480 - Listener Favorites

This week, Karen and Georgia are taking a break for Mental Health Awareness Month, so we're celebrating your favorite stories! On this quilt episode, we revisit Karen and Georgia's coverage of the Zoot Suit Riots from July 30, 2020 and Cleveland's infamous 1974 Ten Cent Beer Night from February 9, 2023. In honor of #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth, Karen and Georgia are donating $10,000 to The Trevor Project. For more information, please visit https://www.thetrevorproject.org/. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes http://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Speaker 00

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 0:47Speaker 02

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• 1:30Speaker 02

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• 1:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. I'm Georgia Hardstark, and Karen and I are taking a short recording break this week in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. So today, we're bringing you a listener's favorites quilt episode. We'll revisit the Zootsu riots, originally aired in July 2020, and then Karen will tell the story of Cleveland's legendary 10-cent beer night from February 2023. That is absolutely a favorite of yours. Just to top it off, in support of Mental Health Awareness Month, we're going to donate $10,000 to The Trevor Project. Among other amazing things, The Trevor Project provides counseling support for LGBTQ plus young people 24/7, all year round. Go to thetrevorproject.org to get more information and to donate yourself

• 2:35Georgia Hardstark?

  or to get any help you need. And we hope you all take a little bit of time for yourself this month. Get a little self-care in there. We all need it. It's a rough moment in time. And we'll see you real soon. Okay, bye.

• 2:48Karen Kilgariff?

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• 3:30Karen Kilgariff?

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• 3:56Speaker 00

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• 4:24Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:39Speaker 06

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:49Speaker 05

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 4:55Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 5:22Georgia Hardstark?

  So this week, I'm going to do what?

• 5:29Speaker 05

  Were you reading something?

• 5:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Can you hear it?

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Shit. No, no, reading.

• 5:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 05

  Like, you just said that so slowly and staring straight ahead where I'm like, what's this gonna be?

• 5:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Karen.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  So.

• 5:41Georgia Hardstark?

  So, I am doing the Zoot Suit Riots.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Oh, shit. Yes.

• 5:47Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't know how this has never crossed my mind to do it. Like, it's always just kind of been an afterthought, and then I start looking into it and it's bananas.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:56Georgia Hardstark?

  And there's so much to know. It's our city here, Los Angeles, that we know and love. So this is when Los Angeles experienced one of the most historically significant episodes of racial violence in the 20th century, known as the Zoot Suit Riots.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:13Georgia Hardstark?

  So. There's so much good information out there on the internet and podcasts and books. Some of them I got from the hundreds, an article by Brandon Diaz, Smithsonian.com, an article by Alice Gregory, LADailymirror.com. They have a bunch of old articles that you can read up there.

• 6:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 6:32Georgia Hardstark?

  There's an article by actual friend of the podcast, Alina Shatkin, who I, who's a friend of mine. She's a really great food writer, but she wrote an article on L.A.ist about it.

• 6:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Cool.

• 6:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Scholar historian Eduardo O'Brien Pagan, who wrote Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon, the book about it. And then there's a podcast called Latino Rebels Radio, and they posted an episode called From Latino Media Collective, where they interviewed Professor Gerardo Lacone, and he's, it's an incredible interview.

• 7:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice.

• 7:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Mercurynews.com, History Channel has a documentary, Thought Co., article by Robert Longley, Curbed L.A. article by Elijah Chiland. I mean, there's just so much out there. So.

• 7:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Did you, now may I ask?

• 7:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Please.

• 7:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Did you watch the film Zoot Suit starring Edward James Almost?

• 7:25Georgia Hardstark?

  I did. It's so good.

• 7:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Did you really?

• 7:27Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so good. Yeah. I mentioned, I mentioned it at the end of that, at the end of this. It's like.

• 7:31Karen Kilgariff?

  I saw that in the theater.

• 7:33Georgia Hardstark?

  You did?

• 7:33Karen Kilgariff?

  I know.

• 7:34Georgia Hardstark?

  It came out in 81.

• 7:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Eighty, eighty-one. Yeah. I, and all I remember is, yeah, but it was like, if it was playing downtown, we'd just go see it. We saw everything.

• 7:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Karen Kilgariff?

  And he, I just remember Edward James Almost in those zoot suits or whatever, and that leaned back thing.

• 7:53Georgia Hardstark?

  So chill.

• 7:53Karen Kilgariff?

  I think it, it just was the stylistic, fascinating kind of thing that I'd never seen or heard of before. It was like, did they invent something new? And it's like, no, no, no, no. This is, this is Latino history. This is like, this is origin shit.

• 8:08Georgia Hardstark?

  This is. And I just had no fucking clue. And there's, okay. And it goes, oh, it goes so deep. And I'm obviously not going to do a great job in 10 pages of getting to everything. So please do read about it and look it up because it's, there's so many connotations that come along with this. Anyways.

• 8:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Georgia Hardstark?

  So, let's first start with a little history. The Mexican Revolution, which lasted roughly from 1910 to 1920, caused many Mexican families to immigrate to Los Angeles. So much so that by the 1930s, new immigration from Mexico, migration from other states, and the longtime presence of multi-generational residents dating back to the rancheros had made Los Angeles home to the largest concentration of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the US. The working-class communities, most of which were concentrated to the diverse east side of Los Angeles, everyone here knows that that's the east side had, you know, was historically

• 9:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Mexican and Mexican-American families, like Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights, were traditional, conservative, and self-contained. And actually, so my family immigrated here from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles in the 20s as well, or late teens, early 20s, and Boyle Heights was kind of the only place where anyone who wasn't white could live. So there was a big Jewish population there as well, and that's where my family's from. So.

• 9:31Karen Kilgariff?

  From Boyle Heights?

• 9:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Uh huh.

• 9:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, nice. Those houses are rad.

• 9:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Amazing, yeah. But it was like a lot of farmland, too. I have old photos of my grandma and like the farmland.

• 9:42Karen Kilgariff?

  There, it reminds me of something else, and this could actually be in another Edward James almost film, Stand and Deliver, one of the great, another great 80s movie that as a teen, I was like, I'm so inspired, maybe I'm gonna take calculus. There's no fucking way. But, and I can't, it might be from that, it might just be, you know, other stuff I read, but it was some kind of thing where somebody yelling, like, "Go back to your country" to Mexicans, and Mexicans being like, "Bitch, this is our, we were here long before you. This is all, this is part of Mexico. Like, what are you talking about?

• 10:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 10:17Karen Kilgariff?

  You're in our country.

• 10:18Georgia Hardstark?

  That's, that's part of the story, right? So the Mexican-American communities in Los Angeles had faced decades of discrimination, you know, including not being allowed to patronize or even work in many of the businesses. So like even waiting tables at a restaurant, they weren't allowed to do, they could be the busboy at the most. And even be, they were expected to step off the sidewalk when white pedestrians passed them. So it was just incredible discrimination. By the 1940s. L.A. had a Mexican-American population of over 250,000. And many of those families now had teenagers that had grown up in Los Angeles. You know, so they, this, this is where they're from. While their parents had been immigrants or, you know, had lived there for generations.

• 11:03Georgia Hardstark?

  This is their hometown. This is where they're from. And so they felt like the city was theirs as well. And what do teenagers do? They fucking rebel. And these teenagers were no different. So known as Pachucos. So Pachucos are the youth of this counterculture. And they're experiencing this huge cultural and generational gap between themselves and their parents. It kind of reminded me of like Rebel Without a Cause, the way they were like, we don't want the norms that you're used to. We need to break out of what's going on, you know, and pave our own way. Yeah. And they were, they were fucking over discrimination that their parents and grandparents had experienced. And they wanted to create their own identities. Enter the zoot suit.

• 11:47Georgia Hardstark?

  So the fashion trend, I didn't fucking know this at all, had first been popularized during the 1930s in Harlem's jazz dance hall scene and were predominantly worn by black teenagers. So that's where it started. I didn't know that at all. With black teenagers, super, you know, the jazz scene. The extravagantly styled two-piece suit. So just people who don't know it typically included the bright color fabric, knee-length suit coats. So it almost looked like a, like a overcoat, but it was a suit coat down to the knees. They had excessively wide shoulders. It was very flamboyant and extravagant. The flowing pants that ballooned out at the knee and tapered really tight at the ankle.

• 12:29Georgia Hardstark?

  I read a thing that sometimes they were so tight that you had to put lubricant on your feet to get it over your feet. It was just like, it was just this like, it was, it was purposely ostentatious. Yeah. You know what I mean? And part of the reason that it was so tight, it was also like function because they were jitterbugging. They were doing these amazing dances. And so having flowing pants at the ankle would get in the way. So that's pretty cool. That's where that came from. And these weren't suits you could buy at the store. Either you had to go to a specialty tailor, or you could take a regular suit that was two sizes too large and have that tailored the right way. So

• 13:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Georgia Hardstark?

