”Stars and Strikes” with author Dan Epstein

America 1976.  Colorful. Complex. Combustible.  

A year of Bicentennial celebrations and presidential primaries, of Olympic glory and busing riots, of “killer bees” hysteria and Pong fever.  For both the nation and the national pastime, the year was revolutionary.

It was the craziest season of baseball’s most colorful decade.  A year which witnessed the “Big Red Machine,” the rise of the “Bronx Zoo”-era New York Yankees, the dismantling of the Oakland A’s dynasty, the onset of full-scale free agency, the outrageous antics of team owners Bill Veeck, Ted Turner, George Steinbrenner, and Charlie Finley -- all set against the star-spangled backdrop of America’s Bicentennial.

Listen in as author Dan Epstein visited the Clubhouse for this highly entertaining trip back to 1976...


Dan Epstein is an award-winning journalist, pop culture historian, and avid baseball fan who has written for Rolling Stone, SPIN, Men’s Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, MOJO, Guitar World, Revolver, LA Weekly and dozens of other publications.  He is the author of the acclaimed Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s.  A Detroit Tigers fan since the mid-70s, he adopted the Chicago Cubs as his National League team in 1980, for better and (mostly) worse.