OTD July 12, 1979: Disco Demolition Night – Tigers, White Sox Game Canceled After Disco Records Explode, Fans, Fire Take Over Field (Video)
Disco demolition Night. Odds are if that phrase rings a bell you are a fan of the Detroit Tigers or Chicago White Sox. Or just an MLB fan who is old enough to remember an event planned at a baseball game that went horribly wrong!
The idea of DDN was created by Steven Dahl, a DJ in Chicago. At the time the DJ didn’t realize he was about to become a household name – which wasn’t easy to do before social media.
Chicago History recalls the event – “The Chicago White Sox twilight doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers that erupted into chaos. To encourage attendance, the White Sox hosted WLUP 97.9 rock DJ Steve Dahl, who was known for mocking disco and had been fired from a previous radio job when the station switched from rock to disco.
They asked fans to bring a disco record to the ballpark in exchange for 98-cent admission, and those LPs were to be gathered and then blown up in a controlled explosion between games.”
Things turned out to be far from “controlled.”
Though a crate of records was blown up by Dahl in center field between games as planned, as the Sox started to warm up for game 2, attendees started to rush onto the field. With security focused on keeping gate-jumpers from entering the ballpark from outside, the crowd could not be held back. An estimated 7,000 people were on the field for 40 minutes before security and police in tactical gear were able to remove them.

Above – DJ Steven Dahl fires up the crowd right before the first explosion of Disco albums.
In that time, a bonfire was set in center field, a batting cage was destroyed, and bases were stolen. Ultimately 39 people were arrested, and the Sox had to forfeit Game 2.
It was a mess, to say the least.
In the end, the Tigers, who won Game 1 of the twi-night double header 4-1, were gifted the Game 2 win as well.