  What I didn't realize about the style of dress is that the ostentatiousness and the flamboyance of the suit itself was a way of refusing to be ignored and dismissed as a minority.

• 13:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Hell, yes.

• 13:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Right? So, and this is such a youth culture thing of fuck you, I'm not fitting in and I'm going to look, you know, loud and get attention. I'm not gonna fade into the background.

• 13:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Right. I'm not gonna step off the sidewalk cuz you're walking by. I get to be like, it's like I get to take up space and I get to be here as I am.

• 13:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly, exactly. So minorities and people of color have always been expected to blend in and kind of be behind the scenes. You know, like they were menial workers. They were making everything comfortable for white people. But the rebellious youth refused to fade into the background and that's where the, what the zoot suit represented. Plus, the amount of material and tailoring required to make them, made them a luxury item. So it was like a defiance against their association as a second-class citizen. You know, they'd save up all their money and they'd have these luxury tailor-made suits. They were essentially, I wrote, they were essentially bawling, shot-calling.

• 14:21Georgia Hardstark?

  One could say.

• 14:23Karen Kilgariff?

  If you're having a hard time relating to what this means, that truly the definition of bawling and shot-calling.

• 14:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. And so the zoot suit becomes a symbol of counterculture and empowers young Black and Mexican youth to express their individualistic identity within their culture and society. Fucking both Caesar Chavez and Malcolm X were zoot suit wearers.

• 14:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice.

• 14:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Right? Now, the female members of this counterculture are called pachucas. And they wear tight sweaters and short, for the time, skirts that are like flared out. You can see them in the movie Zoot Suit. They have fishnets, they have high hairdos and big earrings and heavy makeup. It was rumored that some of the pachucas would hide knives in their like bouffants.

• 15:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, I've heard that.

• 15:11Georgia Hardstark?

  So rad.

• 15:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Knives and razor blades sometime.

• 15:14Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean,

• 15:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Love it.

• 15:14Georgia Hardstark?

  I hate violence. I'm against violence. That's badass.

• 15:17Karen Kilgariff?

  It really, well, because if you need it.

• 15:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 15:20Karen Kilgariff?

  If you need it, throw it up in that hair.

• 15:22Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 15:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Do it.

• 15:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Other Pachucas would actually wear zoot suits themselves. And that was a way to rebel against gender norms, which is so ahead of its time and incredible.

• 15:32Karen Kilgariff?

  That's badass.

• 15:32Georgia Hardstark?

  I know, I know. So Catherine Ramirez, she wrote the book Woman in a Zoot Suit, wrote, quote, "These youths refuse to accept the racialized norms of segregated America with their flashy ensembles, distinct slang, extra cash generated by a booming war economy, and rebellious attitude. Pachucos and Pachucas participated in a spectacular subculture and threatened the social order by visibly occupying spaces, public spaces."

• 16:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Hell, yeah.

• 16:04Georgia Hardstark?

  So in Los Angeles, Pachucos adopt the zoot suit in order to brand themselves as rebels. But white people see zoot suits as unpatriotic and zooters, as they're called, quickly become branded as a negative thing. So this is partly due to the fact, so it's early 1940s, we get into World War II, US enters World War II in 1941, and the rationing of resources and the commercial manufacture of civilian clothing becomes strictly regulated because both fabric and the time and energy is focused on the war effort. So zooters become a public enemy because of the amount of fabric it took to make the zoot suits.

• 16:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Because of racism.

• 16:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Because that's an excuse for you to be racist.

• 16:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep.

• 16:55Georgia Hardstark?

  So bootleg tailors continue to make the zoot suits, which uses a lot of rationed fabrics. And so white people view the zoot suit itself as harmful to the war effort, and the young people who wear them are seen as un-American and unpatriotic, which is just an excuse for the racism.

• 17:12Karen Kilgariff?

  It's always that.

• 17:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Karen Kilgariff?

  It's unpatriotic.

• 17:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 17:14Karen Kilgariff?

  You're against the military.

• 17:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly.

• 17:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It's all this, it's, yeah.

• 17:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Yes, 100%, especially because by World War II, migration had peaked, so there was a lot of tension going on in Los Angeles. And don't forget that this was also a time when Japanese Americans were forcibly sent to internment camps. Japanese Americans who lived and thrived in Los Angeles were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. So obviously racism is rampant and blanket society.

• 17:47Karen Kilgariff?

  And that this is just, I think we've talked about this before, but when the Japanese were sent to those internment camps, many Japanese people lived in Southern California because they were here to grow the citrus groves, which used to be everywhere down here, just everywhere. And like in Burbank, every other street has like a lemon tree or an orange tree on it.

• 18:07Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why Orange County is called Orange County.

• 18:09Karen Kilgariff?

  It was mile, mile after mile. And when they interned the Japanese, they stole their land, they stole their property. And people like Bob Hope went in and bought up all of this stolen land. And then it was just when those American citizens who happened to be Japanese got released from those internment camps, they just didn't have anything because it was, it's so ugly.

• 18:32Georgia Hardstark?

  It's, that's, it's one of the most disgusting historical times in our, well, they all are. Okay.

• 18:39Karen Kilgariff?

  There's so many, there's so many to pick from. We'll talk about all of them.

• 18:43Georgia Hardstark?

  On this podcast today. Okay, so throwing lighter fluid onto this fire is the fact that a naval school for the Naval Reserve Armory was built in Chavez Ravine. It's, it's a primarily Hispanic neighborhood. It's named after Julian Chavez, a rancher who eventually served as assistant mayor, city councilman, and became one of LA County's first supervisors. So that area, you guys will know it's where Dodger Stadium is, which I'll get to later. But Dodger Stadium was built in Chavez Ravine. The area had been home, and it's, it's kind of these beautiful rolling hills. It's this really lush, lovely place in Los Angeles. It's right above Echo Park, if you've ever been here. And the area had been home to generations

• 19:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Mexican-American families and the city used eminent domain, that motherfucking bitch, to clear out some of those homes and then sailors that had, so they put the sailors in this Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine. And then sailors had to cut through those neighborhoods to get downtown. So they'd be going downtown to drink, they'd come back through those neighborhoods. So of course there's going to be tension and there'd be catcalling, there'd be all kinds of, you know, tussles and that sort of thing happening.

• 20:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Stuff to start fights with.

• 20:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. I think those buildings are still there too. If you, if you're driving off the five to get into Dodger Stadium to get tested for COVID now is what it's for.

• 20:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Georgia Hardstark?

  You'll see these old buildings and I think that's where it's from.

• 20:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 20:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Pretty interesting.

• 20:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you, Sean Penn, by the way. You know, Sean Penn's the reason all that COVID testing is set up at Dodger Stadium.

• 20:21Georgia Hardstark?

  You're kidding?

• 20:22Karen Kilgariff?

  I swear to God.

• 20:22Georgia Hardstark?

  I didn't know that.

• 20:23Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know if he's financing it, if he organized it or what, but it, that's his thing. And I know a couple of people who have done it and they say, you pull up and the line looks insanely long. It's, you're done like that.

• 20:35Georgia Hardstark?

  I have heard that too. That's great.

• 20:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Everyone be careful. This is not a joke. Wear a mask. Okay. By the summer of 1943, tensions between the thousands of white US servicemen stationed in and around Los Angeles and the Pachucos are running high because we also have ports here. There was stationed, you know, stationed in San Diego, all along the coast up through LA. There's a lot of servicemen here.

• 21:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 21:02Georgia Hardstark?

  So many of the LA area servicemen view the Zooters as draft Dodgers, despite the fact that nearly half a million Mexican-Americans are serving in the military at the time. And a lot of the Zoot-suited Pachucos are teenagers. So like 12 through 16. So they're actually too young to even be eligible. So it's false.

• 21:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. So before we get to the Zoot suit riots, we have to go over the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, which happens a year before the riots and is considered a precursor to them. So Sleepy Lagoon was a rural reservoir. And this is another thing is a lot of Los Angeles, which is now overdeveloped and crazy, was rural. So like even Chavez Ravine was rural, rural. Hate rural.

• 21:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Rural.

• 21:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Rural.

• 21:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Rural.

• 21:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Rural.

• 21:50Georgia Hardstark?

  So it's a rural reservoir in the east side of Los Angeles in what is now Commerce. And that's a, it's a popular swimming hole, hangout spot, lover's lane for Mexican Americans, partly because they're banned from segregated public pools. So that's where they swim. Uh huh. In the early hours of the morning on August 2nd, 1942, a brawl breaks out at a birthday party near that, near Sleepy Lagoon. When police arrive, they find an unconscious and mortally injured 22-year-old named Jose Diaz on a nearby dirt road. He dies shortly after being taken to the hospital. His cause of death is inconclusive, although he has severe blunt force trauma to the back of his head. They don't, they think it's from being, you

• 22:34Georgia Hardstark?

  know, jumped or hit, or it could be from a car accident. They actually, he may have got, might have gotten thrown off a motorcycle. They don't know for sure. But authorities blame his death and the big fight that had happened on the, at the party on the so-called, quote, "Mexican youth gang problem" in Los Angeles. So in the following days, and there's amazing pictures from this, and I'm sure we'll post one on Instagram in the episode post, the LAPD arrests 17 Mexican-American teens that are associated with the so-called 38th Street gang. And the word "gang" is, is really different back then. You know, it's, it's not what you think of now. So this, these kids who lived around 38th Street that hung out together are called a gang when really

• 23:19Georgia Hardstark?

  it's just teenagers hanging out together.

