Bill Veeck (72 page)

21
. Ibid.
New York Times
, December 14, 1972.

22
.
Newsday
, December 14, 1975.

23
. Robert Markus in
Chicago Tribune
, December 15, 1976.

24
.
New York Times
, December 18, 1975.

25
. AP,
Bangor Daily News
, December 25, 1975;
Sporting News
, March 27, 1976;
Chicago Tribune
, March 10, 1976.

26
. Bill Veeck interview with William J. Marshall, for the University of Kentucky Libraries, A. B. “Happy” Chandler Oral History Project, February 23, 1977.

27
. AP,
Bangor Daily News
, December 31, 1975.

28
. Bowie Kuhn,
Hardball
(New York: Times Books, 1987), 319; Bob Lemon interview with William Marshall, the University of Kentucky Libraries, A. B. “Happy” Chandler Oral History Project, May 15, 1979.

29
.
Chicago Tribune
, January 14, 1976.

30
. Ibid., January 22, 1976.

31
. Ibid., February 3, 1976.

32
. UPI,
Beaver County Times
, February 5, 1976.

33
.
Chicago Tribune
, February 5, 1976.

34
.
Washington Evening Star
, February 25, 1976.

35
.
Sporting News
, March 13, 1976;
Washington Post
, February 27, 1976.

36
.
Sporting News
, March 20, 1976.

37
. Ralph Novak in
People
, April 19, 1976.

38
.
Chicago Tribune
, February 27 and March 1, 1976.

39
.
Bangor Daily News
, March 10, 1976.

40
.
Chicago Tribune
, March 19, 1976. This appeared in Rick Talley's column, and Talley admits it was a close approximation of the actual conversation.

41
. Pat Williams interviews, 1997–98, no. 82. Spencer ended the interview with the words “He enjoyed life and loved the game. I'm glad I played for him.”

42
.
Chicago Tribune
, February 18, 1976.

43
. Ibid., April 10, 1976.

44
. The quotes from Condon, Mike Veeck, Talley, and Hemond all come from a piece by Amalie Benjamin in the
Chicago Tribune
, April 14, 2004. Richards's comments on the moment suggest he reverted to character after leaving the field in costume: “ ‘With Veeck running this team, you got to learn to expect anything,' Richards said afterward, denuded of his wig. ‘That outfit is gone now. I put a match to it when I took it off. Would I ever dress up in Revolutionary War gear again? I might for a price.'”

45
.
Chicago Tribune
, September 5, 1976, D3.

46
. Ibid., December 12, 2010.

47
. Harry Caray with Bob Verdi,
Holy Cow!
(New York: Villard, 1989), 210–11.

48
. Tim Wiles, “Music of the Sphere,” in
Baseball as America: Seeing Ourselves Through Our National Game
(Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2002), 133. Mike Veeck had a different version of how Caray began the custom. According to this version, Caray at first demurred at the request from the Veecks, father and son; they begged for weeks, but Harry did not want to sing it. Finally blackmail was employed: “We told him we had a cassette copy of him singing this song, and we were going to play it whether he wanted us to or not, so he might as well sing live.”

49
. Ralph Novak in
People
, April 19, 1976.

50
. Allen Able, “Baseball Now Game for Unbridled Egos, Veeck One of Dying Breed,”
Globe and Mail
, March 17, 1979.

51
.
Wilmington Star-News
, August 9, 1976.

52
. AP wire copy, August 10, 1976, in Veeck file, National Baseball Library.

53
. Interview with Mark Plotkin, July 15, 2009.

54
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, September 17, 2010. After Rosita died, Faust bought another donkey, which was six years old when Faust retired in 2010.

55
.
Chicago Tribune
, September 2, 1976.

56
. Dan Helpingstine and Leo Bauby,
South Side Hit Men: The Story of the 1977 Chicago White Sox
(Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005), 24.

57
.
Time
, April 25, 1977.

58
.
Sporting News
, October 16, 1976.

59
. Ibid., October 15 and November 6, 1976.

60
. Ibid., October 23, 1976.

61
.
Chicago Tribune
, November 24, 1976.

62
.
Sporting News
, March 31, 1977.

63
.
Time
, April 25, 1977;
Sports Illustrated
, March 28, 1977.

64
. Interview with Mike Veeck, June 28, 2008.

65
.
Chicago Tribune
, June 8, 1977.

66
. Richard Roeper,
Sox and the City: A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz
(Chicago: Chicago Review, 2006), 114.

67
.
Milwaukee Journal
, August 1, 1977. The article was entitled “As in Wreck: Veeck Joins Fisticuffs in Stands.”

68
.
Chicago Tribune
, October 2, 2010. The actual name of the song is “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”

69
. Roeper,
Sox and the City
, 117.

70
.
Sporting News
, October 29, 1977.

71
.
Chicago Tribune
, November 2, 1977.

72
.
Baseball Quarterly
2, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 17.

73
.
Globe and Mail
, March 17, 1979.

1
.
Washington Post
, June 1, 1977; January 5, 1986;
Palm Beach Post
, December 5, 1986.

2
.
Washington
Evening Star
, June 1, 1977.

3
.
New York
Daily News
, November 19, 1977.

4
. Ron Blomberg and Dan Schlossberg,
Designated Hebrew: The Ron Blomberg Story
(Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2006), 138.

5
.
Chicago Tribune
, June 14, 1978;
Ocala-Star Banner
, June 14, 1978.

6
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, June 16, 1978.

7
. Ibid., June 15, 1978.

8
.
Chicago Tribune
, June 16, 1978.

9
.
Score
(CBS test publication), May 9, 1979.

10
.
Milwaukee Journal
, July 1, 1978.

