontrollable beasts.”
So what had Indians management learned from the debacle? Team officials announced that at the three other planned Ten-Cent Beer Nights, fans would be restricted to only four cups apiece per night, no exceptions. American League president Lee MacPhail said that wouldn’t be necessary because there would be no more such promotions.
WASHINGTON SENATORS' LADIES DAY
1897
It was a promotion ahead of its time. In 1897, the Washington Senators (a National League team that lasted only eight years) introduced Ladies Day to the nation’s capital. To broaden the appeal of the game and to boost the box office take, the ball club invited women to attend free to learn more about the game. The ladies, it turned out, knew a whole lot more and acted a whole lot differently than management thought.
A mob of pushing, shouting, anything-but-ladylike guests filled the stands at Boundary Field (also known as National Park). They focused most of their attention on pitcher George “Winnie” Mercer, the city’s heartthrob. His nickname came from “Winner” which was shortened to “Win,” but the gals called him “Winnie.” The boyishly handsome 5-foot, 7-inch, 140-pound hurler had piercing dark eyes and a smooth delivery both on and off the field that made women swoon.
In a game against the Cincinnati Reds, Mercer was dazzling on the moun
d to the delight of his adoring audience. But Mercer also happened to hate umpires as much as he loved the ladies—and the combination of the two in the same ballpark at the same time spelled trouble. The more he baited umpire Bill Carpenter, who was calling balls and strikes, the more the women squealed in glee. But after one heated rhubarb in the fifth inning over a ball that Mercer thought was a strike, Carpenter ejected the pitcher. The ladies were incensed and let loose with epithets that, under other circumstances, would have left them blushing.
They kept up their indignant uproar until the final out of the game, won by Cincinnati. Unable to restrain themselves any longer, the infuriated women charged onto the field. It was like girls gone wild, only instead of taking their clothes off, they were trying to strip the umpire. They surrounded Carpenter, battered him to the ground with their parasols, and ripped his clothing. With the help of some players, the beleaguered ump fought his way through the mob to the safety of the clubhouse. He was able to leave the ballpark only after putting on a disguise.
But the turmoil didn’t subside. Angered by his escape, the women attacked the ballpark. They ripped out seats, broke windows and doors, and tore railings from their moorings before police quelled the disturbance.
No one dared hold another Ladies Day in Washington for years.
NEW YORK YANKEES' ARMY DAY
June 10, 1975
A thunderous 21-gun salute honoring the military created some embarrassing repercussions for the New York Yankees and the Army.
Barry Landers, Yankees promotions director, decided to celebrate the U.S. Army’s 200th birthday by holding “Army Day” at Shea Stadium, where the team was playing during the renovation of Yankee Stadium.
Before a game with the California Angels, a battery from Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton positioned two 75 mm cannons on the warning track, facing the center field flag. The Army brass assured Landers that the paraffin in the cannons would flash harmlessly and burn out after flying about 20 feet over the fence and onto a grassy area beyond. The Army experts were probably the same ones who predicted the Vietnam War would last only a few months.
With an ear-splitting boom, the battery fired the first salute—and knocked down part of the fence. But rather than call a cease-fire, the soldier boys kept right on blasting away. The whole stadium filled with smoke and shook with earthquake force. Glass shattered in the stadium’s exclusive enclosed Diamond Club, adding to the terror.
When the smoke cleared, 31,809 temporarily deaf fans saw a gaping hole in the center field fence. The cannoneers had blown away three fence panels and set fire to a fourth, which was quickly doused. The game was delayed while groundskeepers hurriedly covered the holes with plywood.
“I was the one who got the idea,” a chagrined Landers recalled. “I was the one who got the blame, too.” And he was the one who ended up with the nickname “Boom Boom.”
Commenting on the promotion on his nightly TV newscast, Walter Cronkite told his viewers, “The final scores: Yankees 6, Angels 4; Army 21, Fence 0 . . . and that’s the way it is . . .”
CHICAGO WHITE SOX'S
DISCO DEMOLITION NIGHT
July 12, 1979
If ever there was a promotion that was off-key, it was Disco Demolition Night.
The event was dreamed up by popular Chicago disc jockey Steve Dahl, who, along with his legion of listeners, hated disco and its intrusion on the music scene. So he schemed with Mike Veeck, the son of ailing team owner Bill Veeck, to blow up a pile of disco records in center field between games of a twi-night doubleheader at Comiskey Park. Fans who brought a disco record for destruction at the ballpark were charged 98 cents admission (as in 97.9 FM, the call numbers of Dahl’s radio station, WLUP).
A real blast for disco-hating fans© Bettmann/CORBIS
Roland Hemond, general manager of the White Sox at the time, recalled that Bill Veeck had checked himself out of the hospital that day and showed up at the stadium unexpectedly. “I said, ‘What are you doing here?’” recalled Hemond in a New York Times article. “And Bill said, ‘I’m worried about this promotion. It could be catastrophic.’”