• 23:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, there's no, they're not getting jumped in. There's not, there's not like the, you have to go now do violence or whatever. It's more of just like kids that are all from the same neighborhood. I mean, that's how, my dad grew up in San Francisco. It's just like you're, you kind of represented your neighborhood.

• 23:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 23:38Karen Kilgariff?

  And then on the weekends, you'd get drunk and street fight people. My dad used to love to say that. He goes, "Oh, if we couldn't find other people to fight, we just all fight ourselves." Because he had four brothers.

• 23:47Georgia Hardstark?

  So, yeah.

• 23:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, man.

• 23:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. So 38th Street gang, quote, "And despite lack of sufficient evidence, the young men are collectively charged with the murder of Diaz. They're denied bail and they're held in prison and they become known as the Sleepy Lagoon defendants and they're paraded in front of the press. And part of the reason is because the LAPD, there's been a lot of, um, False newspaper articles about this Mexican youth gang problem. And so LAPD is like, look what we're doing about it. And they parade them in front of the press to make it seem like they're actually taking care of it. But really, all it does is make people even more afraid. So the, by the end of the week, police have used the excuse of Diaz's death to further

• 24:34Georgia Hardstark?

  arrest hundreds of Mexican-Americans in nightly sweeps for offenses that are just trumped up. Like even possessing a draft card with an incorrect address. You can get arrested for unlawful assemblage, like all of these, you know, they're just arresting people.

• 24:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Georgia Hardstark?

  And they single out youths in zoot suits. In particular, cops line up outside of dance halls and they have like pokers that they, with razor sharp blades that they use to rip the peg top trousers of the zoot suits of the boys as they come out. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of like photos from back then of kids that have clearly been in fights and the trouser of their legs are ripped. So the media doesn't help matters and prints incredibly racist headlines that history has shown were not supported by either facts or statistics. And in fact, the government statistics from that time found no increase in youth crime or delinquency. So talking about it now, it's completely trumped up.

• 25:35Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's basically just, how dare you wear these outfits and say that you belong?

• 25:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Karen Kilgariff?

  That it's your city.

• 25:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Stay in your fucking lane, essentially, is what they're saying. So in order to scare people, the press referred to the zooters as a quote, "Mexican goon squad." And they called them delinquents and hoodlums. And they also distribute false stories of Mexican boys prowling in wolf packs armed with clubs and knives and tire irons. They say they're invading homes, peaceful homes. It's all, it's all nonsense. So after months of racist media coverage that goes nationwide, including a fucking Disney cartoon in which a Donald Duck beats up another duck dressed as, in a zoot suit for being unpatriotic, fucking Disney, the Sleepy Lagoon defendants go on trial in October of 1942.

• 26:26Georgia Hardstark?

  There's never any testimony that anyone saw one of the defendants strike the vic. Like, no one can put any of these defendants with or near the victim. And some of the defendants can't even be placed at the murder scene. And yet Judge Frick permits the chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office to testify as a, quote, "expert witness." He says that Mexicans as a community, he testifies this in court, have a bloodthirst and a biological predisposition to crime and killing because of the culture of human sacrifice practiced by their Aztec fucking ancestors.

• 27:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Jesus Christ.

• 27:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Karen Kilgariff?

  That's a stretch because the Aztecs haven't been around for a while, A. And B, have you ever heard of Vikings? Have you ever heard of?

• 27:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Racial profiling?

• 27:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Have you, have you ever heard of every single, uh, human clan has always had, uh, fuck off.

• 27:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. The trial ends on January 13th, 1943, when three of the 17 defendants are convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Nine others are convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to five years to life. And other, the other five defendants are convicted of assault. So, following the Sleepy Lagoon case, there's a lot of hate towards the Mexican-American community and US servicemen, most of whom, by the way, grew up in other states, so they had had very little contact with people of Mexican and Latinx descent. They're now streaming into Southern California to prepare for war and are getting into violent altercations with young Mexican-American Zooters. You also gotta think, they're fresh out of boot camp.

• 28:11Georgia Hardstark?

  They're, they're also fucking young men, you know? And they have this, they have what they think is this patriotism that allows them to fight for their country and they see these, you know, others as... Not American and, and it's just, I mean, it's a, what's it called? Tinderbox, you know?

• 28:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Georgia Hardstark?

  So.

• 28:34Karen Kilgariff?

  But also, but it is that thing of there's people from small towns all over this country where they show up and instead of going, I'm new to the big city.

• 28:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, right.

• 28:46Karen Kilgariff?

  They start looking at people who've, who've parents have lived there for ten generations.

• 28:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Generations, yeah.

• 28:51Karen Kilgariff?

  And say, hey, get, hey, foreigner. I mean, like, that's just that American ignorance that's so tragic.

• 28:57Georgia Hardstark?

  That's true.

• 28:58Karen Kilgariff?

  This entire country is made up of foreigners.

• 29:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Karen Kilgariff?

  I, I hate to tell you, I hate to tell you.

• 29:05Georgia Hardstark?

  I love to tell you to tell me about it.

• 29:08Karen Kilgariff?

  I hate.

• 29:09Georgia Hardstark?

  I love it.

• 29:10Karen Kilgariff?

  To have to tell you.

• 29:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Listen, New Zealand, can you get me and Karen and Stephen a, can we get in there, please? Okay.

• 29:16Karen Kilgariff?

  They're like, hell, no.

• 29:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Only a week prior to the outbreak of what would become the Zoot Suit Riots, a number of Mexican-Americans dancing at the Aragon Ballroom in Santa Monica in Venice are attacked by a mob of American servicemen and bystanders after rumors spread that a sailor had been stabbed, which there's no police report to corroborate that. An LAPD officer later says that, quote, "The only thing we could do to break it up was arrest the Mexican kids." So that's.

• 29:46Karen Kilgariff?

  That's, it sounds like a setup.

• 29:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Karen Kilgariff?

  That almost sounds like a burning car at 3:00 PM on, on La Brea and Fairfax, doesn't it?

• 29:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Or a guy with an umbrella breaking a fucking window at a fucking. What is it? What was the place? An auto parts store?

• 30:01Karen Kilgariff?

  That was in Minneapolis, yeah. The big tall guy with the, that covered himself entirely and completely got caught because everyone's now on to that shit.

• 30:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, modern times.

• 30:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Modern times. It's the worst. I want to make clear that these are normal teen, teenagers who are rebelling. So of course they get into trouble. There's some escalated issues. They, there are some that are, you know, looking to fight. There's, you know, it's, it's the normal teenage thing that both you and I and everyone we know who's cool went through as teenagers. So, you know, there were these, there were cases of shit going down, but it was normal teenage stuff.

• 30:42Karen Kilgariff?

  But that's the same thing as like in these, in the protest, there will be the person here and there that's going to be like, I'm gonna loot that store.

• 30:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Karen Kilgariff?

  And then that is what's manipulated and turned into this is what these people are. Yeah, and it's, yeah.

• 30:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. So I don't want to seem like I'm, I want to make clear that I understand that. And it's partly from the fact that the, there's, it's, there's a wartime effort now that's growing and includes women being able to work in these labor, in the labor force. So women and like mothers and grandmothers are now working in the labor force. So they're away from home. The fathers are either at war or they're working as well. The demands of the war effort made it so both parents were working and out of the house for the first time. And they're also working through the night. So kids are, you know, they have a freedom they didn't have before and they're not being looked after the same way because of that.

• 31:39Karen Kilgariff?

  So. And they're, but then they're also being watched in a different way, probably than they had before. Yeah.

• 31:44Georgia Hardstark?

  And police records at the time, though, show that there wasn't, there's no escalation from regular juvenile delinquency. So it's not, it, there is no proof that it was worse at the time. It was normal juvenile delinquency. Government statistics reported at the time found no increase in youth crime. And also, the other thing that scared people is that the police officers, a lot of them are away at war as well. So people are already primed and ready to be scared of, you know, this fictitious mob that's going to come after them because they're not protected by the police. So it's a crazy story in that so many little things had to add up to what happened.

• 32:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 32:25Georgia Hardstark?

