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30 Years after Dahl’s “Disco Demolition”, Baseball is Corporate, Sanitized and Falsely Pure

As we reflect on the events that unfolded 30 years ago tonight at Comiskey park, a few things come to mind:

First, not since the "Smokey Vs. The Bandit Debate" have Sox fans and I been so on the same page. Normally, I love to hate on southsiders for failing to fill their stadium, attacking coaches on the field and for well, liking the White Sox. But on that fateful night in 1979, WLUP, Steve Dahl and 70,000 Sox fans got it right. Disco Sucks! Is it a shame that the demolition got out of control? Not really, and here's why: Veck should have known better. 89 cent tickets combined with a complete lack of secrutiy could only have spelled chaos. Also, a major league team sporting those softball uni's the Sox rocked in the late 1970's should have to forfeit af few games.

Second, it's time for Americans to get pissed off again. We live in a time not unlike the late 1970's, shitty economy, a culture of excess and the pop charts are dominated by crappy flash in the pan bubble gum bullshit. It's time for rock and roll to strike back. Maybe we should stop waiting on the world to change and proclaim that we're "mad as hell and not gonna take it any more" by torching a few thousand Jonas Brothers CD's. Incidentally, whatever genius thought it would be a good idea to toss those clean and sober, purity ring wearing Disney corporate creations on the cover of Rolling Stone twice in one year needs to be punched in the balls and stripped of his rock and roll street cred.

Third, and most importantly, the fact that nothing like the disco demolition could happen 30 years later doesn't speak at all to the progress we've made as a society, but rather to the post strike false sanitization of Major League Baseball. Those of us who remember baseball games in the 80's remember a raucous, almost lawless environment where one was free to smoke, drink, curse and fight with little of no repercussions. Ball game antics were not only permitted, but almost encouraged as we affectionately referred to revelers as "bleacher bums".

In today's league, baseball fans are escorted out for being drunk and unruly, discouraged from heckling outfielders and arrested for smoking cigarettes in the bleachers - let alone joints. I know, I know we have to protect the kids. They're here to see their favorite juiced up, wife beating slugger belt dingers and convince their parents to buy them $30 tee-shirts, not to get life lessons in drugs, dysfunction and the proper definition of the term "cunt-rag" as in "Albert Bell! You fucking cunt-rag!". Time was you went to the ball park to grow up. The ballpark was where you became a man. Where you had your first beer, dipped your first skoal and added some choice phrases to your vocabulary. We learned how to gamble at the ball park. Remember "pass the cup"? We learned how to heckle and how to catch hot dogs hurled at us by a vendor three rows back.

The last great bastion of ball park hijinks were the right field bleachers at the old Yankee Stadium. I attended a Yanks - Mets game there once after they'd stopped selling beer in the bleachers. That didn't stop every patron from sneaking in their own stash of booze, weed and smokes. It was about 115 degrees in those bleachers and they were charging 6 bucks a pop for bottles of water. Fights broke out between the Bronx natives and the transplants from Flushing and you really felt like the whole city might burn to the ground that day. This was baseball! But the cathedral is gone now and we're left with falsely nostalgic, cookie cutter stadiums with corporate sponsorship and sushi on the menu. We hear stories of seat jumpers being chased away by ushers in late innings, guys getting ejected for talking during the Anthem and we're paying 12 dollars for a beer - all while Major League Baseball tries to recover from a scandal they allowed to happen in an effort to save their own ass. Baseball's not pure. It's just as dark, hypocritical and imperfect as it ever was - and you know what? That's the way we like it. Because we see ourselves in baseball. We find our flaws reflected in the game's flaws. That's what makes it truly American. It's not perfect and it never will be, but it's ours. The game is flawed, it's fans are flawed, but there's still nothing we'd rather do than watch a ball game. That is until the PC police find the last shreds of fun and kill it dead. Baseball will always be baseball - no matter how many rules or how much corporate sponsorship you add - and fans will always be drunk, rude and heckle our heroes. We're Americans. That's what we do. And this is America's game. So let's have some fun with it. Let's charge the field next time someone hits a Fisk-like game winner in the Series. Let's taunt the shit out of every right fielder in the league. Let's drink, chew, gamble and smoke and let our kids know it's okay. Not all the time, but at the ball park. And for Christ's sake, let's have another rock and roll revolution.

-Wild Bill