baseball

Disco Demolition Night

I was born during Disco Demolition Night, a Chicago White Sox home game in 1979 where unwanted disco records were collected and blown up in center field, causing a near-riot.

When it exploded, the bomb tore a hole in the outfield grass surface and thousands of fans immediately rushed the field. Some lit fires and started small-scale riots. The batting cage was pulled down and wrecked and the bases literally stolen, along with chunks of the field itself.

The police broke it up and the game was forfeited to the Detroit Tigers. It is considered a symbolic marker of the beginning of the decline of the musical fad -- I was born on The Night Disco Died.

Sat, 07/12/2008 - 10:44am
  • A leaked list of the names that will be in today's Mitchell Report on steroid use in Major League Baseball. If this is true, Red Sox fans won't be happy to see Jason Varitek there. Johnny Damon, Trot Nixon, Nomar Garciaparra, and Roger Clemens, less so. (via kottke)

    Update: The post is down. I'll put up the official one when it comes out.
    Update 2: It appears the above list had some inaccuracies. Still waiting for an official one...
    Update 3: Here's the report itself. Since I don't want to go through all 400 pages, I'm still waiting for a list, because hey, I love lists.
    Update 4: Forget it, I'm not going to post a list -- the report is subtler than that. I searched the PDF, though, and Varitek, Nixon, Damon, and Garciaparra aren't in it. Clemens and Mo Vaughn are. Here are the report's conclusions.
    (9) #
    12/13/2007
  • jbg from Boston has, through various channels, procured a copy of the agreement made when the Red Sox handed Babe Ruth over to the Yankees for a tidy sum in 1919 (for selfish reasons). The curse is still reversed! (0) #
    5/9/2006
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