The Bronx Is Burning meets Chuck Klosterman in this wild pop-culture history of baseball's most colorful and controversial decade.
The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the '70s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations. Outspoken players embraced free agency, openly advocated drug use, and even swapped wives. Controversial owners such as Charlie Finley, Bill Veeck, and Ted Turner introduced Astroturf, primetime World Series, garish polyester uniforms, and outlandish promotions such as Disco Demolition Night. Hank Aaron and Lou Brock set new heights in power and speed while Reggie Jackson and Carlton Fisk emerged as October heroes and All-Star characters like Mark "The Bird" Fidrych became pop icons.
For the millions of fans who grew up during this time, and especially those who cared just as much about Oscar Gamble's afro as they did about his average, this book serves up a delicious, Technicolor trip down memory lane.
"Dan Epstein--the leading chronicler of 70s baseball."
Deadspin
"I used to tell people 'You had to be there.' Well, now you don't have to have been there. You can relive the color, the passion, the wild, raucous fun of baseball in the '70s in Big Hair and Plastic Grass. Dan Epstein and baseball in the '70s go together like Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon."
Allen Barra, Wall Street Journal
"The '70s were a colorful, druggy time in baseball, as well as everywhere else, but this history makes the decade particularly vivid....As Dan Epstein's enormously entertaining Big Hair And Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball And America In The Swinging '70s demonstrates, the decade was colorful in many ways....Epstein's book waves its freak flag high."
