Category Archives: Sports

Apr 05 2023
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Movie Reviews, Music, Pop Culture, Sports

If the Shoe Fits

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck score big in their modern Cinderella story about one of the greatest underdog victories in sports marketing history

Matt Damon stars as a Nike marketing exec in ‘Air.’

Air
Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis & Jason Bateman
Directed by Ben Affleck
Rated PG-13

In theaters Wednesday, March 5

Move over, Cinderella, and make way for another shoe story. And this one’s no far-off fairy fable.  

Director Ben Affleck’s earnestly crowd-pleasing Air tells the true tale of how a third-rate sneaker company signed a teenage college basketball phenom, Michael Jordan, and revolutionized everything that followed. One of the most groundbreaking deals in the annals of sports marketing, Nike’s affiliation with Jordan sparked quantum changes in pro sports as well as the realms of fashion, celebrity endorsements and lifestyle.  

It catapulted Nike to the top of the sports-shoe pyramid and eventually made Jordan—today widely recognized as pro basketball’s GOAT, its greatest player of all time—an ever-growing multi-million mountain of moola, dwarfing what he ever earned in his entire NBA career as a superstar for the Chicago Bulls and the Washington Wizards.

Air is a rah-rah, rousing feel-good story about taking risks, following gut instincts, sweating bullets and scoring big. It’s like sports in that regard, but it’s not really a “sports drama.” It spends very little time courtside. Most of the plays we see are as business execs watch grainy scouting tapes. The central figure of the story, Jordan, appears only briefly, a silent sentinental seen almost always from behind. We never get a good look at his face, and we hear him speak only one word, “Hello,” over a telephone.

He’s a looming presence without really being present. It’s a bold, completely effective choice from director Affleck, who knows that dwelling too much on Jordan as a character would take us away from the “sole” of the story and the people who made it happen.

So Jordan, and the game of basketball itself, are sidelined as movie focuses, instead, on the human drama—fathers, sons, workaholic businessmen and one super-savvy mom who connected all the dots, against all the odds. It’s like Moneyball crossed with Jerry Maguire and a dash of David and Goliath.

Ben Affleck is Nike’s philosophical founder, Phil Knight.

It opens in the heart of the go-go, greed-is-good 1980s as we learn how Nike is on the financial ropes, floundering far behind its competitors, Adidas and Converse. The board of directors is pressuring CEO and founder Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to cut corners and slash budgets. Advertising honcho Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) bemoans that “George Orwell was right: 1984 is a terrible year—sales are down, growth is down.”

And Nike is down. But Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), in the company’s basketball scouting division, has a bold brainstorm to turn things around…maybe. He wants to use the company’s entire marketing budget to lure Michael Jordan, then only 18, into an endorsement deal, custom designing a shoe that “fits” him in more ways than one, footwear that will become his emblem, his lifestyle, his legacy.

Sonny knows that if his gamble doesn’t roll out a winner, he’ll be out of a job. But he’s all-in. “We build a shoe line just around him. He doesn’t wear the shoe, he is the shoe,” he says. “I’m willing to bet my career on one guy.”

The shoe, of course, would be the Air Jordan, so named for Jordan’s jaw-dropping leaping abilities as a prolific scorer.

Viola Davis plays the mother of teenage basketball phenom Michael Jordan.

Viola Davis plays Jordan’s mother, a shrewd negotiator who innately understands the longterm value her supremely gifted son brings to the table. Marlon Wayans is George Raveling, a superstar basketball coach who only appears briefly but offers some enduring words of inspiration from his past. Comedian Chris Tucker steals his scenes as a Nike marketer with some valuable insights for Vaccaro, especially in dealing with Black athletes. “Always go the mamas,” he tells him. “The mamas run stuff.”

Chris Messina has some spicy comedic bite as a Jordan’s hard-driving agent, David Falk. Matthew Maher is the shoe designer who comes up with the iconic, inspired design for a product that would ultimately travel far, far above and beyond the basketball court.

It’s a juicy, Oscar-bait ensemble, but Damon’s Vaccaro is the heart and soul of the story, the bedraggled underdog who rallies his Nike cohorts—his teammates—behind his big, high-stakes push to land a legend…and help create another one in the process.

