A Drunken Sport Riot
Thirsty fans stampeded for the beer trucks. Unfortunately, management had not beefed up staffing or security for the trucks: they were overseen by two teenaged girls. They promptly fled. With no one to stop them, the fans treated the beer trucks like private kegs, and some drank straight out of the trucks’ hoses as if they were straws. Then two drunks got up on a wall, and mooned the crowd. They loved it. It was still just the fifth of nine innings. Halfway through the game, as chaos engulfed the Indians’ ballpark, a Rangers player was hit by a ball. The crowd loved that as well, and began to shout: “HIT HIM HARDER!” Against that backdrop, the Rangers’ manager Billy Martin, an alcoholic who had supposedly once taken a hit out on an umpire, came out to argue a call.
The home crowd did not like that, and plastic cups rained down from the stands. They were followed soon thereafter by a hail of firecrackers so intense that the Rangers’ bullpen had to be evacuated for the players’ safety. An announcer asked the fans to quit throwing trash on the field, to no avail. Soon, the fans were throwing not just plastic cups and firecrackers, but other items like hot dogs, rocks, batteries, trash cans, and ripped out seats. Simultaneously, so many streakers got on the field that piles of clothes formed up. By then, it was clear that the Indians had skimped on security: they had hired only 50 personnel for the entire ballpark. Worse, by the 8th inning, just about everybody who worked for the Indians’ administration had left.