The biggest failure of a baseball promotion ever. Disco Demolition night in Chicago. If you've not heard of it, set aside ten minutes and watch this ESPN story on the night. I'm going to dig up some pictures.

Shakedown 1979
Cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet

Junebug skipping like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end to it all

And I don't even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don't know just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

Double-cross the vacant and the bored
They're not sure just what we have in store
Morphine city slipping dues down to see

That we don't even care as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below

Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we thought we'd go
Beneath the sound of hope

Justine never knew the rules,
Hung down with the freaks and ghouls
No apologies ever need be made
I know you better than you fake it to see

That we don't even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don't know just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

The street heats the urgency of now
As you see there's no one around

Close second was 10 cent beer night, 50 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Cent_Beer_Night

The story on this promotion was that a local FM radio DJ was going to collect disco albums from fans, stack them up between games of a doubleheader, and blow them up with explosives. Admission to the games was only 98 cents if you brought an album with you.

Once they EXPLODED that pile of records a riot broke out. The White Sox were forced to forfeit the second game.

Before the riot


The DJ


Post Explosion


About the time Harry Caray makes the comment that based on the smell of the place, he wishes he had a cut of the marijuana concession.


And in color


Fire


Drunk climbing foul pole

America used to be fun.

Americans aren't weird

Pretty sure on that early morning I was running on the jogging path on Houston Street near G. Rollie White. For some reason this story never made it into my newspaper reading the day after.

Last night was so crazy!!