Moment #96: Disco Demolition Night Goes Awry | MLB's ALL-TIME MOMENTS

This MLB offseason, we are starting a countdown of the 100 greatest moments in baseball history. These moments helped make the game what it is today. They all had an impact in the short or long term and endure to this day in the hearts and minds of baseball fans everywhere. We continue with #96: when maverick Bill Veeck's son's idea turned disastrous.

Disco Demolition Night was a promotion slated for July 12, 1979 at Chicago's Comiskey Park where a crate of disco records were blown up on the field between games 1 and 2 of a doubleheader between the White Sox and Tigers. It sounded like a cool promotion, but it quickly turned ugly and dangerous for fans and spectators.

What many don't know is this ill-fated night all started with a personal vendetta of a Chicago radio DJ. Steve Dahl of WLUP-FM was fired in 1978 by a rival station, WDAI when the station decided to make the jump from rock to disco. Dahl wasn't a fan of the decision that cost him his job and he began a crusade against disco. Luckily for him, there was an open-minded baseball promoter in town.

Mike Veeck, son of famous promotions man Bill Veeck, was the promotions director for the White Sox in 1979 and got the idea for Disco Demolition Night after putting on a promotion for disco fans that drew 20,000 people. He had heard of Dahl blowing up disco records and an idea was born between the two. For just 98 cents, fans would be admitted into the second game of the doubleheader if they donated a disco record to be blown up in center field.

Perhaps Veeck didn't anticipate what would happen next. The City of Chicago surely didn't or they would have sent a larger police presence to the ballpark that day (if not shut down the idea entirely). If you've ever seen the movie300,you know that it's possible for a much smaller army to win a battle. That did not happen on that July night between Chicago police and angry rioters who despised disco.

60,000 people showed up for the event after Veeck was expecting about 35,000 to attend. The number of police officers tasked with controlling this crowd: 50. It became obvious fairly quickly that they were in trouble. Dahl, sensing the momentum he was building with the event, dressed in military gear and got the crowd excited by riding his Jeep around the outfield and blowing up the records in center field. If there is anyone to blame for the night, Dahl is the closest to a single person you could point to.

He riled up the crowd to the point people were jumping onto the field, tearing down batting cages and lighting things on fire. By the time the dust finally settled, 39 people were injured and nine were arrested. As one would expect, Comiskey Park was in no condition to host a baseball game that night, and as a result, the White Sox forfeited the second game to the Tigers.

Only five games have been forfeited by MLB teams since 1970 and most of them are for reasons similar to Disco Demolition Night, where teams weren't able to control their unruly fans. Ten-cent beer night hosted by the Indians in 1974 speaks for itself. Someone had to have seen that coming. Three years earlier, on September 30, 1971 at the final game at RFK Stadium by the Washington Senators, angry fans stormed the field in protest of the team's impending move to Dallas.

As a result, the Yankees won the game. Most recently, Dodgers' fans cost their team a game by hurling souvenir balls onto the field in protest of Raul Mondesi and Tommy Lasorda being ejected in 1995.

While it's funny to look back on such a strange day in baseball history, Mike Veeck's career changed profoundly in the aftermath. Before the 1980 season, Veeck was fired by the White Sox and didn't get another job in MLB until he joined the Tampa Bay Devil Rays organization in 2000. He believes he was blacklisted by the league thanks to the disastrous Disco Demolition Night he helped orchestrate.

There has not been any promotion quite like this since the incident and there's good reason for that. In a time when promoters were pushing the envelope, Veeck ended up taking things a little too far. There was no way for him to know this was the way things would turn out and by the time it was apparent where things were headed, it was too late. For that reason, there is unlikely to be a baseball promotion this memorable -- or disastrous -- ever again.