Veeck, As In Wreck

The other night, I watched a funny and inspiring documentary about Bill and Mike Veeck called The Saint of Second Chances. You really need to see it, but I’ll give you a couple quick bits on these two birds.

Bill owned the Chicago White Sox and was called “the maverick who changed baseball.” Because of an injury when he was in the Marine Corps, Bill had a wooden peg leg. He used to stroll around the ballpark like he was Long John Silver. His son Mike was the parrot.

Bill and Mike have really brought a lot of fun to America’s pastime over the years. They introduced the exploding scoreboard, which shot off when a Sox player corked a homer. They had a nun giving massages in the bleachers, a local barber giving haircuts in the outfield. They even had a pig deliver a bag of balls to a flabbergasted umpire behind home plate.

The best was when Bill put Eddie Gaedell, a 3-foot-7 dwarf, up to bat. With almost no strike zone to work with, the midget walked on four pitches. Another good one was when Mike staged a Disco Demolition promotion at Comiskey Park between a double-header with Detroit Tigers. 98 cents and a disco record was all you needed to get in. The place was packed. They had thousands of disco records piled in a huge crate and blew it sky high. This stunt was also featured in the great Bee Gees documentary that came out a couple years back.

That goddamn event wrecked the field and started a riot. Mike was pretty much banned from Major League Baseball after that. It sent him into a tailspin for years. But Mike never quit. He fought his way back to the game he loves and today he owns a bunch of successful minor league teams. And now his son, Night Train Veeck, has teamed up with him. Mike is an old friend of ours and we worked together on promos and events for his bestseller Fun is Good. You should read it, Bucko. And even if you don’t give a damn about baseball, you should watch this documentary. The most memorable part is the story of a personal tragedy in Mike’s family and how they pulled through. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll realize what’s really important in life.

Keep your dukes up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c

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