Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

Big hair and plastic grass, a funky ride through baseball and America in the swinging '70s, Dan Epstein

eng

technical information on music

Includes bibliographical references (pages [321]-325) and index

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Big hair and plastic grass

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Dan Epstein

a funky ride through baseball and America in the swinging '70s

"What the 1960s were to America, the 1970s were to baseball, and Dan Epstein has finally given us the swinging book the '70s deserve."---Rob Neyer, Espn.com columnist and author of Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups --"If Jim Bouton's 1970 memoir, Ball Four, was the book that showed what sex, drugs, and rock ǹ' roll were doing to pro baseball, Epstein's Big Hair and Plastic Grass is the book that shows what that 1970s brand of baseball did to the rest of us. Only someone who loves America could write this book. This is an ESPN Classics trip right through the freaky heart of our national identity."---Dean Kuipers, Los Angeles Times --"If Roger Angell is baseball writing's perfectionist Tom Seaver, then Dan Epstein must be its irrepressible Dock Ellis. His irreverent prose pops like a Nolan Ryan fastball, rages like an Earl Weaver tirade, and is as memorably untamed as Oscar Gamble's Afro. Epstein lives and breathes baseball and pop culture with equal passion and intensity---and will make you care deeply about both."---Adam Langer, author of Crossing California and The Thieves of Manhattan --From Astroturf and free agency to garish polyester uniforms and World Series night games, baseball witnessed more changes during the turbulent 1970s than in all of its previous decades combined. While America endured the "Me Decade" that brought us Watergate, gas-station lines, and Studio 54, Hank Aaron and Lou Brock set new marks in power and speed: Roberto Clemente, Carlton Fisk, and Reggie Jackson astounded fans with their World Series heroics; and the eccentric antics of such players as Mark "The Bird" Fidrych and Al "The Mad Hungarian" Hrabosky were often matched (or even eclipsed) by controversial team owners such as Charlie O. Finley. Bill Veeck, and Ted Turner. Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" and the Oakland A's stood as contrasting dynasties ("the hairs vs. the squares"), while George Steinbrenner got things burning in the Bronx again, and the Pittsburgh Pirates "We are Family" team captured the imagination of fans everywhere. --The '70s were also a time when baseball caught up to the rest of American society. While much of the country experienced a terrific upheaval in the '60s, Major League Baseball had remained surprisingly conservative throughout it all. Yet in the '70s, pop culture and the counterculture collided head-on with the once-conservative sport, rocking it to its very foundations. The Black Power movement, the sexual revolution, the emerging drug culture, the music and---especially---the fashion all reshaped the game in ways that would have been unthinkable just years before. Pop culture historian Dan Epstein goes behind the headline-making stories of the day as Major League Baseball let its freak flag fly: from the pitcher who threw a no-hitter while (he'd later claim) tripping on LSD, to the Yankees teammates who showed up to training camp announcing they'd swapped wives and children, to the outlandish and ill-fated Disco Demolition Night. --In the sometimes stat-heavy world of baseball fandom, the author mines his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport to serve up this delicious helping of American pastime pie---the perfect book for fans who care just as much about Oscar Gamble's Afro as about his OPS. Big Hair and Plastic Grass is a fun-filled trip down memory lane and a thorough but irreverent look at baseball's most overlooked and misunderstood decade. --Book Jacket

1970 -- 1971 -- Ashtrays and astroturf -- 1972 -- 1973 -- The polyester proliferation -- 1974 -- 1975 -- Rows, 'frows, anything goes -- 1976 -- 1977 -- Chicken suits and cheap beer -- 1978 -- 1979 -- Epilogue : Th party's over