  And they fucking did. So all this tension is simmering, rumors are flying, and just the sight of a zoot suit at this point is enough to fucking piss people off. Until one night in early June, an altercation between a sailor and a pacheco escalates into a brawl outside a bar in downtown LA. And this sailor gets, maybe gets knocked unconscious. We don't really know. There's a rumor that a sailor gets stabbed. That's never And so the following day, uh, the following night of June 3rd, around 50 sailors leave the armory flanked with makeshift weapons. And they want to get revenge for the fight from the night before. So at the Carmen Theater downtown in downtown LA,

• 33:09Georgia Hardstark?

  they turn, they get the house lights turned on. And like 50 sailors, they roam the aisles looking for Zooters. They find two boys, their ages are 12 and 13. No. They yank them out of their seats. And it says ignoring the protests of the patrons. So, you know, the people there were not fucking cool with it. The sailors drag them on stage. They rip the zoot suits off these kids and they beat the boys up and they set the zoot suits on fire. Jesus Christ. And this is the start of the zoot suit riots. And so this becomes a kind of a theme of humiliation and violence. The next night, over 200 sailors grab a fleet of 20 taxi cabs,

• 33:50Georgia Hardstark?

  which the taxi cabs waved the fare to, to transport them and decided to take the fight into the Mexican-American neighborhoods of East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. And the sailors cruise the neighborhoods. They storm into bars and cafes and theaters. There's nowhere that's safe. And, you know, um, violence continues on the night of June 4th and 5th. Confrontations between servicemen and Zooters occurring all over the city. And some military personnel start targeting anyone who looks to be of Mexican descent. Like they don't even care about zoot suits anymore. They're berserking. Yeah. On June 5th, a group of Mexican musicians from El Paso are assaulted as they exit the Aztec Recording Company,

• 34:33Georgia Hardstark?

  even though they're not wearing zoot suits at all. The racist press encourages the servicemen. The Hearst's own Herald and Express publishes inflammatory stories, including one that warned of 500 Zooters planning to kill every cop they came across. You know, the Los Angeles Time applauds rioters for teaching zoot suiters a lesson. But the media just happens to suppress any mention of the white mobs that are actually, you know, the fucking rioters. They're the rioters. And one Los Angeles paper prints a guide on how to de-zoot a suit, a zoot suitor. So like

• 35:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Jesus Christ.

• 35:12Georgia Hardstark?

  However, a reporter for the city's black weekly newspaper, The California Eagle, named Charlotte Spears Bass, she writes a piece blasting mainstream newspapers for race baiting and calls for black readers to stand with Latinos. And there is a camaraderie there with the zoot suits and these teenage rebellion. They like, they understand that they're borrowing this culture, this jazz culture from another culture and they all kind of stand together, which is

• 35:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Good.

• 35:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Incredible. And also, another thing that could fucking scare racists is, you know, camaraderie.

• 35:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 35:50Georgia Hardstark?

  You know what I mean?

• 35:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Is, is, yes, is marginalized people laying down any kind of biases or

• 35:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Karen Kilgariff?

  And they have and banding together. I mean, yeah.

• 36:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. On the night of June 7th, a crowd of 5,000 civilians and gather downtown. So it's

• 36:09Karen Kilgariff?

  5,000.

• 36:09Georgia Hardstark?

  It's civilians, it's soldiers, Marines, sailors from other stations as far away as Las Vegas. They fucking get on board and come down to like, fight this fight. The witness, a witness to the attacks, a journalist named Carrie McWilliams writes, quote, "Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors and civilians proceeded to beat up every zoot suitor they could find."

• 36:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Jesus.

• 36:35Georgia Hardstark?

  And there's photos of this. There's these two young boys sitting, one is clearly been beaten and unconscious. The other one's like hunching over him naked. They, and there's a crowd circling them.

• 36:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 36:50Georgia Hardstark?

  It's, it's pure humiliation and violence. A man named Vincente Morales and his girlfriend were at a show at the Orthium Theater, which is a friend of the podcast.

• 37:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Friend of the pod.

• 37:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Where sailors drag him out of the building, strip him of his clothing and beat him unconscious. And when he comes to LAP, the officers arrest him for disturbing the peace.

• 37:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 37:15Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so oppressive. It's so, it's so upsetting and oppressive and And if you think it's that much different from the way it is today, you're reading the wrong fucking newspaper. Yeah. You know? Yep. Yeah. As rioting spreads into predominantly black neighborhoods like Watts, Latinos join with black residents to mount a resistance with hundreds gathering. There's a Coca-Cola plant on Central Avenue, I guess. Years later, participant Rudy Leavos tells the LA Times reporter, quote, "Toward evening, we started hiding in alleys. Then we sent about 20 guys right out into the middle of the street as decoys. They started coming after the decoys, then we came out. They were surprised.

• 38:00Georgia Hardstark?

  It was the first time anybody was organized to fight back." Nice. So they fucking joined forces like the fucking X-Men. The police arrest dozens of young Mexican-Americans. And one of them asks, when one of them asks, "Why am I being arrested?" The response is that they get savagely fucking beat with a nightstick for asking that. When the boy falls to the sidewalk unconscious, he's kicked in the face by police. Please remember, these are 13, 14, 15-year-old children. Junior high students. Yep. Getting, getting the shit kicked out of them by fully grown By adults who have been trained in Yeah, military combat. Exactly. So at midnight on June 8th, my birthday. Hey, happy birth, again, happy birthday. Thank you.

• 38:45Georgia Hardstark?

  The Navy and Marine Corps finally intervene and declared downtown. So all this, you know, they intervene. All this shit happens that they, they're like trying to restore order. So they say, but the fucking, the riot lasts until June 10th, essentially. Oh, my God. Their official position is that there are men were acting in self-defense. On June 9th, the LA City Council passes an emergency resolution that makes it illegal. Ready for this? Makes it illegal to wear a zoot suit on city streets. Not to beat the fucking shit out of someone for their outfit. And actually, what's really fucking interesting is that

• 39:25Georgia Hardstark?

  the War Production Board, which is a government agency that oversees industrial manufacturing, they, they put out all these guidelines. They make it required that manufacturers use 26% less fabric when they're making suits, which effectively criminalizes the manufacture of zoot suits, which is the first time any piece of clothing has ever been criminalized. Wow. Yeah.

• 39:49Georgia Hardstark?

  So all, you know, it keeps happening in other cities as well. There's no reported deaths, but more than 150 people are injured in the LA riots and police end up arresting more than 600 Mexican-Americans on charges ranging from rioting to vagrancy. Only a few servicemen are arrested overall. In total, the riots last 10 days from June 3rd to June 10th. Shit, and no, so no one died? Wait, that's not 10 days. The riots lasted 10 days from June 3rd. Nope. June 13th. That's not 10 days. I'm gonna say June 1st to June 10th. Or it lasted seven days. But it's early June is like the known, you know, they ended, who knows what the last day was, is what I'm trying to say.

• 40:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Gotcha. What did you say? What were you saying? That no one died, you said. There's no reported deaths. Reported deaths, okay. Like officially. Right, right. So afterward, in response to a formal protest from the Mexican Embassy, we're like, I'm sorry, what the fuck?

• 40:50Georgia Hardstark?

  A special committee is appointed to determine the cause of the riots and the committee concludes that racism is the root cause of the violence and also places the blame on the press for associating Zooters with a supposed crime wave. Good. Yeah. But LA Mayor Fletcher Bauron is intent on preserving the city's public image and declares that Mexican juvenile delinquents and racist white southerners are the ones who caused the riots.

• 41:20Georgia Hardstark?

  So their fault. We didn't do anything wrong. He claims that racial prejudice is not and would not become an issue in Los Angeles.

• 41:27Karen Kilgariff?

  No, guys, come on.

• 41:31Georgia Hardstark?

  We got some news for you from the future.

• 41:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Georgia Hardstark?

  It's not a friend of your podcast.

• 41:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Admit it now. Admit it now.

• 41:40Georgia Hardstark?

  The Un-American Activities Committee attempts to prove that the Zoot Suit riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread, you know, their Nazi propaganda between the United States and Latin American countries. But of course, not surprising, nothing comes out of that.

• 41:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, but let's bookmark that for another time because I feel like it couldn't be more relevant today.

• 42:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. In the aftermath, okay, so that's the Zoot Suit riots. In the aftermath, the Sleepy Lagoon trial, remember that?

• 42:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Second thing, the community organizes the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, SLDC, and by 1944, they raise enough money to bring the case to the Second District Court of Appeals, wherein the Judge Clement Nye overturns the verdict citing insufficient evidence, the denial of the defendant's right to counsel, and the overt bias of Judge Frick in the courtroom.

• 42:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice.

• 42:41Georgia Hardstark?

  All 17 defendants are released in 1944 from prison with their criminal records expunged. So

• 42:49Karen Kilgariff?

  So good.

• 42:49Georgia Hardstark?

