Information AboutDisco Sucks |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT DISCO DEMOLITION NIGHT | |
| chicago white sox | |
| detroit tigers | |
| 1979 in baseball | |
| chicago culture | |
| disco | |
| baseball lore | |
| violence in sports | |
| hooliganism | |
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THE EVENT Steve Dahl and Garry Meier , two Radio Disc Jockey s for the Chicago Radio station WLUP , devised a promotion that involved people bringing unwanted Disco music Record s to the game in exchange for a 98 cents admission fee. It would prove to be the most ill-conceived promotional idea since the infamous " Ten Cent Beer Night " in Cleveland in 1974 {Link without Title} . This promotion apparently encouraged a lot of attendees who were not "typical" baseball fans. Sox TV announcers Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall commented freely on the "strange people" wandering aimlessly in the stands. In ''Slouching Toward Fargo'', Mike Veeck – son of then-White Sox owner Bill Veeck – recalled that the pregame air was heavy with the scent of Marijuana . Many spectators, realizing that long-playing (LP) records were shaped remarkably like frisbees, threw their records from the stands during the baseball game. After the first game, Dahl came out to center field with the records in a box rigged with a Bomb , in a mock demolition of disco music. When it was exploded, thousands of fans ran onto the field. Some started their own fires and mini-riots. The bomb also ripped a hole in the outfield grass surface. Bill Veeck and Harry Caray used the public address system to implore the fans to leave the field immediately. Eventually the field was cleared by police in riot gear. In the end, six people reported minor injuries and 39 were arrested for disorderly conduct. Sparky Anderson , manager of the Detroit Tigers, refused to field his team citing safety concerns, which resulted in the forfeiture by the White Sox to the Tigers. BLAME Although Bill Veeck took much of the public heat for this fiasco, it was known among baseball people that his son Mike was the actual front-office "brains," as it were, behind this promotion. As a result, Mike was Blacklist ed from the major leagues for a long time after his father retired. As Mike related in the book ''Slouching Toward Fargo'', about the independent St. Paul Saints which he partly owns, "The second that first guy shimmied down the outfield wall, I knew my life was over!" In ''The National Pastime'' (Number 25), a yearly publication of the Society For American Baseball Research , there is an article by James Forr, about various ball games forfeited since 1920. He discusses the 1979 game at some length. Then he addresses August 10 , 1995 , at Dodger Stadium , where the home team conducted an ill-conceived promotion that violated the first rule of promotions ("Don't give away something the fans can throw, ''especially a baseball''"). The Dodgers handed baseballs to over 50,000 paying customers as they entered the gates. After sufficient Liquid Stimulation and some close umpiring calls, many fans began pelting the field with their souvenir baseballs, and eventually the game was forfeited to the visiting St. Louis Cardinals . Forr reports that with that game now the most recent forfeiture in the public memory, rather than Disco Demolition Night, Mike Veeck said happily, "I finally got it off my back, I'm a free man!" EXTERNAL LINK |
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