Air is Affleck’s fifth project as a director, and it brims with the confidence and slam-dunk sure-footedness he’s developed in The Town, the Oscar-nominated Argo, Gone Baby Gone and Live by Night. The film is rich with ‘80s period-piece touches (handheld video games, Trivial Pursuit, VCRs, running suits) and a soundtrack of expertly curated MTV-era hits (“Blister in the Sun,” “Money for Nothing,” “Born in the USA,” “Time After Time”). It marks the first project of the production company, Artists Infinity, Affleck formed with Damon, his childhood bestie from the ‘hood in Massachusetts.

This is the ninth film in which Damon and Affleck have appeared together, beginning with uncredited appearances as Fenway Park extras in another sports-related human drama, Field of Dreams. They have a natural, unforced ease onscreen together, a natural stride that feels like, well, two old friends who’ve marched along the same path together for years, often as collaborators, doing what they always dreamed of doing, now getting to do it in Hollywood’s big leagues.

And in Air, they’ve found a shoe—and a shoe story—that feels like it fits them perfectly, a cinematic Cinderella’s slipper accented with the Nike swoosh.

—Neil Pond

Jul 02 2018
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Movie Reviews, Sports

Full Court Press

NBA All Stars Go Old School in Basketball Buddy Comedy

Uncle Drew_group

Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber, Nate Robinson, Reggie Miller & Kyrie Irving play former basketball stars who reunite after three decades for a streetball tournament.

Uncle Drew
Starring Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery & Shaquille O’Neal
Directed by Charles Stone III
PG-13

Uncle Drew is a basketball comedy with its roots in television spots for Pepsi Max featuring the NBA’s Kyrie Irving of the Boston Celtics, disguised as an elderly man who schools younger players—or “youngbloods”—in pickup games.

The film takes that concept and runs with it, expanding the plot, adding a half-court of NBA all-stars and some Hollywood live wires.

After a faux ESPN 30 For 30 documentary intro—in which we learn that Uncle Drew was an NBA legend who mysteriously disappeared from the scene three decades ago, at the height of his fame and glory—we begin to meet the players.

UD_D028_20209.JPG

Lil Rel Howrey, Nick Kroll & Tiffany Haddish

Dax (Lil Rel Howery, from Tag and Get Out) is a hapless Foot Locker employer who loves basketball. But traumatized by a childhood buzzer-beater block on the court, he hasn’t been able to play the game since. So now he manages a team from the sidelines and dreams of winning a big annual streetball tournament—and $100,000—at Rucker Park in Harlem.

His gum-smacking, wisecracking nemesis, Mookie (Nick Kroll), thwarts him at every move, however. At the last minute, Mookie steals Dax’s star player, Casper (Aaron Gordon of the Orlando Magic), the rest of his team and his gold-digging girlfriend, Jess (Tiffany Haddish).

Dax is understandably crushed, but things begin to start looking up when he finds the fabled Uncle Drew, mopping up with a cocky youngblood on a playground court. Drew (again played by Irving) agrees to play for Dax’s team, under one condition—if he can bring along his old teammates.

So Dax and Drew set out on a road trip in Drew’s orange, shag-carpeted conversion van to collect Preacher (Chris Webber, who retired from the Golden State Warriors in 2008); Lights (Reggie Miller, the three-point maestro whose entire 18-year career was spent with the Indiana Pacers); Boots (Nate Robinson, the NBA’s first three-time slam-dunk champion); Betty Lou (former WNBA Los Angeles Sparks star Lisa Leslie); and Big Fella (the towering, 7’1” Shaquille O’Neal).

Of course, rounding everyone up is not so easy—and the team certainly doesn’t appear as sharp and game-ready as they were 30 years ago. Preacher, now a bona fide man of the cloth, has to sneak away from his church, and his wife, to play ball. Lights is legally blind. Boots is in a wheelchair—and a psychiatric ward.

Shaquille O'Neal as "Big Fella" in UNCLE DREW. Photo by Quantrell Colbert.

Big Fella (O’Neal) is a martial arts instructor in the Zen zone.

And Big Fella is in the Zen zone as a children’s martial arts instructor—with a mountain-sized grudge on his gigantic shoulders. “Without a good defense,” he tells his class of young students, “your offense means nothing.”

Can Dax and Drew get them all back in shape, and on board?

The big appeal is seeing all these big basketball stars in decades-deep disguise as geezers, then finally breaking out their hidden mojo on the court to show younger hotshot players how it’s done, old-school style—like an NBA edition of Undercover Boss. There’s plenty of humor as Dax and the players jib and jab each other, and basketball fans in particular will appreciate the inside jokes and zingers—Shaq and free throws, Webber’s character inquiring about time-outs.