  That's post-Zoot Suit riots. Officially, the death of Jose Diaz from the Sleepy Lagoon murder remains unsolved, but before her death in 1991, a former Pachuca named Lorena Encinas confides to her children that her brother Louis, who's dead, was the one who beat and killed Jose Diaz that night, which we don't know if it's true or not, but that was her confession. There's so much more. Please look into the Chavez Ravine and see about eminent domain and what ended up happening, that they fucking forcibly removed the remaining Mexican-American homeowners who'd lived there for generations. They ripped them out of their homes. They bulldozed them home. They gave them fucking pennies on the dollar of what

• 43:32Georgia Hardstark?

  their homes were worth. And they, because they were going to redevelop the land into high-end homes, which didn't happen, and they ended up, the city ends up fucking selling that very fucking Crucial land at a huge profit is sold to the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Walter O'Malley, who starts building the Dodger Stadium in 1959. That is a fucking blight on our fucking city, Dodger Stadium. And I, I really suggest people look into that. I mean, it's a great fucking, I love, love the Dodgers, love the stadium, love going to it. It is an ugly time in history of what happened there.

• 44:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Horrifying.

• 44:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Karen Kilgariff?

  And it also hasn't changed too much in that, and I won't get into it because I actually, I've only, very recently been reading about it, but is, this is like, kind of the spine of gentrification in that way, where people that are from an area, especially in Los Angeles, and the way people migrate to this town, and then the actual families and the people that have lived there for a long time.

• 44:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Are forced out, and then they try, and because then those rents go up.

• 44:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 44:37Karen Kilgariff?

  And you've got all the people that are like, I'm going to be on a pilot this year.

• 44:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, it's urban sprawl, and so when you put, uh, when you put entire cultures in a certain neighborhood and segregate them to that neighborhood, then when you want that neighborhood back, it's not like, you know, the city is naturally growing, you fucking steal that land back, even though you told them that's the only place they could live. You build freeways through their fucking homes so that the houses are worth less, or they're divided from, you know, quote, better parts of town. You know, the whole LA freeway system, there was a recent LA Times article about it, how fucking racist, uh, and how race played into us building, like, the freeways make no sense here, you're on the 405 and you want to get to fucking Hollywood, it's going to take you forever, it's because of those, those neighborhoods.

• 45:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Because they were building them through, they certainly weren't building them through Hancock Park.

• 45:30Georgia Hardstark?

  No, they were not. No, they were building them through Inglewood, so it's, it's ugly. As for the Zoot Suit itself, although it did fall out of fashion eventually, the part it played in challenging the entrenched roles of race, gender, and class identities of mainstream America during World War II has not been forgotten. In 1978, actor and playwright Luis Valdez wrote the play Zoot Suit. It's the First play on Broadway made by someone of Mexican descent.

• 45:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 45:57Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. And that got turned into a movie, 1981, starring Danielle Valdez, who's so cute and sweet, and Edward James Olmos. And actually, in 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art searched out a zoot suit to display as part of their, like, they had a men's, like, history of men's fashion. And it cost them nearly 80 grand to acquire a, like, legit, old-school zoot suit.

• 46:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Because they had been destroyed and kind of targeted that way, where it was so impossible to find them?

• 46:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Probably.

• 46:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 46:27Georgia Hardstark?

  There's been a push from historians to change the name from zoot suit riots, which fucking implies that it was the zooters who were rioting, to the sailor riots, but that hasn't stuck yet. And, um, yeah, that's the story of the zoot suit riots and the Sleepy Lagoon murder.

• 46:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 46:45Georgia Hardstark?

  The book that you can read if you want to know more is Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in War Time L.A. by Eduardo "Bring on Pagan." P-A-G-A-N is the last name.

• 46:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow, that's amazing. That's such a good history lesson. And living in the city, it's really embarrassing

• 47:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Karen Kilgariff?

  that I don't know anything about. It's, it's just that feeling every time. It's the same feeling of, of watching, um, that OJ special and learning all about the Watts riots. We're just like, how come I, I, you know, we don't know these things.

• 47:17Georgia Hardstark?

  They don't teach it in school because they don't, because it, because it makes us look bad.

• 47:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 47:23Georgia Hardstark?

  And like, that's somehow not okay to be like, we did a really horrible thing and, but we're learning from it. You know?

• 47:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, yeah, because I think a lot of people aren't there yet and a lot of people in charge aren't there yet and

• 47:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 47:34Karen Kilgariff?

  whatever. Great job.

• 47:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 47:36Karen Kilgariff?

  That was really good.

• 47:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you. That was a really, thank you to Lilly for all her research notes. That was a really, that was, that was an interesting one. I, I definitely spent a lot of time researching that and I could have spent a lot fucking more time. Like, there's so many good articles from every different angle.

• 47:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Cool. I definitely want to look up. Did you say the Getty is the museum that got? Cause they were doing the fashion, sorry.

• 47:58Georgia Hardstark?

  No, no. In 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, they had a thing called Reigning Men, Reigning, R-E-I-G-N-I-N-G. Reigning Men Fashion in Menswear from 1715 to 2015.

• 48:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh shit.

• 48:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Sounds fucking cool.

• 48:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 09

  I was gonna say one thing really quickly. I texted my grandma to confirm because my mom's side of my family has been here. I mean, for generations and my grandma's brother was actually a Zoot Suter.

• 48:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Really?

• 48:27Speaker 09

  But he entered the army. So I wonder if he, and now I want to like call my grandma and ask her, like, I wonder if maybe he avoided this because.

• 48:37Georgia Hardstark?

  And they were in Orange County, right?

• 48:39Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah. Well, my grandma specifically grew up here. My mom grew up in Atwater Village, so. We grew up, yeah. So I really, now, next time I see my grandma, I like, I want to learn more of this because I want to know.

• 48:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Steven, do it. Please ask your grandma if she has a picture.

• 48:53Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 48:54Karen Kilgariff?

  I would love to see an actual legit. Yeah. Morris family. What would that be? What's your mom's maiden name?

• 49:02Speaker 09

  My mom's maiden name is Valdez, Raymond Valdez was my grandfather. And then my grandma, her maiden name was Flores, so Sarah Flores.

• 49:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my God. If she has a story, please get it on video or record it. That would be incredible. I'm so bummed I can't ask my grandma. It was very old, but I'm so bummed I can't ask her if she remembers it, although I know she would have just said, yeah, that was scary.

• 49:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, that's incredible, Steven.

• 49:30Karen Kilgariff?

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• 51:08Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 51:23Speaker 06

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• 51:34Speaker 05

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  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 51:45Speaker 05

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 52:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, Georgia, you know how much I love TikTok.

• 52:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Of course.

• 52:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And one of the main reasons I love TikTok is because it either educates me about things I absolutely knew nothing about, like you just did, or it reminds me of things I adore. So that's what happened. When I was scrolling through TikTok, I saw a video by an account called at the Feedski, F E E D S K I, and they reminded me of a story that I long ago heard on The Dollop about the legendary 1974 Cleveland 10 cent beer night.

• 52:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Remember this?

• 52:46Karen Kilgariff?

  No, but it sounds like a mistake.

• 52:48Karen Kilgariff?

  All right. From jump.

• 52:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, my God. Yeah.

• 52:52Karen Kilgariff?

  If you want to do the three minute version of this story, you can go on TikTok, follow the Feedski, they will tell you about it.

• 52:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 52:57Karen Kilgariff?

  But you can also listen to the 2014 episode of The Dollop. It was the 15th episode of that podcast. Yeah, early, early days of The Dollop.

• 53:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Karen Kilgariff?

  But I will tell you about it now. You can also, of course, you can go on YouTube and watch footage from the game.

• 53:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, no.

• 53:16Karen Kilgariff?

  About what I'm about to tell you about, which is kind of amazing.

• 53:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Why am I picturing it in like the 1920s? It's not, right?

• 53:23Karen Kilgariff?

  It's not. 74.

• 53:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, 74. Okay, that's a cozy place. I can, I can meet you there.

• 53:28Karen Kilgariff?

  You should meet me there because you'll be happy you did. But compared to 2023, which every once in a while that number gets into my head and I'm like, wow. Because I started in the 70s. So 74 is like so much more familiar to me than where we, than where we are now.

• 53:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Karen Kilgariff?

  And all of the things in this are, it's just the delight of the way things used to be.

• 53:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Which at this point, sometimes when you talk about it, feels like you're lying or like it's a movie you watched.

• 53:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 53:58Karen Kilgariff?

  So here's a little slice of the 70s that really will drive it home. And it's the 70s in Cleveland, Ohio.

• 54:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 54:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Which is a very specific vibe.

• 54:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, it is.

• 54:09Karen Kilgariff?

  So the main sources for this story today are at 2008 ESPN article by a writer named Paul Jackson, a 1974 Associated Press article by the writer Richard Bellotti, and the book Crazy With The Papers To Prove It by sports writer Dan Coughlin. And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So what I'm about to regale you with is considered one of arguably one of the most chaotic nights in sports history, June 4th, 1974, takes place in Cleveland, Ohio in the 70s. I think it is safe to say that at this time, Cleveland was not flourishing. They had several large problems. One is the pollution.