11
. Rick Talley,
The Cubs of '69: Recollections of the Team That Should Have Been
(Chicago: McGraw-Hill Contemporary, 1989), 205.

12
. Tom Melody in the
Akron Beacon Journal
, August 21, 1978.

13
.
Chicago Tribune
, September 29, 1978.

14
. Joseph Thomas Moore,
Pride Against Prejudice: The Biography of Larry Doby
(New York: Greenwood, 1988), 164.

15
. Larry Doby interview with Tom Harris, February 18, 1994; interview with William Marshall, August 1, 2009.

16
.
Los Angeles Times
, January 4, 1986.

17
.
Chicago Tribune
, February 10, 1979.

18
. Mike Veeck and Pete Williams,
Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy and Passion in Your Workplace and Career
(Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2005), 147.

19
.
New York Times
, July 5, 2009.

20
. Eliot Salant, who responded online to the piece on Disco Demolition Night that appeared in the
New York Times
, July 5, 2009.

21
. Art Hill,
I Don't Care If I Never Come Back
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 243.

22
. Interview with Clarence Page, October 29, 2009. John-Manuel Andriote, the author of
Hot Stuff: A Brief History of Disco
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), wrote one of the severest critiques of Disco Demolition in a blog attached to a
New York Times
article on the thirtieth anniversary of the event: “No one wants to admit it—as if all the violence and destruction was somehow just ‘innocent fun'—but racism and homophobia were stoking the fire at Comiskey Park as much as those vinyl records…. This is why I laugh when I see today's baseball fans doing their silly moves to the Village People's ‘YMCA'—one of the gayest songs ever made by a group of men who laughed all the way to the bank with the money they made from people who hated gay men but couldn't (maybe didn't want to) see the stereotyped gay images of the musicians themselves…. Disco music was fun dance music. That's all it was ever meant to be. It grew out of the same R&B roots as rock and roll. It was the record companies that drove
it into the ground with overkill (24/7 dance music). Funny that no wedding or bar mitzvah today is much fun without at least some ‘retro' disco music!”

23
.
Palm Beach Post
, September 16, 1969.

24
. Veeck and Williams,
Fun Is Good
, xxiv.

25
. Richard Roeper,
Sox and the City:
A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz
(Chicago: Chicago Review, 2006), 142.

26
.
Sporting News
, November 10, 1979.

27
.
Chicago Tribune
, December 4, 1979, C3.

28
. UPS,
Palm Beach Post
, April 15, 1980.

29
.
Chicago Reader
, May 9, 1980

30
. E-mail to the author, March 15, 2009.

31
.
Chicago Tribune
, August 26, 1980.

32
. Interview with Bruce Kraig, October 3, 2009. He added in a follow-up e-mail: “By the way, that night Ross Baumgarten of the White Sox pitched his best game in the bigs, a one-hitter against the Angels (Rod Carew got the only hit or, as Harry Caray used to call him in a guttural voice: Rod Careeeewww).”

33
. Jim Piersall,
The Truth Hurts
(Chicago: Contemporary, 1984), 150.

34
. AP,
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
, August 24, 1980;
Chicago Sun-Times
, August 24, 1980.

35
. Phone interview with Bill Gleason, August 11, 2009.

36
. Jerome Holtzman in the
Chicago Sun-Times
, October 1, 1980.

37
.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
, September 9, 1980.

38
.
Modesto (CA) Bee
, October 25, 1980.

39
.
Palm Beach Post
, December 5, 1980; John Helyar.
The Lords of the Realm
(New York Ballantine, 1995), 242.

40
.
Youngstown Vindicator
, December 12, 1980.

41
. Ibid.

42
.
Dallas Times-Herald
, December 14, 1980. David Israel, then working for the
Chicago Tribune
, called Pete Rozelle of the National Football League and asked him if there was anything at all wrong with DeBartolo. Rozelle had a deep interest in the family, which already owned the 49ers, and he was totally sensitive to the issue of gambling. Rozelle told Israel that DeBartolo was clean; the issue was a matter of not fitting into the club. “Was it bigotry against Italians, the certain generation, or was it disaffection with Veeck?” asked Israel who suspected it was a combination of both. (Interview with David Israel, September 20, 2009.)

43
. Interview with Ray Grebey, August 17, 2009.

44
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, December 19, 1980.

45
. William O. DeWitt interview with William J. Marshall for the University of Kentucky Libraries, A. B. “Happy” Chandler Oral History Project September 29 and October 1, 1980.

46
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, February 4, 1981.

1
.
Atlanta Journal
, February 9, 1981.

2
.
New York
Daily News
, February 3, 1981.

3
.
Boston Globe
, January 7, 1981.

4
.
New York Times
, February 3, 1981.

5
.
Newark
Star-Ledger
, February 3, 1981;
New York Times
, February 3, 1981.

6
.
Chicago Tribune
, May 5, 1981.

7
. Marvin Miller,
A Whole Different Ball Game: The Sport and Business of Baseball
(Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1991), 368.

8
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, July 25, 1982;
Los Angeles Sentinel
, October 13, 1983, B2.

9
. Usher's manual, Chicago Cubs, 2011;
Chicago Sun-Times
, July 25, 1982.

10
. Interview with Greg Veeck, March 12, 2011.

11
. Interview with Ray Grebey, August 17, 2009.

12
.
Chicago Sun-Times
, January 5, 1986.

13
.
Milwaukee Sentinel
, November 12, 1981;
Rock Island Argus
, January 7, 1986.

14
.
Arizona Republic
, March 9, 1982.

15
.
Baltimore Afro-American
, June 2, 1982;
Tuscaloosa News
, June 9, 1982.

16
. Interview with Monte Irvin, November 7, 2008.

17
. Pat Williams interviews, 1997–98, no. 1.