Thinking back on the1977-78 Southside HitMen season, Commiskey Park 81 times through the summer was the Largest Tavern on Earth. Cheering on our favorite Veeck/Hemond cheating, lovable ham sandwiches cast of characters acting like ball players, every spectator left with an alcohol blood level over the blow limit. Every fan was drunk for every pitch the entire season. I attended 52 games that year.
Commiskey Park was on one side of the urban renewal demarcation line called the Dan Ryan Expressway. Walking across the bridge over an Interstate eight lanes wide, one would find themselves in the Robert Taylor Homes complex, since demolished. High-rise public housing stretching for miles on either side, they were occupied by black sharecroppers from the South. I'm sure there were plenty of baseball fans that lived there but they seldom attended. They worked outside, scalping tickets or using the 'watch your car, Mister' gentle extortion scheme.
A recent conversation involving the Great Extortionist, Jesse Jackson, and his black boycott threatening Major League Baseball brought this forward. For a payoff, it sure was an easy endeavor to maintain. Not many black people ever showed up to watch the game. It very well may have to do with disposable cash available but being intimidated by 50,000 drunk white people probably had more to do with it.
Even with the 9-inning state of being en masse, I simply don't recall any harassment of any black folks working there, men or families that were there for baseball entertainment. This is a 46-year memory, and it would be an interesting study of Police reports coming out of the Bridgeport district on game night concerning race relations. Were African Americans beaten up for being black? In this percolating kettle of, supposedly, white hatred was there ever what is described these days as a 'hate crime'? After the game, there was always plenty of mischief and interactions, how many incidents of unbridled White Supremacy violence were there?
There is plenty of racial violence in present day America. Let's be honest about it.
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The Slaughter of Cities*
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