Time heals another wound: White Sox to give away Disco Demolition t-shirts on June 13

Robert Feder reports this morning that the Chicago White Sox will soon give away 10,000 t-shirts commemorating the 40th anniversary of Disco Demolition.

The Sox have been doing a t-shirt giveaway during Thursday home games for some time now, and some of the t-shirts have been pretty nice. You have to have nice promotions when you're rebuilding, as the Sox are.

I wouldn't know personally, but I bet that a certain North Side baseball club had sweet promotions when it was rebuilding a few years back. Now I think fans entering Wrigley might get a commemorative tissue paper, if that certain North Side baseball club bothers to have any promotions at all. And, if it does have a Tissue Paper Night, it's a cinch that the certain North Side baseball club will collect a king's ransom from the sponsor who gets to put its name somewhere on said tissue paper. I look forward to the day, hopefully soon, when the White Sox can also have crumby promotions.

Anyway, that's the t-shirt, pictured above, and one may be yours if you are one of the first 10,000 arriving for the Thursday, June 13 game (first pitch at 7:10 p.m. against the hated New York Yankees) at Guaranteed Rate Field. Steve Dahl is scheduled to throw out the first pitch. All is finally forgiven.

What's to forgive, you ask?

The Detroit Tigers were in town for a doubleheader on Thursday, July 12, 1979.

Between games, Dahl, then the enfant terrible morning jock at WLUP, was to lead his Coho Lips Army onto the field to blow up a cache of disco records. The records were to be supplied by fans, who could get general admission tickets that night for only 98¢ apiece (get it?) if they also brought a disco record.

(I'll pause here while the Baby Boomers and the hipsters in the audience explain what a "record" is to those in the Millennial and Gen-Z cohorts who may not know.)

Old Comiskey had a capacity of about 50,000 in those days; that night there were perhaps 70,000 in the house. Many got in without paying even 98¢.

Although I was a frequent patron at Old Comiskey in the Summer of '79, I was not there that night. I was in law school then, still living with my parents, watching the broadcast on Channel 44. Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall were doing the Sox games in those days. After the records were blown up (a very big explosion in center field, which by itself probably jeopardized the second game of the twin bill), thousands of drunken kids stormed the field -- and I remember Piersall, who almost sounded like he was crying, shouting, "This is not baseball!"

And it wasn't. Ultimately, though the field was finally cleared, it was unplayable, and the White Sox were obliged to forfeit Game 2.

The whole sorry spectacle, as originally broadcast on Channel 44, was available for some time on YouTube. Sadly, it seems to have been removed. I was, however, able to find this ESPN coverage of the debacle.



Although I wasn't at Disco Demolition, I was at the park three times that same week. Twice before, and once after.

It was a lot more fun before.