Crack of the Bat, Boom in the Sky: America’s Favorite Doubleheader
Baseball and fireworks tied the knot under the stars. We’ve been invited every summer since.
If you’re reading this, chances are high that you’ve watched fireworks from a baseball stadium at least once in your life.
No other sport is more closely associated with Fireworks than Baseball. They are the perfect couple.
Most games are played at night and outdoors. The season is played during holidays such as Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day whose traditions include fireworks. With so many games on the schedule, teams need something to entice fans to keep returning to the ballpark.
But have you ever wondered when the marriage between Baseball and Fireworks was consummated?
Or better yet, when did the first sparkler sizzle? Was it a church wedding or a shotgun Roman candle elopement behind the dugout? Was it love at first KA-BOOM, or did they slow-dance through a field of sparklers before igniting the full pyrotechnic passion? Did they court with quiet firecrackers, or were they cohabiting under the same grandstand before unleashing a full sky-blazing, heart-thumping, kiss-me-under-the-Katyusha kind of union? Who proposed—Baseball on bended knee with a diamond, or Fireworks with a sky-written “Marry Me”?
Let’s investigate, shall we?
We know the Chinese invented fireworks in the 7th century, supposedly to scare away evil spirits.
We know John Adams called them “illuminations” and they were set off to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the inauguration of George Washington as the first President in 1789.
We know that baseball played exclusively day games until May 24, 1935 and we also know that Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks put on a fireworks show at the first MLB night game, played at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.
I think that game was when Baseball and Fireworks told their friends and family, “I this could be the one.”
But for the “first date” of these loud love birds, we need to go back to Monday, July 5, 1909.
Barney Dreyfuss1 owned the Pittsburgh Pirates. He’d just opened Forbes Field a few days earlier. Barney had an idea way ahead of its time: a postgame fireworks show. But remember, this is 26 years before the first night game.
The Pirates held a doubleheader: game one started at 10:30 am, game two at 3 pm (it lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes), then the fans just waited … and waited … and waited … because what else were you going to do back in 1909? … and waited some more … and then were treated to a postgame fireworks show at approximately 8:30 pm.
When did Baseball and Fireworks begin “going steady?”
Baseball and Fireworks, and all of their friends, absolutely fell in love in 1960.
That’s when Bill “Mr. Fireworks” Veeck introduced an exploding scoreboard at old Comiskey Park to celebrate Chicago White Sox home runs.
Fans loved it. It was love at first boom.
The stodgy baseball establishment hated it. Here’s an excerpt from the bio of Veeck from the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR):
“It shrieks, wiggles, burps, whines and twinkles,” The Sporting News marveled. “Fireworks explode beneath the scoreboard while tape recordings give out virtually every sound imaginable … a cavalry charge, machine-gun fire, two trains crashing head-on, subway screechings, jet bombers, and a woman screaming, ‘Fireman, save my child.’”22 The cacophony delighted fans and infuriated opponents. Cleveland outfielder Jimmy Piersall threw a baseball at the board. Casey Stengel orchestrated a puckish response: After Mickey Mantle hit a homer, Stengel and the Yankees paraded in front of the visitors’ dugout waving sparklers.
The exploding scoreboard at Comiskey Park lit the fuse for the possibilities of Baseball and Fireworks to get married.
The established baseball owners dismissed Veeck and made fun of his crazy new promotions, but they gradually followed his lead on fireworks and more ideas too.2
Postgame firework shows became more and more popular through the 1960s and 1970s, both in the major and minor leagues.
When did Baseball and Fireworks get married?
Because I was there, I’m going to claim the official marriage between Baseball and Fireworks took place when 58,980 fans attended a minor league baseball game with postgame fireworks on July 2, 1980.
I swear to you, I was there. It was my first experience with Baseball and Fireworks and one of the key moments that lit the fuse of my bond with baseball.
