19. Big Hair and Plastic Grass by Dan Epstein

Category: 50 Books

19. Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swingin’ ’70s by Dan Epstein

I so enjoyed this book. It was very entertaining.

They layout was perfect. The author would make each year it’s own chapter, and he’d talk about the teams and the players. He’d go through the playoffs and World series and any other shenanigans. Then bwtween the year chapters he’d have a chapter on general ’70s stuff. Sort of like a snippet history lesson. It wasn’t anything too daunting. So it seemed to flow really well. The author kept a light touch on everything.

Most baseball books focus on one player or one team, but this one wasn’t like that. Sure the superstars get more mentions, but since the author went year by year, he was able to talk about a lot more players. It was great to read about the Big Red Machine and the A’s Mustache Gang and not have to read a full-on bio of say, Pete Rose. (Not that i don’t like Pete Rose, mind. he was a bastid, sure, but he was a great ballplayer.)

My only problem with this book is that there needed to be more pictures. There were only 15 pictures. And NONE of them were in color. The hell? One third of the book is about how crazy hilarious the uniforms were and we don’t get to see pictures in color? I’m sure this is the publisher’s fault, trying to save money on printing or whatnot. The book would have been damned near perfect with some color pictures.

Easy read, very entertaining. If you like baseball books you’ll like this one.

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