• 54:54Karen Kilgariff?

  They're so polluted there, in fact, that just five years earlier in 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire.

• 55:03Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right. Oh, God.

• 55:07Karen Kilgariff?

  And as alarming as that sounds, that actually eventually led the way for the government to start the Environmental Protections Agency.

• 55:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 55:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Because pollution had just gotten so bad.

• 55:21Georgia Hardstark?

  It was so bad, you guys.

• 55:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Not just like littering and stuff, but industrial pollution where like companies that were making, you know, glue were just dumping everything into the nearby river. And that's what was happening.

• 55:35Georgia Hardstark?

  And the car fumes and the gasoline we used was like toxic. Like there were days when the weather would be, don't leave the house because the air is toxic.

• 55:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 55:45Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't there, but my mom told me that.

• 55:48Karen Kilgariff?

  No, it's true. So there's the pollution issue. The city's also dealing with serious economic downturn over the past decade. In the area, there's been a mass exodus of factories and industrial plants, meaning total loss of jobs and also loss of population. Between 1970 and 1980, Cleveland will lose nearly 200,000 residents. Because of like job loss and everything, kind of. So in 1974, leaders in Cleveland are worried that the city is about to go bankrupt.

• 56:23Karen Kilgariff?

  And on top of all that, Cleveland's Major League Baseball team is not doing well. So at the time of the story in 1974, they were the Cleveland Indians.

• 56:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, right.

• 56:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Indigenous groups have worked for years and years, decades, to get this name changed. They just in 22 changed the name to the Cleveland Guardians. But for the sake of simplicity in talking about the story, I'm just going to call them Cleveland. So that, you know, so we can talk about it.

• 56:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Good idea.

• 56:50Karen Kilgariff?

  So, a year before the story takes place, Cleveland's baseball team has the lowest game day turnout of any team in the league. They, they basically are at about 15% capacity at every game.

• 57:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Oof.

• 57:03Karen Kilgariff?

  In their stadium. It's rough.

• 57:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, God.

• 57:05Karen Kilgariff?

  They're reporting losses of around $1.4 million, which is $7 million in today's money. So the situation is dire. And management knows they need to do something to stay out of the red and to get butts in seats. They know the easiest way to boost attendance at games. So they basically suggest an idea that has worked well for them in the past. Journalist Paul Jackson, writing for ESPN, says it like this, quote, "Considering the state of the city in 1974, the team decided that Cleveland probably could use a drink." And this is the origin story for Cleveland's infamous 1974 10 cent beer night. So the real story actually starts the week before at Arlington Stadium in Texas.

• 57:50Karen Kilgariff?

  It's late May 1974. The Texas Rangers are playing Cleveland in Texas. It's a shit show. So there's a lot of like, and I think things were a little, obviously, a little less regulated, a little less official, a little less like branded.

• 58:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, right.

• 58:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Slightly more Bad News Bears.

• 58:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Karen Kilgariff?

  I would say, as everything was back then, you know? A person that is a baseball aficionado is not going to love my recap here, but I'm just doing it for simplicity to give you the sense.

• 58:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Look, video games, sports, we don't know anything.

• 58:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Salami, taking out the garbage, it's all boy stuff. So but here's the basic recap for us for the purposes of me telling you this. So in the fourth inning of this game, Texas Rangers are at bat. There's two men on and whoever is at bat hits. And the guy on first base is a Rangers player named Lenny Randall. So essentially, there's a guy on first and second. And so somebody getting a single moves them both ahead. Got it. But the ball goes to Cleveland's third baseman. So he hits third base. He tags third base, gets that guy out and then throws it over to second base. It should have been a double play, which they needed because Cleveland didn't have any, hadn't gotten any runs so far.

• 59:09Karen Kilgariff?

  So essentially, the third baseman catches the ball that gets hit, tags third base, that guy's out, throws it over to second, should be an easy double play. But Lenny Randall slides into second base and he hits the second baseman. So I guess he's safe and everyone gets super pissed off. He does a hard slide and basically in a way that they normally kind of aren't supposed to do. I think he got kind of physical and made it so that it was not a double play. Okay. Cleveland, the team and the fans are pissed. In the eighth inning, Lenny Randall is up again. The pitcher, Milt Wilcox, memorize all these names. Beautiful name.

• 59:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Milt Wilcox throws the ball behind him, which is, you know, he's, it's kind of threatening. It's basically like, I'm gonna hit you with this. Yeah. Lenny Randall ends up bunting and running to first base. So the pitcher, Milt Wilcox, picks it up and tags him. And as he does, Lenny Randall kind of hits him with his forearm, right? Cleveland's first baseman, John Ellis, steps up and punches Lenny Randall. Shit. And so the bench is clear and here they go. And now everyone's fighting on the field. Fun. Right? All the boys run out to the field, dozens of men throw punches at each other in front of stadium full of spectators while the broadcasters call it live. It happens, it's not like rare in baseball. Yeah. Wow. But essentially, the fight's broken up.

• 1:00:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Everyone goes back to their dugouts. The Texas fans are pissed. They start booing, pouring beer on nearby players, throwing food. And then to add insult to injury, Cleveland loses three to zero. Ouch. Now, the drama seems guaranteed because the two teams have to meet up again six days later in Cleveland to like finish the series, right? Oh dear. When a reporter from the Cleveland Press newspaper asks the Rangers manager Billy Martin, if he's gonna quote, "take his armor to Cleveland," Billy Martin simply replies, quote, "Nah, they won't have enough fans there to worry about."

• 1:01:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Ouch.

• 1:01:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Boom. So that's gonna start some shit. That's gonna piss some people off. That's basically like salt in the wound. As journalist Paul Jackson puts it, quote, "The 74 Indians were a smorgasbord of mediocre and forgettable talent, playing in an open-air mausoleum."

• 1:01:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Jesus.

• 1:01:32Karen Kilgariff?

  End quote, end lives. Like, it, rough times. The team's not good. You know, the stadium is, barely has anyone in it. Not, you can't say even half-full.

• 1:01:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Hot dogs are bad, probably.

• 1:01:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, all of it is rough.

• 1:01:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Karen Kilgariff?

  So now, all of that is bad enough, but now, this rematch, right? In Cleveland is also on the same night as the big brainchild idea, Tencent Beer Night. Everything's coming together in a bad way. So, on Tencent Beer Night, the 12-ounce pour of Genesee beer, have you heard of Genesee beer?

• 1:02:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Mm-mm.

• 1:02:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Must be regional. My dad hadn't heard of it either. So that beer normally costs 65 cents. Tonight's gonna cost a dime.

• 1:02:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:02:17Karen Kilgariff?

  That's like getting a $4 beer for 60 cents.

• 1:02:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow, thank you. That make, that's good. A $4 beer for 60 cents.

• 1:02:25Karen Kilgariff?

  For 60 cents. In hindsight, yes, this sounds like a horrible idea, but amazingly, Cleveland had already hosted, they hosted a nickel beer night in 1971 that went great, and with no incidents. So they were like, this will work, this will be great. Okay. So no one's really worried about Tencent Beer Night coinciding with the rematch game. The only precaution Cleveland really takes in preparing for this is doubling security. Normally, they have 25 security guards. Now they have 50. That was actually a smart move. Since the brawl in Texas, the Cleveland, like, journalists, radio hosts, anybody that was like publicly talking about this game, is talking about it like-

• 1:03:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Revenge rematch, like they're, they're talking about it, hyping it up. There's bitterness, there's vengeance. Cleveland sports fans are out for blood. They want, they want a rematch. So when the day arrives, it's warm and humid in Cleveland. Temperatures are around 85 degrees, which is great weather for a night game at a stadium. Over 25,000 people show up to watch the game, which is almost double the normal attendance. Yeah. And the crowd also is decidedly young because in the seventies, the national drinking age was 18. Oh my God. So essentially, people in their late teens and early twenties pack the stands.

• 1:03:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Aside from it being like, you know, a hyped up rematch, you know, whatever. A lot of people are out of work. A lot of people don't have too much money. They can't afford not to go to 10 cent beer night because for a dollar, you can get a ticket to get in, get a seat in the bleachers and get five beers.

• 1:04:13Karen Kilgariff?

  For $1. Each one a bigger mistake than the last. As expected, they open the doors. Everyone makes a beeline for the cheap beer the second they enter the stadium. There is a rule set for 10 cent beer night. People are supposed to be capped at six beers per transaction. But as soon as the stadium opens, it's clear that there is a massive staffing shortage for this promotion because the cheap beer isn't at each like hot dog stand around the stadium. It's one table with two teenage girls. Yep. At the 10 cent beer table. Oh no. And these girls are supposed to be keeping track of how many beers people get per, they're with no system.

• 1:04:58Karen Kilgariff?

