CHICAGO _ Sports teams rarely celebrate the forfeiture of a game, but the White Sox are handing out 10,000 T-shirts at Thursday's Yankees game commemorating next month's 40th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
Like radio personality Steve Dahl's July 12, 1979, event itself, the giveaway is not without controversy. For one thing, it has reopened old debates about whether there were deeper, uglier undercurrents to the rejection of a musical genre extending to the segments of the population that first embraced it.
The White Sox have issued a statement that the "this year's Disco Demolition T-Shirt giveaway was intended to recognize the anniversary of a historic off-the-field moment that has been connected to the organization over the past 40 years."
Whatever the larger picture of what happened, they were harder to discern at ground level 40 years ago beyond the fact a lot of things went wrong when Dahl and his so-called Insane Coho Lips Anti-Disco Army packed old Comiskey Park.
Admitted for 98 cents and a disco record, Dahl's rock-loving listeners were promised their disco singles and albums would be blown up on the field between games of a twinight doubleheader with the Tigers.
It was playing off a recurring on-air bit Dahl had developed since landing at The Loop after his ouster from WDAI-FM, which axed him months earlier when it changed to an all-disco format.
Dahl, a future inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame, would start to play some dance number only to interrupt it with a record scratch and an explosion sound effect.
But with an actual explosion promised, the number of Dahl fans who showed up for the White Sox promotion far exceeded expectations and manageability.
The Sox lost the first game, 4-1. They never got to the nightcap. The reverberations of the on-field stunt still resonate to this day.
(You may be wondering why the White Sox's Disco Demolition T-shirt giveaway is not closer to the actual July 12 anniversary. For one thing, the Sox will be visiting the A's that night. For another, they give away T-shirts at Thursday home games and the only other opening before the anniversary is Independence Day. The Sox have a patriotic-themed shirt planned for fans that day.)
Future Tribune sports writer Paul Sullivan was at Disco Demolition Night 40 years ago, and Phil Rosenthal was close.
Here they share their recollections of what they experienced ...
