Riot That 'Killed' Disco

In the summer of 1979, the flailing White Sox were attracting on average just 15,000 fans to a stadium with a capacity of almost 45,000. Bill Veeck needed a gimmick to boost ticket sales, and Mike, the team's director of marketing, turned to Steve Dahl. The previous Christmas, Dahl had been dropped from Chicago radio station WDAI when it switched, like so many others, from rock to disco. He reinvented himself at rival station WLUP as an anti-disco culture warrior who encouraged his followers, the Insane Coho Lips, to besiege and occupy disco nights in the city with the rallying cry "Disco sucks!"

Comiskey Park had previously hosted a "Salute to Disco", with dancers on the field. Mike figured, "We ought to have a night for people who hate disco." He had the brainwave of offering discounted 98 cent tickets to anyone who brought along a disco record for Dahl and his sidekick Garry Meier to ceremonially detonate between games during the White Sox doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. On the night, the stadium was filled to capacity, with thousands more people fighting to get in. The dumpster designated for the disco vinyl soon overflowed, so many of the excess records were repurposed as aerial missiles. The first game unfolded to a ceaseless chant of "Disco sucks!" Afterwards, Dahl and Meier circled the field in a jeep, wearing military fatigues. "This is now officially the world's largest anti-disco rally!" Dahl bragged.

Dahl triggered the explosives, sending shards of shattered vinyl 200ft into the air. More than 5,000 fans took this as their cue to storm the field, tearing up the grass, kindling bonfires, and stealing the bases, until they were dispersed by riot police. With the ground a battlefield, the White Sox had to forfeit the second game. This mayhem was all televised, making it an international scandal. The Veecks were disgraced. Bill sold the team the following year. "That event was so traumatic it broke his heart," author Neal Karlen says in the documentary. Mike became persona non grata in the world of baseball. Jimmy Piersall, the White Sox's own broadcaster, called Disco Demolition Night "the worst promotion in the history of the world".