  There's no way to do that. They're just supposed to kind of be managing what is an absolutely unmanageable situation. Which is just so hilarious and so typical. So they're in charge of monitoring purchases, taking money, pouring beer for thousands of increasingly and very Quickly drunk customers, they're immediately overwhelmed. And before long, they realize their job is impossible. And also, they can't handle these drunk customers who are rude. They're belligerent, they're berating them for having to wait in such a long line. Like, it's bullshit. So eventually, thank God, the girls just say, screw it and fucking abandon shit.

• 1:05:39Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 1:05:39Karen Kilgariff?

  They're like, bye. Which is the very least that they should have done.

• 1:05:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Karen Kilgariff?

  So someone from Cleveland's promotions team decides they're going to solve that problem by driving a beer truck with taps, industrial taps on it, inside the stadium. And then just allowing the fans to go up and pour their own beers for themselves unchecked. And I think what seems like unpaid

• 1:06:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Karen Kilgariff?

  For the rest of the night.

• 1:06:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:09Karen Kilgariff?

  So I don't know if that was the best call. No one's exactly sure when that truck was brought in, but it's pretty early in the game, within the first few innings. And this game is not going well. In the first inning, Ranger Tom Grieve hits a homerun. And Cleveland fans are already drunk, basically, by this time.

• 1:06:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Karen Kilgariff?

  You know what I mean? They're just like, they're pre-gaming, pre-partying, they're getting it all done. They immediately start throwing things at Texas first baseman, Mike Hargrove, who would later go on to say, quote, "I must have had 15 or 20 pounds of hot dogs thrown at me."

• 1:06:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:49Karen Kilgariff?

  In the second inning, a middle-aged woman runs onto the field and flashes the crowd and then tries to kiss the head umpire, Nestor Shilak.

• 1:07:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 1:07:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Of course, this is a Major League Baseball game.

• 1:07:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:05Karen Kilgariff?

  So Shilak's furious at this interruption, but the crowd goes crazy. They, of course, love it. This woman, there's pictures, she looks like a diner waitress. She has kind of like, she has big, kind of bouffante

• 1:07:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Dun-up hair. She's definitely on the older side. She is not, does not look like the kind of woman that's just going to show you her tits.

• 1:07:28Georgia Hardstark?

  For free.

• 1:07:29Karen Kilgariff?

  She just doesn't.

• 1:07:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Karen Kilgariff?

  And she has this huge smile on her face. Like, she looks like, it's just like, well, I'm finally living.

• 1:07:36Georgia Hardstark?

  All I can think about is her, the next morning, asking your friend what you did last night. Did I do anything embarrassing last night?

• 1:07:46Karen Kilgariff?

  I have a bad feeling, but I don't know why.

• 1:07:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Something went wrong.

• 1:07:50Karen Kilgariff?

  It suddenly starts coming back in little individual slides of like seeing Nestor Shilak yelling in her face of like, why would there be the home plate umpire screaming in my face?

• 1:08:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:08:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Why would he be mad at me? Nestor's furious, the crowd loves it. When security finally removes this woman from the field, the stadium goes crazy cheering for her. They're thrilled. Before long, streakers start running across the field during play. This was a big trend in the early 70s.

• 1:08:22Karen Kilgariff?

  It was.

• 1:08:23Karen Kilgariff?

  People loved to get naked because it was like kind of right after, you know, the hippie era had kind of come and gone, but that kind of crunchy granola nudity vibe was still there.

• 1:08:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Karen Kilgariff?

  And streaking was a thing. There was a ton at 10 Cent Beer Night, but perhaps the most iconic, Maren writes, perhaps the most iconic is the man who in the fourth inning, fully naked, aside from a pair of black socks. So you know, he's a businessman. Dramatically slides into second base at the exact moment that Texas's Tom Grieve hits his second homer of the night.

• 1:09:01Karen Kilgariff?

  So the game is continuing on.

• 1:09:04Karen Kilgariff?

  A naked slide.

• 1:09:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Is, that's painful, it sounds.

• 1:09:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. It sounds horrible. But also imagine that today where it's like, you can't use an image of Major League Baseball without getting the shit suit out of you.

• 1:09:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Sometimes a cat runs across and they stop everything and like, you know, also there's a picture of him running and he's smiling. He kind of looks like Robert Plant. He has an amazing body. You're like, I get why you're doing this.

• 1:09:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Karen Kilgariff?

  He's feeling it. Okay, so now the score is 2-0. Texas is leading. The beer drenched stadium seems to care more about the streakers than the score. So as six security guards try to catch the black socked legend, he gets up from second base, he runs basically climbs over the back fence and like Cinderella and her glass slipper, he leaves a single black sock behind on the field. But now he's in public. I don't understand. Now he just has to walk home. Now he's stuck under the bleachers, kind of lost and shitfaced. Right. He's dealt with worse, I'm sure. I'm sure. So now it's the fifth inning. The score is five to one Rangers.

• 1:10:18Karen Kilgariff?

  The cheap beer continues to flow unmonitored from that beer truck, much like the streakers and the flashers, who continue to flow onto the field, including a father-son duo, who run onto the field and moon the fans. Mooning was another big thing. Mooning was very popular back then. It's a partial streak. It's just a peep. Yeah. Of course, the stadium goes crazy. The crowd is really drunk. It looks like the team is losing. So now they're just kind of into the display of whatever other people feel like doing. So up until this point, the trashed and largely teenage crowd has been rowdy, but they're harmless. Everyone seems happy. They're laughing. They're being silly. They're just kind of like enjoying this goofy night. Mm hmm.

• 1:11:03Karen Kilgariff?

  It's how it always starts. Yep. I was, my next line is, but as all of us true alcoholics know, that is about to change. The goofy party atmosphere devolves into the realm of pure belligerence. So at one point, the Rangers manager, Billy Martin, disputes a call by the umpire, a common thing that happens, not that big of a deal. Like a mean drunk dad at Christmas, the crowd decides it's deeply offended by this. And cups of beer are sent flying onto the field in Billy Martin's direction. He responds by blowing them a kiss from the dugout. Ooh. So drunk fans start throwing any and everything that they can onto the field. And on top of that, because it is the 70s, multiple people have brought fireworks to the game.

• 1:11:48Karen Kilgariff?

  What? Yeah. What? Okay. Yeah. Fireworks was a pastime, like a hobby in the 70s. It was something people did. You keep heightening this story and it's. I don't. It's going well. History does.

• 1:12:04Karen Kilgariff?

  The people of Cleveland did. Yeah, yeah. Full credit to them. So groups of drunk teens are now shooting off fireworks from their seats.

• 1:12:17Karen Kilgariff?

  And at this point, anyone who showed up for an above board, normal baseball game is long gone. And what's left is an entirely wasted and increasingly chaotic crowd in a stadium that's starting to feel like a war zone. So now it's the sixth inning and in an exciting turn of events, Cleveland starts to rally. They score two runs and then in the seventh inning, they score yet another. So now it's 5-4 Rangers. And then Cleveland ties the score and now it's 5-5. Oh shit. So the crowd starts to focus on the game again. They remember, oh, that's right, we're at a major league baseball game. And this is actually the point of all this. Their focus, of course, since they're so drunk, doesn't really last. And what they end up

• 1:13:00Karen Kilgariff?

  doing is the kids with the fireworks start trying to shoot the fireworks into Texas's bullpen where the other pitchers are warming up.

• 1:13:11Karen Kilgariff?

  And then inexplicably, they shoot them towards Cleveland's bullpen. All right, everyone gets some. So this forces the very fed up umpire Nestor Shilak to direct both teams to move their athletes out of the line of fire. But the game continues on, like this doesn't stop the game. So they're just kind of managing the bad behavior at this point. Yeah. Now we're in the ninth inning, right? This is it. It's the last inning. Things are looking great for Cleveland. The score is 5-5. Cleveland's at bat and the bases are loaded. This should have been the positive turning point. Yeah. The world is full of potential. Anything can happen right now. It could be something magic. Yeah.

• 1:13:54Karen Kilgariff?

  But another fan runs onto the field at this point. Uh-uh. This guy's fully dressed, but the difference here is up until this point, it's been fun times. It's streakers, people running by, they're playing to the crowd and running away before security can catch them. This time, this fully dressed man runs towards a Rangers outfielder named Jeff Burrows. He flicks Burrows' hat off his head and then tries to grab his glove.

• 1:14:21Karen Kilgariff?

  But because he's drunk, he falls down in the process of trying to do this, of course.

• 1:14:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:14:26Karen Kilgariff?

  So Burrows, who of course never, didn't expect that and like wasn't, didn't know, he's visibly rattled by being bum rushed by this drunk stranger. So the man's down, he goes over and kicks him in the thigh. And then in doing that, he ends up falling over himself.

• 1:14:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Burrows would later tell the Associated Press that, quote, "I tried to call time, but no one heard me."

• 1:14:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:14:52Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, they're far away.

• 1:14:54Georgia Hardstark?

