New Slammers co-owner Mike Veeck on Tuesday entertained a audience with stories about his family’s colorful experience in baseball while promising an “open-door policy” for the local team. The Slammers have gotten off to a good start, showing up in the Frontier League with an average crowd of 3,800 per game, Veeck said at a luncheon for the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Veeck said want to “earn your respect” and “be part of this community.
” “A community doesn’t needed a ballpark, but a ballpark can’t exist without a community,” he said. Veeck interspersed comments about the Slammers with a ranging look back at his own experience as the man behind the ill-fated Disco Demolition Night promotion in 1979 at old Comiskey Park, his baseball comeback with the St. Paul Saints minor league franchise, and his parents’ ownership of the White Sox and old St.
Louis Browns in the major leagues. Veeck devoted much of his talk to the legendary Disco Demolition Night, which captured an anti-disco attitude of the time and seemed to be a great promotion with Comiskey Park packed, fans surrounding the stadium, and others trapped in interstate traffic trying to get to the ballpark with disco records that would be blown up on the field in between games of a twi-night doubleheader. The first sign of trouble, however, was when he got a call from the late Mayor Jane Byrne, Veeck said.
“When the mayor calls you and says, ‘Mr. Veeck,’ you know you’re in t.
