On this day in 1974 Rheingold Beer announces it will close its Brooklyn-based plant. As a result, the brewery will be forced to end its 13-year relationship with the Mets as the team’s primary radio-TV sponsor.

This was my dad’s beer, and it got me into trouble big time once. Not because I was drinking under-age but because that empty bottle was worth a nickel. In the late 1950’s, the summer, I was 10 years old I started saving my allowance to buy tickets, to sit in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, price of admission fifty-cents. One-time I needed one more nickel for a ticket and, sitting in the refrigerator was dad’s almost full quart bottle of Rheingold beer. Thinking dad would not notice I poured it down the drain and with that nickel in hand off to the game I went. That night at dinner dad asked “what happened to his beer”, mom did not drink beer, my older brother was at camp, and my sister was eight. Knowing I was in trouble I confessed that I poured it out for the deposit on the bottle. Next came “why”, and my answer only made it worst I needed to buy a ticket to see the Yankees. Dad always a calm man, told me I was too young to be going to Yankee Stadium alone, pulled my allowance of 25-cents a week for the remainder of the summer.