What Funky Thing Happened on July 12th. You’re Going to Dig It!

The first time I heard this story it was as part of a program like Baseball’s Most Memorable Moments or something like that on the MLB Network or ESPN.  You know the type of shows they broadcast when there is rain delay.

On July 12, 1979, a stunt was held at Chicago’s Comiskey Park during a double header between the the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers.  The disc jockeys from Chicago’s WLUP “The Loop” FM, Steve Dahl and Garry Meier approached the White Sox with a crazy attendance boosting idea to promote the death of disco.

As the 1970s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing its finale. To many people of the time, it didn’t die fast enough.  I remember the talk about its death but I can’t say I was immune to disco fever.  From what I remember disco was dead but the movie Saturday Night Fever brought it back from the dead.

Instead, disco 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. That incident, which led to at least nine injuries, 39 arrests and the cancellation and forfeit of a Major League Baseball game, is what put the last nail in disco’s coffin.

On American radio, Rock DJs all over the country were being displaced when the stations which to the disco format.  Not all DJs found it necessary to wage a vendetta.  Only Dahl was inspired to launch a semi-comic vendetta aimed at “the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease.”

With the permission of the White Sox, July 12th was declared “Disco Demolition” night and  Dahl blew up a dumpster full of disco records between the games of the doubleheader. The first mistake organizers made on Disco Demolition night 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. WLUP and the White Sox expected perhaps 5,000 more fans than the average draw of 15,000 or so at Comiskey Park. What they got instead was a raucous sellout crowd of 40,000-plus 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, which 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, as 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 while the stadium scoreboard implored them to return to their seats.

If these links don’t work, you can just search youtube and find videos about the incident.

This hasn’t been the only crazy nightmare stunt associated with Major League Baseball.  Google search 10 cent beer night and read about Cleveland Indians game on June 4, 1974.  I guess it is something about the 1970s.