My family lived in Littleton, Colo. and I’ll never forget watching the Denver Bears (the Montreal Expos triple-A team) at Mile High Stadium. Yes, a minor league baseball team once shared the same stadium as the NFL’s Denver Broncos. It was not just a one-game thing. It was a verrrry different time.3
I was 6 years old, going on 7, at the time. I even named my first Little League team the Bears.
Tim Raines, the future Hall of Famer, hit an inside-the-park home run in the game. My dad and I talked about this endlessly — all the time, whenever we saw Tim Raines on TV, we’d tell anyone who would listen that we saw this. When Raines tripled and won MVP of the 1987 All-Star Game in Oakland, I told people around me that I saw him hit an inside-the-park homer in the minors.
To my relief, when I looked it up on newspapers.com, our memories were correct. Here’s the story — again, it was a whopping 58,980 fans in attendance — which set a record for a minor league baseball game. As the UPI story notes, the fireworks were the biggest draw.
These enormous crowds in Denver were common around Independence Day, fueled by the fiesta of fireworks. The press coverage was instrumental in showcasing Denver as a future MLB city and Mile High Stadium as a suitable location.
MLB awarded an expansion franchise to Denver and the Colorado Rockies debuted in 1993.
Watching fireworks on the field
You know those famed “steps that go nowhere” in left and right field at the Oakland Coliseum? They actually did serve a purpose.
First, it’s how fans reached the temporary seats that were added to the Coliseum when the Raiders shared the facility. Here’s a cool old black and white photo of the Coliseum, before it was ruined by Mt. Davis, and you can (kinda) see why the “steps to nowhere” served an important function.
Second, fans seated in the bleachers had to be cleared out for fireworks show, and those steps are how we got onto the field.
Some of my best memories are being on the actual Oakland Coliseum field, playing catch with my Dad and friends, then laying with our backs down on the grass, and watching the fireworks on July 4th.
Did Baseball and Fireworks ever get divorced?
Baseball and Fireworks never got divorced, but they were on shaky ground and needed some marriage counseling after the events of July 4, 1985 that stretched into the early morning hours of July 5.
It’s known as “the Rick Camp game” now.
The Atlanta Braves hosted the New York Mets, but did not begin until 9:04 pm due a one hour and 24-minute rain delay. In the third inning, the game went into a second rain delay that lasted 41 minutes. The Braves scored four runs in the eighth inning for an 8-7 lead, but the Mets tied the game in the 9th inning.
The game remained tied until the 13th inning, when both teams scored two runs. In the 18th inning, the Mets scored a run for an 11-10 lead. In the bottom of the 18th, Rick Camp, a pitcher with a career .060 batting average and no home runs, tied the game with an improbable home run.
Check out the reactions of the Mets third baseman Ray Knight and left fielder Danny Heep, and the incredulous call of John Sterling (then a Braves announcer).
In the 19th inning, the Mets scored five runs, the Braves could only score two in their half, and the final out was made at 3:55 am.
Yes, the promised postgame fireworks still went off!
Nearby residents called the police. A spokesperson for the Atlanta police department said, “To quote Mrs. Vivian Williams of Capitol Homes, it was ‘inappropriate and ill-advised’ to set off fireworks at 4 am.” Said another woman to a local TV reporter, “I thought it was the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
On the advice of marriage counselors — or maybe it’s the police department — most teams now have a curfew for their fireworks.
Wally Backman played all 19 innings in the game. When he managed the Triple-A Las Vegas 51s, they played against the Isotopes on July 4th. Of course, I interviewed him about that game and his memories. Here was my interview.
Marriage counselors were also needed in San Diego when Baseball and Fireworks got into a fiery dispute on Sept. 16, 1998. You might recall the Great Home Run Chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa was captivating the country.
The Chicago Cubs’ Sosa connected on his 63rd home run at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. The Padres, who were in pursuit of a playoff spot, set off fireworks to celebrate an opposing player hitting a home run off their team. The scoreboard congratulated Sosa. The Padres fans cheered the visitor.
