inning. Te RiverDogs set the record for the lowest attendance ever at a baseball game – zero – and Veeck got a ton of free publicity. “I gave 140 interviews all over the
world,” he boasted. Another promotion that struck
gold was Tonya Harding Minibat Night. A crowd larger than the sta- dium’s 5,400 seating capacity showed up to see Harding, whose ex-husband whacked her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, on the knee with a metal baton dur- ing training for the U.S. Figure Skat- ing Championships in 1994. OK. So maybe that promotion was just a little bit off color. But it was also Military Appreciation Night and the notoriety wasn’t surpassed until Yankee all-star Alex Rodriguez played in Charleston while preparing to return to action after a hip injury in 2013. Under Veeck’s watch, the River-
Dogs also have held a Salute to Duct Tape Night (“the single greatest substance known to man or woman,” according to Veeck) given away a funeral (contestants had to write a 50-word essay) and given fans “bobble legs” (similar to bobble heads but with a different part of the anatomy bobbling) to honor, or maybe to make fun of, Bill Veeck, who lost a leg in combat during World War II. “Dad would have loved it,” Veeck said of his father, who moved on to that great baseball stadium in the sky in 1986. Veeck’s father probably didn’t love
the promotion that apparently drove his son out of baseball for 10 years. He purchased the White Sox in 1975, and Mike joined him in Chicago. Tings went well for the Veeck family, for a while at least.
“1977 was an unbelievable year.
Fans would stay for an hour after games and sing songs,” Veeck remem- bered, adding that the Sox even out- drew their crosstown rivals, the lovable but usually pathetic Cubs, that year.
But that was also the season the
seeds of Veeck’s temporary exit from the world of baseball were planted. Te team held a Disco Night, draw- ing around 22,000 people for a game with Seattle. Two years later, local disc jockey Steve Dahl blew up a disco record at a shopping center. Tat was all Veeck needed to leap into action. “I called him and asked him if he wanted to do it at Comiskey Park,” Veeck recalled. Disco Demolition Night drew
many more fans and a much rowdier crowd than Veeck or anyone else could have anticipated. Sixty thou- sand people pushed their way into the park on July 12, 1979, while another 40,000 partied outside at 35th and Shields, which has since been re- named Bill Veeck Boulevard. It prob- ably should be noted that the White Sox drew an average of only 16,211 people per game that year. Te idea – Mike Veeck admitted it was his – was to blow up a crate full of disco records between games of a double-header. Following the explo- sion, a mass of humanity rushed onto the field, damaging it to a point where the White Sox were forced to forfeit the second game to the Tigers. Less than two years later, Bill Veeck
sold the White Sox. Tough he tried to find work in baseball, Mike Veeck didn’t return to the sport until 1989. He migrated to Florida and hung drywall for a while before working in marketing for a different game – jai alai – and later at an ad agency. Tat, he said, prepared him for “the third act of what I laughingly call my career.” Te curtain rose on Act 3 in 1989 with a call from Marv Goldklang – who told him “there ought to be a Veeck in baseball.” Goldklang – now Veeck’s business partner with the RiverDogs, along with actor Bill Murray and Dr. Gene Budig, past president of the American League –
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