Interview Author Dan Epstein talks funky Chicago baseball in the '70s

In former Chicagoan Dan Epstein’s new book Big Hair And Plastic Grass, the Chicago native takes a long look at the ’70s, the most eventful decade in baseball history, when the DH, free agency, and AstroTurf turned America’s pastime upside down. While Big Hair covers the glories of the Big Red Machine and the ’77 Yankees-Dodgers Series (as well as Dock Ellis’ LSD-assisted no-hitter and Pete Rose’s racist rants), it also covers plenty of Chicago baseball lunacy. As he prepared to launch his book tour (coming here in late June), Epstein helped The A.V. Club determine which team holds the Crosstown Cup of ’70s baseball absurdity.

The A.V. Club: The subtitle of your book is “A Funky Ride Through Baseball And America In The Swinging ’70s.” Was Chicago’s ride funky?

Dan Epstein: Certainly the Sox’s Bill Veeck, both as an owner and a showman, made ’70s baseball fascinating. This is a guy who knew he was putting an inferior product on the field and didn’t have enough money to correct the situation, so he resorted to outrageous promotions, ranging from a beer-stacking contest to the infamous Disco Demolition, and he introduces, for the first and last time, Major League uniforms with shorts. They only wore them for a couple of games in ’76, but it was so traumatic for Sox fans that many believe they wore them for an entire season.

AVC: How were you supposed to slide in shorts?

DE: Veeck’s wife claimed it got hot on the Comiskey Park field, so the players might enjoy a little ventilation. The first game they wore them, the Royals were laughing as the Sox took the field, threatening to kiss them if they got to first base.

AVC: A significant portion of your book is about that era’s haircuts. How did the Chicago teams fare?

DE: Chicago definitely played into the uniquely hirsute aspect of ’70s baseball. You’ve got Joe Pepitone, who came to the Cubs in the early ’70s, wearing not one, but two different toupées, one for on the field, and one that was longer for his carousing hours. Then you’ve got Oscar Gamble, who had this amazing ’fro while with the Indians earlier in the decade, but the Yankees made him trim it down significantly. When he came to the Sox in ’77 he was free to let that thing grow to ridiculous proportions.

AVC: So the Sox basically kicked the Cubs’ asses in ’70s silliness?

DE: The Sox had a much more interesting ’70s. The Cubs were never really able to shake their collapse in ’69. After the Leo Durocher era you’ve got several years of profoundly mediocre baseball on the North Side. Dave Kingman was hitting these cinematic home runs, but other than that, really not a whole lot of reasons to go to a game at Wrigley Field.

AVC: Your book also reveals some minor Chicago connections to some of baseball’s bigger ’70s icons. The ’79 Pirates are struggling in the World Series, so Willie Stargell contacts Chicago’s—

DE: When you’re down three games to one, who you gonna call for a motivational speech? Radical black comedian Dick Gregory! The interesting thing about the ’70’s Pirates is they were racially harmonious. There weren’t the factions by race you had on other teams. So I would imagine when Gregory showed up it wasn’t just the brothers who were down with it.

AVC: The book’s main villain is hated A’s owner Charlie Finley, who started a trend when he paid his players to grow mustaches and forced them to take nicknames like Catfish and Blue Moon.

DE: Another Chicago connection. Finley was a Midwestern insurance dude and preferred to run the team from his Chicago office. This was before cable TV or satellite radio, so he hired a teenager he’d seen dancing for change in The Coliseum parking lot to call him during games and tell him what was going on. And this teenager grew up to become MC Hammer. So there’s another reason to hate Finley: He’s personally responsible for the rise of Hammer.