  They're still playing?

• 1:14:55Karen Kilgariff?

  They're still playing and the outfielders are really far away from each other. Each other and everybody in the infield.

• 1:15:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:15:02Karen Kilgariff?

  He said, "I was getting scared because I felt the riot psychology." Of all the crazy shit those baseball players are probably used to with crowds, I don't think they've probably seen this level.

• 1:15:14Georgia Hardstark?

  No, you get one or two drunk people. It's standard.

• 1:15:18Karen Kilgariff?

  And usually it's like, it's all takes place in the stands. Nothing is spilling out onto the field, I would imagine. So the Rangers manager, Billy Martin, has been watching this game get repeatedly interrupted. He's had countless beer cups thrown at him. Now he's just had enough, seeing this. He sees Burrows fall over. And because it all happened so fast, he assumes Burrows been attacked by this drunk fan. That's why he fell over. So he turns to the, all the rest of the players in the dugout and he says, "Let's go get him, boys."

• 1:15:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 1:15:50Karen Kilgariff?

  The Rangers pull their bats off the bat rack and march out onto the field.

• 1:15:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:15:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Martin will later say, quote, "I knew it was silly for us to do that, but Jeff was out there all by himself. We couldn't just let our teammate get beat up." But as the Rangers move with their bats, more people from the stands start pouring onto the field, basically in response. And these are no longer the happy-go-lucky streakers of previous innings. This is now a drunken mob. Some of them are even carrying weapons. According to the journalist Paul Jackson, quote, "Billy Martin spotted people wielding chains, knives, and clubs fashioned from pieces of stadium seats." Oh, no. "The 25 Texas players quickly found themselves surrounded by 200 angry drunks,

• 1:16:38Karen Kilgariff?

  and more were tumbling over the wall onto the field," end quote. It's like a fucking zombie movie. I was just thinking that. It's a zombie nightmare. Oh, my God. It's one of those fast zombie movies, but with more burping. So, over in the Cleveland dugout, manager Ken Aspremante is seething. He is so close to getting this legendary win, right? How insane would that make you of all the work that you've done up until this point? You're actually making a comeback, like you're supposed to do. His team, his Bad News Bears team, is on the verge of winning, basically. And drunk fans are screwing it up for them. And he's also watching the Rangers become vastly outnumbered

• 1:17:21Karen Kilgariff?

  as more and more people come down from the stands to like, basically, fight. He's legitimately worried that he's about to witness a bloodbath for these Ranger players. And so, in a moment of solidarity with the team that seconds ago was Cleveland's bitter rival, Aspremante orders his players to grab any and all available bats and go help the Rangers. Oh, let's add some fuel to this fire, essentially. Exactly. So now, a full-on war has broken out between a couple dozen professional athletes with bats and hundreds of belligerent, mostly teenage fans with chains and armrest clubs, who are fucked up. Yeah, they are.

• 1:18:04Karen Kilgariff?

  It's gnarly. The Cleveland catcher pushes a man down and kicks him in the face. A Ranger tackles the guy that's trying to take down his teammate. A drunken Cleveland fan hits Cleveland's pitcher over the head with a chair. Oh, no. It's mayhem. Nestor Shilak, the head umpire, also gets hit over the head with a chair. Oh. After that, he stands up and sees a hunting knife land at his feet. And he knows he has to call the game now. But first, they have to get to safety. So Shilak will later tell AP that, quote, "We were so scared out there. It was 500 to 1 odds, and we could have gotten killed very easily.

• 1:18:45Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm sure the only other place you would see something like this happen would be in a zoo." End quote. Oh, my God. They get, both teams, stadium staff, the umpires, and a couple reporters, they're, they're all able to fight their way back to the dugouts. And then from there, they go into the tunnels that lead, you know, back to the locker rooms, like safely inside the stadium. They bolt the doors behind them. They're all soaked with beer, blood, sweat, and spit. Ugh. And they're trying to process what's just happened. One of Cleveland's announcers, who's broadcasting live from the press box, captures the atmosphere well. He says, quote, "I've been in this business for over 20 years,

• 1:19:28Karen Kilgariff?

  and I have never seen anything as disgusting as this. This is tragic." So now that the athletes and their staff are safely off the field, Nestor Shilak calls the game. He calls it a forfeit due to the crowd's bad behavior, which means the Rangers win. Ooh. But out on the field, the news incites a new wave of, of like violence from the drunken fans. Because there's still hundreds of people swarming the field. Now they just go crazy. They start stealing anything that isn't nailed down. They're taking the bases. They're pulling up grass. They even rip down pieces of the stadium's padded wall. A writer named Dan Coughlin is one of the unlucky journalists

• 1:20:11Karen Kilgariff?

  who didn't escape into the clubhouse with the teams. When the game is forfeited, he's out in the stands trying to interview fans. This would be an expected thing for any sports journalist to do. But as Coughlin approaches spectators, asking for their point of view, he gets punched in the face, not once, but twice. Oh, my God. It's just like out of control. And meanwhile, sorry to laugh at you, Dan Coughlin. It's not funny that you got punched, but it is all of a sudden just, all of society breaks down in a stadium in Cleveland one night in 1974. Mob mentality, right? Yes. And meanwhile.

• 1:20:52Karen Kilgariff?

  In a, this is Maren's writing, "In a legendary failure to read the room, Cleveland's organist starts playing Take Me Out to the Ballgame over the loudspeaker." No. I mean, like, that organist is pretty hilarious. Yeah. "The Cleveland police arrive to clear the stadium, and here's how they do it. They turn off the lights and throw tear gas onto the field. People bolt, except for a dozen defiant teenagers standing on top of the Rangers dugout, calling for the Texas players to come back out and fight them."

• 1:21:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, that's definitely gonna happen. That vibe, though, is so familiar to me. It's so like, as I read that sentence the first time, I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're also like, I know him. I know him. I've met that guy before. I've met that guy. I've loved that guy. I've been that guy. "All in all, nine people are arrested on 10-cent beer night, and seven are sent to nearby hospitals, where they're treated for minor injuries and released. Amazingly, no one is seriously injured at 10-cent beer night." All right. It's a miracle, but the athletes and the stadium crew are shaken up by this experience, understandably. Billy Martin tells the Associated Press that, quote,

• 1:22:13Karen Kilgariff?

  "It's the closest I've ever seen anybody come to getting killed in my more than 25 years in baseball." And Nestor Shilak is said to have been so heated after his narrow escape from the field, that he, when he got down into the locker room area, you know, those hallways in the stadium, he smashed every light bulb in sight. Fuck. Nestor was pissed, but I mean, like, you can imagine. It's just, that's the adrenaline, the survival adrenaline. Yeah. I mean, that must have been so scary and crazy. And you know he was upset, because with a compress held to his injured head, he tells reporters, quote, "Fucking animals. You just can't pull back a pack of animals.

• 1:22:56Karen Kilgariff?

  When uncontrolled beasts are out there, you gotta do something. I saw two guys with knives, and I got hit by a chair. If the fucking war is on tomorrow, I'm gonna join the other side to get a shot at them." Wow. End quote. He was pissed. He was pissed.

• 1:23:12Karen Kilgariff?

  So really, besides the arrests and the stolen property and the general mayhem, the most interesting part about 10 Cent Beer Night is that strange moment of unity between the Cleveland and the Texas players against the drunken mob. Texas Ranger Rich Billings would go on to tell the press, quote, "I really don't know what would have happened if the Indians hadn't come out. They were the real peacemakers in the deal." Wow. So essentially, if those players hadn't started defending people, it would have been an attack. Totally. And despite the league's absolute fury at everything that went down that night, Cleveland would go on to throw another 10 Cent Beer Night just a few weeks later.

• 1:23:54Karen Kilgariff?

  No, have we learned nothing? Oh, my God. No, but they did learn. So this time, they have a strict two beer per person limit, and they use tickets to track the purchases, and they have four times the usual security staff. Okay. And here's the good news, the evening goes off without a hitch. And that is the story of Cleveland's infamous 1974 10 Cent Beer Night. Oh, my God. Mayhem, mayhem. Mayhem. Also, who brought a hunting knife to a baseball game? Truly, truly, yeah. What were you doing? You're not fucking, who, I don't know. Bear Grylls?

• 1:24:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you. I was like, I had so many names suddenly flooding my head, and I couldn't pick one. He's the best one. He loves a knife. Yeah. Wow, great job. Great story. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I like that one. I've been waiting to do that one for a little while. Yeah. The world contains multitudes. That's right. From the Sisters, who essentially saved the Dominican Republic, to the Cleveland fans who ruined baseball for one night on purpose, for fun. And we're here to deliver all of it to you. We want you to know about all of it. Our valued listeners. We love you. We do. Stay sexy.

• 1:25:21Karen Kilgariff?

  And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

• 1:25:34Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci. Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ally Elkin. Email your hometowns to [email protected]. Follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder. Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe. Goodbye.

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