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Disco Demolition Night

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the detonation. The playing field was so damaged by the explosion and by the rioters that the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers.

Date

July 12, 1979

6:00 pm CDT and following

Promotional event: 98¢ admission with a disco record; discounted admission for teenagers

Steve Dahl, Mike Veeck, and several thousand attendees

Game 2 of Tigers/White Sox doubleheader forfeited to Detroit

None

0–30

Damage to the playing field

Approximately 39

Disorderly conduct

July 12, 1979 (first game of a doubleheader)

Chicago, Illinois

47,495

WDIV (Tigers' broadcast)
WSNS-TV (White Sox' broadcast)[1]

WDIV: George Kell, Al Kaline and Mike Barry
WSNS-TV: Lorn Brown, Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall

WJR (Tigers' broadcast)
WMAQ (White Sox' broadcast)

WJR: Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey
WMAQ: Brown, Caray and Piersall

In the late 1970s, dance-oriented disco was the most popular music genre in the United States, particularly after being featured in hit films such as Saturday Night Fever (1977). However, disco sparked a major backlash from rock music fans—an opposition prominent enough that the White Sox, seeking to fill seats at Comiskey Park during a lackluster season, engaged Chicago shock jock and anti-disco campaigner Steve Dahl for the promotion at the July 12 doubleheader. Dahl's sponsoring radio station was WLUP (97.9 FM, now WCKL), so admission was discounted to 98 cents for attendees who turned in a disco record; between games, Dahl was to destroy the collected vinyl in an explosion.


White Sox officials had hoped for a crowd of 20,000, about 5,000 more than usual. Instead, at least 50,000—including tens of thousands of Dahl's listeners—packed the stadium, and thousands more continued to sneak in after capacity was reached and gates were closed. Many of the records were not collected by staff and were thrown like flying discs from the stands. After Dahl blew up the collected records, thousands of fans stormed the field and remained there until dispersed by riot police.


The second game was initially postponed but was forfeited by the White Sox the next day by order of American League president Lee MacPhail. Disco Demolition Night preceded, and may have helped precipitate, the decline of disco in late 1979; some scholars and disco artists have debated whether the event was expressive of racism and homophobia. Disco Demolition Night remains well known as one of the most extreme promotions in MLB history.

Hooliganism

Post-disco

Ten Cent Beer Night

- the 1998 Whit Stillman film about the end of the disco era

The Last Days of Disco

; Hoekstra, Dave (August 2016). Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died. Foreword by Bob Odenkirk and photographs provided by Paul Natkin. Chicago, Illinois: Curbside Splendor Publishing. ISBN 978-1-9404-3075-1.

Dahl, Steve

Dickson, Paul (2012). . New York: Walker Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN 978-0-8027-1778-8.

Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick

Fingers, Rollie (2008). . Cincinnati: Clerisy Press. ISBN 978-1-57860-335-0.

Rollie's Follies: A Hall of Fame Revue of Baseball Stories and Stats Lists and Lore

Frank, Gillian (May 2007). "Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 16 (2): 276–306. :10.1353/sex.2007.0050. JSTOR 30114235. PMID 19244671. S2CID 36702649.

doi

Young, Christopher J. (Summer 2009). "'When Fans Wanted to Rock, the Baseball Stopped': Sports, Promotions, and the Demolition of Disco on Chicago's South Side". The Baseball Research Journal. 38 (1): 11–16.

Zeitz, J. (October 2008). "Rejecting the center: Radical grassroots politics in the 1970s—second-wave feminism as a case study". Journal of Contemporary History. 43 (4): 673–678. :10.1177/0022009408095422. JSTOR 40543229. S2CID 153550017.

doi

Archived November 2, 2019, at the Wayback Machine

Whitesoxinteractive.com's Disco Demolition story page

Archived May 3, 2014, at the Wayback Machine

WBBM-TV news report, July 13, 1979

at MLB.com

MLB Network Remembers

Disco Demolition Night News Headlines

More about the Insane Coho Lips

on American Experience

The War on Disco