“It’s a joke, a flat-out joke,” Padres pitcher Sterling Hitchock said. “We’re playing for something and the fans turn on us.”
Charles Steinberg, the Padres senior vice president for public affairs, admitted the fireworks might have been “superfluous” and agreed every scoreboard did not need a congratulatory message.
Fireworks: The Minor League MVP
In minor league baseball, with only a few quirky exceptions, every team gets a home game on either July 3 or July 4. 4
The means somewhere in the neighborhood of 116 teams spent the night of July 4 and early morning of July 5 either on a bus or a commercial plane to reach their destination. It’s a relief when both teams arrive on time. 5
I didn’t look at the promotion calendar of all 120 full-season minor league teams, but I feel 99% confident in saying that all of them will have postgame fireworks.6 It’s usually the game with the biggest crowd of the year for minor league teams.
During my two decades working in various jobs in baseball, I’ve experienced some of my best memories, hilarious moments, and heard some funny stories around Fireworks and the 4th of July.
Here’s a few:
In 1997, I broadcasted games for the Single-A Modesto Nuts. The city and the Nuts partner for a fireworks display after the game. Even the fans who don’t buy a ticket to the game at John Thurman Field can watch the fireworks from the golf course located right behind it. But a lot of fans also brought their own fireworks and kept setting them off during the game.
The smoke from the renegade fireworks didn’t blow away. It lingered above the field and a center fielder lost a ball in the smoke at one point.
One of the Isotopes players told me he played a game in the lower minors, where the home team also put on a fireworks show in conjunction with the local municipality that was enjoyed by fans and citizens gathered just outside the ballpark. Because of this, the firework show had to start no later than a certain time (I think he said it was about 9:30 pm.)
Even though the game was still in progress, the game was delayed to allow for the firework show. After the fireworks, most of the fans exited the ballpark, and the game was completed with just a few hundred diehards remaining.
In 2015, I was in Las Vegas at the old ballpark named Cashman Field near downtown. From the location, there was a panoramic view of fireworks going off all over the Las Vegas Valley – some organized by casinos and others, and plenty more unauthorized – from about the fourth inning on.
The next day, I interviewed our starting pitcher, former major leaguer John Lannan, and he told me how unique it was to pitch as fireworks consistently went off during the game.
I can’t remember who said it first, but I’m going to take credit for saying it felt like “the night game” the kids from The Sandlot played.
This year, the Isotopes did fireworks last night on July 3, we’ll do our biggest fireworks extravaganza tonight on July 4, and debut our first Drone Show on July 5.
If you just can’t get enough fireworks, here’s a time lapse from last night. Yep, it was raining during the firework show.
Whether you’re at a ballpark this year, camping, or just hanging with friends in the street, enjoy Independence Day and fireworks, and just remember.
Does Barney Dreyfuss sound like the most stereotypical name for a baseball owner in 1909 or what?
Among his other invenions, Bill Veeck was the first to put the last name of players on the back of uniforms.
Mile High Stadium was originally called Bears Stadium, built just for baseball. Then it was expanded into a dual-sport stadium for the AFL’s Denver Broncos. As part of the NFL/AFL merger, the stadium was expanded to 50,000 seats. Since the minor league baseball team was the first tenant, they continued to play games there, even when there were 70,000 empty seats for some games.
It’s a long story why, but the Albuquerque Isotopes and El Paso Chihuahuas agreed the games would be played July 3 and 4 in El Paso last year, and both days in Albuquerque this year.
The Las Vegas Aviators and Oklahoma City Comets agreed to split the cost of a charter plane that BOTH teams are using to travel between their cities for the games on July 3 and 4.
I’m stunned that six MLB teams — the Nationals, Phillies, Cubs, Mets, Twins and Mariners — are playing day games today, a Friday, and not doing a fireworks show.
Zambelli Fireworks nights' are the only time (other than a Skeens start) the Pirates draw a good crowds these days