It was one of, if not THE best baseball promotions ever, it's still talked about and rehashed today by people like Johnny. On July 12th, 1979 the Chicago White Sox were playing a doubleheader against the visiting Detroit Tigers at the old Comiskey Park in Chi-town. Mike Veeck, the son of owner Bill Veeck decided to hip things up a bit and try to get some butts in the seats. So he contacted legendary Chicago WLUP disc jockey Steve Dahl to run 'Disco Demolition Night' in which fans could get in for .98¢ if they brought a disco record to be added to the hopper to be blown up between games of the doubleheader. The White Sox planned for maybe 30,000 fans, what they got was 60,000 rowdy kids showing up for what was originally promoted at 'Teen Night' before it became 'Disco Demolition Night'. Many fans who couldn't get inside Comiskey Park continually tried breaking down gates and barriers to get inside. There were reports of some fans bringing ladders to the park to get inside over gates.
As the first game of the doubleheader played out, players realized things were somehow, well, not the usual fare. For starters, the sweet smell of marijuana was wafting through the stadium all through game one. Some fans who couldn't get their disco records they brought to the hopper simply used them as frisbees. Said former Tiger (and NY Met) Rusty Staub: “They would slice around you and stick in the ground. It wasn’t just one, it was many. Oh, God almighty, I’ve never seen anything so dangerous in my life. I begged the guys to put on their batting helmets.”
Then came the disco record blow up. Dahl gave a huge countdown in centerfield and KABOOM went thousands and thousands of disco records. The fans took this as an invitation to join Dahl on the field. First the bases vanished, then the pitching rubber was dug out, next went home plate. A batting cage was dragged onto the field and destroyed. Fans climbed foul poles, they hung from the second level over the first. Up next was the roaring campfire out in center field. By the time they did get the fans off the field it was deemed too dangerous to play on and the White Sox were forced to forfeit the second game of the doubleheader to the Tigers by umpire Nestor Chylak. In some kind of cosmic baseball fate, Chylak was also the home plate umpire for another ill fated yet famous baseball promotion (and forfeit), 10¢ beer night in Cleveland in 1974.
Disco did die a very public death that night at the hands of Steve Dahl, Garry Meier and the kids with DREAD cards (A promotion Dahl had started years earlier while on in Detroit--DREAD--Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco) of which Johnny was one. Disco died and all it took was one forfeit by the White Sox. All in all a great trade for American society.
Two video clips for you, an 'as it happened' news coverage and then Steve Dahl discussing Disco Demolition with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
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