As it turned out, father knew best. Son Mike Veeck expected an extra 5,000 fans to show up, which meant an attendance of 20,000 to 25,000. He woefully underestimated Chicago’s level of disco loathing, because more than 50,000 crammed into the stadium for the doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. In fact, when all the seats were taken, people on the outside brought ladders so thousands more could scale the walls to get in.
It took only a few innings before the fans noticed the striking resemblance between a record and a Frisbee. Flying records sailed through the air, causing a halt to the game several times to clear the discs off the field.
“They [the records] would slice around you and stick in the ground,” recalled Rusty Staub, the Tigers designated hitter in the first game. “I’ve never seen anything so dangerous in my life. I begged the guys to put on their batting helmets.”
After the Tigers won the first game 4–1, the rowdy fans were primed for the disco demolition ceremony. Dahl, dressed in army fatigues, went out to center field where the records had been piled and worked the crowd to chants of “Disco sucks!” Then a bosomy blonde “fire goddess” named Lorelei triggered the explosion. With a thunderous boom, thousands of records went up in flames, shooting hundreds of feet in the air.
To the fans, the blast looked like a signal to attack. While yellow-jacketed security guards had been sent outside the stadium to prevent people from crashing the gates, thousands of fans inside Comiskey Park surged out of the stands and ran wild over the field. They tore up the pitching rubber and scooped up the dirt. They stole the bases—literally—and dug up home plate. They dragged out the batting cage and trashed it. They burned banners and climbed foul poles.
Pleas over the public address system by Bill Veeck and broadcaster Harry Caray fell on deaf ears. Finally Veeck had no choice but to call the cops. A detachment of helmeted police cleared the field relatively quickly and made 50 arrests. At least six people suffered minor injuries.
Although the crowd was unruly, it was relatively nonviolent, recalled Mike Veeck. “The great thing was all the kids were stoned,” he told the New York Times. “Had we had drunks to deal with, then we would have had some trouble. The kids were really docile.”
But they had damaged the field. As luck would have it, Nestor Chylak, the supervisor of umpires, happened to be at Disco Demolition Night. He also had been the chief umpire at Cleveland’s disastrous 10-Cent Beer Night five years earlier. After Chylak met with the umpires, Bill Veeck and Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, the White Sox forfeited the second game.
When asked about that night 30 years later, Hemond told the New York Times, “It was a great promotion. We’re still talking about it today.”
NEW YORK GIANTS' SCRAP METAL DAY
September 26, 1942
The New York Giants held a “Scrap Metal Day” to help the war effort—but ended up fighting a losing battle at the ballpark.
For the last day of the 1942 regular season, kids were admitted to the Polo Grounds free if they brought in scrap metal, which would be transformed into new uses by America’s armed forces during World War II. More than 11,000 youngsters responded by piling up 56 tons of scrap outside the stadium before a doubleheader against the visiting Boston Braves.
The kids behaved through the first game, won by the Giants 6–4, and most of the nightcap. But in the bottom of the eighth inning, with New York ahead 5–2, the young fans tumbled out of the stands, streamed onto the field, and engulfed the Braves, who were trying to take their positions.
Umpires Ziggy Sears and Tommy Dunn were swallowed in the maelstrom—a hopeless, tangled mass of kids running helter-skelter all over the field. Having fought his way to the Giants dugout, Sears asked for an announcement stating that the game woul
d be forfeited if the field was not cleared. But the announcement couldn’t be heard above the din.
Police, ushers, and grounds crew could not move the wild mob off the field. Although the Braves claimed they wanted to keep playing, Sears ordered the game forfeited to Boston.
It would have taken a whole battalion to round up the rampaging youngsters. But most of the battalions were overseas with a much bigger fight on their hands.
HOUSTON’S “BREAK THE JINX NIGHT”
September 3, 1962
When an expansion team found itself in danger of setting an all-time record for futility, it tried to change its luck with a day of mysticism, magic, and superstition, including a bizarre ceremony that featured a witch doctor.
In their debut year, the Houston Colt .45s (who later became the Astros) were on their way to becoming the first team in the modern era ever to lose an entire season series to an opposing club. They had dropped their first 15 games against the Philadelphia Phillies.
For its final three-game homestand with the Phillies, which included a twi-night doubleheader, the team publicized the bad news record and scheduled a “Break the Jinx Night” for the twin-bill.
The front office hired Dr. Mesabubu, a fictitious witch doctor from the equally fictitious Wauwautua tribe, to hex the Phillies. Before batting practice, he climbed a ladder in front of the Philadelphia dugout and spewed his mumbo jumbo. Shortly before the game, the witch doctor—decked out in head dress and skins—performed a ceremonial dance that freaked out a couple of Phillies who were strong believers in the occult. They refused to leave the bench until the witch doctor left the field.
