Bill Veeck: Pinch-Hitting Midgets, Disco-Hating Riots, and Other Acts of Genius

The Chicago White Sox last won a World Series in 1917, one year before the Boston Red Sox, but you don’t hear much talk about curses or tortured generations of fans on the south side of the Windy City. The Cubs are the city’s – and much of the nation’s – doomed franchise of choice. The White Sox perhaps get a smaller share of attention (and sympathy) in part because of the infamous 1919 scandal in which several members of the "Black Sox" agreed to throw the World Series for gamblers. Fair enough. Tops on the list of reasons to love the White Sox, though, is the slightly less scandalous and infinitely more entertaining Bill Veeck, the eccentric owner of the team for most of the 1960s and 1970s who turned marketing into a mad science.

As the team prepares to host Game 1 of the World Series on Saturday night, the New York Times appropriately remembers Veeck today, though the article isn’t long enough to properly focus on each piece of weirdness, especially Disco Demolition Night, a 1979 promotion at Comiskey Park that almost ended up making Mrs. O’Leary’s cow look like a friend to the city. That night, disco-hating Chicagoans were invited to bring albums to the stadium and watch the offending tunes blown up in center field between games of a doubleheader. This link provides a good summary of what went wrong. One key paragraph among many:

Those fans who turned up late were surprised to find out that their records were no longer being taken for the demolition (quite enough had been collected), and throughout the opener those discs found their way onto the field frisbee-style, along with beer, golf balls with "disco sucks" written on them, and the occasional fireworks. Across one of the catwalks in the outfield, a banner hung with a pot leaf on it, and (allegedly) a cloud of smoke from the weed was hovering over the outfield bleachers. The bleachers, every seat taken and filled up even in the aisles, were shaking noticeably, to the point that some feared possible collapse. On top of it all, two fans attempted to climb the left field foul pole.