Howery, Kroll and Haddish are all comedy pros, and the needle on the laugh-o-meter jumps whenever they’re on screen. Director Charles Stone III, whose other films include Drumline and the Bernie Mac baseball comedy Mr. 3000, keeps things light, lively and generally predictable while weaving in some sentimental messages about family, forgiveness and what it means to play a “good game.”

UD_2 (72)

Watch for J.B. Smoove and Mike Epps in small roles, and Erica Ash (who stars as Gwen Sullivan on the BET series In Contempt) as Boots’ granddaughter, Maya, who takes a romantic shine to Dax.

As “non-actors,” the b-ball players roll loose and easy with their parts, especially since they are performing underneath layers of makeup and latex prosthetics, wigs and gobs of glued-on grey facial hair. If there’s ever an award for Best Buns in a Hospital Gown by a Former NBA All Star, well, Shaq’s a shoo-in for a nomination.

Uncle Drkew isn’t a cinematic slam dunk, but it’s a surprisingly solid basketball buddy flick that plays by the rules, shoots for laughs, and scores—especially for sports fans.

In theaters June 29, 2018

Mar 09 2016
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Movies, Sports

Fly Like an Eagle

‘Eddie the Eagle’ soars with inspiring tale of unlikely Olympic star

 

Eddie the Eagle

Starring Taron Egerton & Hugh Jackman

Directed by Dexter Fletcher

PG-13

Ever since he was a tot, Great Britain’s Michael “Eddie” Edwards dreamed of becoming an Olympic athlete. But the odds were always stacked against him.

Weight lifter, pole vaulter, discus thrower, hurdle jumper—he didn’t care. But no amount of backyard “training” made any difference. With congenitally wobbly knees bolstered by leg braces and thick eyeglasses to correct his terrible vision, young Eddie was no one’s idea of the Olympic ideal.

Though it takes a few—or more—liberties, Eddie the Eagle is based on the rousing real-life story of Edwards, who proved all the naysayers wrong to become an Olympic competitor, representing Great Britain in the 1988 Winter Olympics as a ski jumper. The movie traces his improbable journey, against the wishes of his working-class father, who urges him to settle into a proper trade, and England’s stuffy Olympic committee, which thwarts his every attempt to qualify for their team.

“Frankly,” one official dismissively tells teenage Eddie (Taron Edgerton), “you will never be Olympic material—goodbye.”

Eddie counters that curt farewell with his usual optimism, tenacity and pluck. Nothing is going to deter him. He sets off on his own to a Winter Olympics training facility, where he meets former ski champ Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), who reluctantly, eventually agrees to take Eddie under his wing.

As the stocky, bumbling, socially awkward Eddie, Edgerton is miles—or kilometers—away from his best-known former role as a stylish, slick super-spy in Kingsman. Jackman provides American-cowboy grit (all the way down to his boots) as a washed-up one-time “whiz kid” of the slopes and former Olympic star himself, who finds his own path to redemption through Eddie’s relentless ambition.

You probably haven’t heard of British actor-director Dexter Fletcher, whose films haven’t made much of a splash here in America. But he gives Eddie the Eagle a look, texture and sound perfect for its time and place, from Prince Charles and Lady Diana salt and pepper shakers on a kitchen table to the music, which combines pop and rock tunes of the era with instrumental synthesizer swooshes and swirls that would have been right at home driving the grooves of most any 1980s flick.

The movie shares its uplifting underdog spirit with Rocky, Rudy, Seabiscuit, Hoosiers and any number of other film sagas about individuals or teams that come from behind, power through roadblocks or are told they can’t, shouldn’t or won’t ever.

Hugh Jackman, left, poses with Eddie Edwards on the set of EDDIE THE EAGLE.

Hugh Jackman with the real-life Eddie Edwards on the set of ‘Eddie the Eagle’

When Eddie finally makes it to the Olympics, the crowd and the media love the naïve, effusively enthusiastic oddity who barely qualified for his team and who causes the announcers to declare, “The eagle has landed!” when he makes his climactic breathtaking, daredevil descent intact—and alive.

