I was gonna go on summer hiatus. You know, put the blog down for a while, give everybody a much needed rest. Then along comes a story I just can’t pass up – and you are the beneficiaries. Honestly, I don’t know how I overlooked this one last year: “Disco Dealt Death Blow By Fans of Chicago White Sox” is not a headline easily ignored. I mean, it’s got all the key elements of a classic: Mayhem, music, and America’s favorite pastime. Not to mention Bill Veeck’s midget, of course. The fact that it’s set on the South Side doesn’t hurt either.
But hey, no worries: We here at dewconsulting.net/blog work tirelessly to bring you only the best blogging the Internet has to offer. And this one? Well, you won’t find anything finer anywhere. At least, you won’t find it anywhere this side of old Comiskey Park I guess.
On This Day in History, 1979…
As the ’70s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing its grand finale. But for all of its decadence and overexposure, disco didn’t quite die a natural death, collapsing under its own weight. Instead, it was killed by a public backlash that reached its peak on this day in 1979 with the infamous “Disco Demolition” night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The incident led to at least 9 injuries, 39 arrests and the cancellation and forfeit of a Major League Baseball game. It is also widely credited — or, depending on your perspective, blamed — with dealing disco its death blow.
Gotta admit:
The folks @ History.com usually are not quite this hilarious.
The event was the brainchild of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, popular disk jockeys on Chicago’s WLUP “The Loop” FM. Dahl had only recently moved to WLUP from rival station WDAI when that station switched to an all-disco format — a relatively common reformatting trend in American radio in 1979. But however many other rock DJs were displaced by disco, only Dahl was inspired to launch a semi-comic vendetta aimed at “the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease.”
…. <with> a doubleheader scheduled on July 12, Dahl and Meier approached the White Sox with a rather unorthodox idea for an attendance-boosting promotion: Declare July 12 “Disco Demolition” night. Allow Dahl to blow up a dumpster full of disco records between games of the doubleheader. White Sox executive Mike Veeck embraced the idea in the same spirit with which his father, legendary team-owner Bill Veeck, had once sent a midget to the plate in a major league ballgame in order to amuse the fans and draw a walk.
Two key mistakes…
The first mistake organizers made was grossly underestimating the appeal of the 98-cent discount tickets offered to anyone who brought a disco record to the park to add to the explosive-rigged dumpster. The White Sox expected perhaps 5,000 more fans than the average draw of 15,000 or so. What they got instead was a raucous sellout crowd of 40,000-plus. Also, an even more raucous overflow crowd of as many as 40,000 more outside on Shields Avenue. The second mistake was failing to actually collect those disco records. These would become dangerous projectiles in the hands of a crowd that was already out of control by the time Dahl detonated his dumpster in center field during warm-ups for the evening’s second game.
What followed was utter chaos. Fans by the thousands stormed the field and began to wreak havoc, shimmying up the foul poles, tearing up the grass and lighting vinyl bonfires on the diamond. The stadium scoreboard implored them to return to their seats, but to no avail. Conditions were judged too dangerous for the scheduled game to begin. The Detroit Tigers were awarded a win by forfeit.
Man Oh Man Oh Man.
It just doesn’t get much better than that, folks.
Well, at least this side of Saturday Night Fever it doesn’t.