“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part,” we’re told, a quote from one of the games’ founders. And no one embodied that spirit like Eddie, whose inspiring, soaring tale of determination and personal triumph in the heartwarming Eddie the Eagle is a joy to behold as it takes flight.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Feb 01 2016
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Movie Reviews, Sports

Butting Heads

Will Smith tackles the NFL 

1286100 - Concussion

Concussion

Starring Will Smith, Alec Baldwin & Albert Brooks

Directed by Peter Landesman

PG-13

Will Smith has fought zombies, space aliens and killer robots. Now he’s squaring off against an even bigger, completely human foe—and certainly a much more popular one.

In Concussion, he plays Dr. Bennett Omalu, who discovers the link between football and CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy—potentially fatal brain damage from repeated concussions.

The true story (originally told in a 2009 article in GQ magazine) begins as we meet Nigerian-born Omalu in 2002, while he’s working in Pittsburgh as the county coroner’s forensic pathologist. The untimely death, and bizarre final days, of a former Pittsburgh Steeler football Hall of Famer, Mike Webster (David Morse), troubles him: Webster’s autopsy reveals severe brain trauma that caused him to go crazy, freak out and eventually expire of a heart attack. When Omalu learns of other NFL players dying in similar fashion, he investigates further and comes to a conclusion that almost no one wants to hear—especially not the National Football League.

Playing football can kill you.

Unlike some other creatures, such as the woodpecker or the bighorn sheep, Omalu points out, humans have no natural shock absorber in our skulls to cushion the blow when one of our noggins impact with something hard—like another noggin. Nature, or providence, simply did not equip us that way. Therefore, Omalu reasons, “God did not intend for us to play football.”

Smith, a bona fide movie star, is outstanding in a non-flashy role that doesn’t involve car chases, spaceships, shootouts or CGI special effects—just straight-up, strong, dig-in acting and a very plausible, start-to-finish nail-down of Dr. O’s West African accent and mannerisms. He makes you feel Omalu’s passionate sense of commitment—and his dream to be accepted as “American”—as the NFL tries to quash his research and discredit him.

Albert Brooks is Cyril Wecht, the county coroner who helps Omalu while warning him of squaring off against with the NFL. “You’re going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week,” he tells him. Alec Baldwin plays Dr. Julian Bailes, the former Steelers team doctor who assists Omalu in getting his message to football players, managers, agents and the commissioner. “You’ve turned on the lights and given their biggest boogeyman a name,” Bailes says.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Will Smith star in Columbia Pictures' "Concussion."

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Will Smith

British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Prema, the Nigerian student who becomes Omalu’s wife, reminding him that his family name means “He who knows, speaks.”

But the movie belongs to Smith, who tackles what might be his one of his trickiest, juiciest roles—a crusading underdog with a potentially life-saving message that falls on mostly deaf ears. “Tell the truth—tell the truth!” a frustrated Omalu jabs at a NFL team neurosurgeon who refuses to admit there’s any connection between football and brain injury.

As millions of football fans tune into the big game this weekend, it’s a truth that will likely be drowned out by the symphony of cheers all across America.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Feb 27 2015
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Movie Reviews, Movies, Sports

Running to Inspire

Kevin Costner is perfectly cast coach in uplifting true-life sports tale

McFARLAND

McFarland, USA

Starring Kevin Costner, Maria Bello & Carlos Pratts

Directed by Niki Caro

PG

When the folks at Disney were looking for someone to play the coach in this real-life sports drama, they knew who’d be perfect.

Kevin Costner, who turned 61 on Feb. 18, has been in just about every kind of movie, but he’s become a sort of senior statesman of sports flicks, with a career arc that started in the 1980s with baseball (Bull Durham and Field of Dreams) and continued through the ’90s with Tin Cup (golf) and into last year with Draft Day (football).

McFARLAND

Maria Bello, Kevin Costner, Elsie Fisher & Morgan Saylor

In McFarland, USA he plays Jim White, a high school football coach who—like Costner—has been around the block a few times. White doesn’t have a lot of patience with pampered jock-star players who don’t put their hearts, as well as their shoulders, on the line and into the game. An “incident” at the beginning of the movie—in 1987—finds the coach, his wife and their two kids on the move, again, transferred from Boise, Idaho, to the small central California town of McFarland, where he quickly discovers that the mostly Hispanic football team is a flop—but man, can those boys run.

That’s because they’re always running home from school to help their parents, or running after school to work in the fields. White sees their potential as a cross-country running team that could compete with bigger, better-funded schools—and possibly even compete at the state level. Never mind that the school has never had a running team, or that White has never coached one.

It’s a pretty basic underdog-tale movie template, but several things about McFarland, USA make it a standout. For starters, director Niki Caro (whose three previous other features include Whale Rider and North Country, both of which received Oscar nods) never cloaks Costner in the glow of aMcFARLAND “white savior” spotlight; he may be the star, but she makes sure the high school athletes shine. This “based-on-a-true-story” movie is their story, too, and the young actors cast as the runners, all newcomers and relative unknowns, give their onscreen characters personality, substance and dimension.

There’s humor as well as heart as White and his family clash with, and ultimately embrace, their new culture. “You got burgers?” White asks on their first—bumpy—night in town before settling for the local restaurant’s only offering: tacos. Maria Bello does a solid job as Mrs. White, even though she’s not given near enough to do, and Morgan Saylor, who played Dana Brody on TV’s Homeland, is lovely as their teenage daughter, Julie, who falls for the running team’s leader (Carlos Pratts).

We meet parents, neighbors, shopkeepers and other town residents. When the camera pans the crowd at the big state meet in the climactic final race scene, we realize that we—like coach White—have come to know, like and respect all these people, who were once unfamiliar, or even threatening.

As the credits roll, you’ll get to meet the real stars of this story: the now-grown McFarland cross-country runners from the team, and the real Jim White. And if you don’t walk out of this feel-good movie feeling better, more inspired and more uplifted than when you came in, proud of what happened back in this small California town in 1987 and proud of the boys and coach who made it possible…well, you must have seen a different movie than I did.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Sep 08 2014
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DVDs, Movies, Sports

Feel The Draft

Kevin Costner leads all-star cast in behind-the-scenes drama

 0612176BTr1

Draft Day

Blu-ray $39.99, DVD $29.95 (Lionsgate)

 

Kevin Costner leads an all-star cast (including Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Frank Langella, Sam Elliott, Sean Combs, Terry Crews, Tom Welling and Houston Texans running back Arian Foster, making his feature film acting debut) in this behind-the-scenes drama about a pro football team manager navigating and negotiating his way through the hurdles—unhappy fans, a contentious coach and a bottom-line manager—of the NFL’s high-stakes Draft Day. Bonus features include a 58-minute making-of documentary, commentary, and a behind-the-scenes look at the real NFL draft.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Aug 12 2014
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Books, Sports

Of Pens & Pigskins

A roundup of great writing & great writers on football

 Football_Great Writing

Football

Edited by John Schulian

Hardcover, 486 pages, $30 (The Library of America)

 

Half a century of legendary players, iconic moments and classic games come alive again in this collection of more than 40 magazine articles and book excerpts. Standouts include a selection from H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights; Frank Deford’s profile of Johnny Unitas; Michael Lewis on NFL kickers, the least respected players on the field; Bryan Curtis’ piece on Texas Youth Football; Roy Blount Jr. writing about his 40-year love affair with the Pittsburgh Steelers; George Plimpton’s first-person account of what it’s like to play as a Detroit Lion from his book Paper Tiger, plus many more insights, perspectives and observations sure to please any diehard pigskin fan.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Jun 30 2014
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Books, Photography, Sports

Baseball Fan-Tography

Amateur pix taken by fans shows baseball behind the scenes

Fantography_San Diego Baseball

Fantography: San Diego Baseball

By Andy Strasberg

Softcover, 128 pages, $24.99 (Arcadia Publishing)

 

The author, a lifelong baseball lover and 20-year Padres employee, presents this collection of amateur photos taken by fans (including plenty from his own collection) for a decade-by-decade snapshot of goings-on in and around the San Diego fields that were home to Hall of Famers Dave Winfield, Goose Gossage, Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith and Roberto Alomar. The only “fantography” rule: No photos of game action. So, instead, it’s page after page of one-of-a-kind, behind-the-scene, sideline and in-the-stands shots, showing the intense connection of fans to their hometown team, year after year, win or lose. For baseball fans of any stripe, everywhere, it’s a hit.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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May 16 2014
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Movie Reviews, Sports

Here’s The Pitch

Jon Ham stars in unlikely true underdog baseball tale

MILLION DOLLAR ARM

Million Dollar Arm

Starring Jon Hamm, Lake Bell, Suraj Sharma & Alan Arkin

Directed by Craig Gillespie

PG, 124 min.

Based on a true story from 2008, Million Dollar Arm stars TV’s Mad Men leading man Jon Hamm as a struggling sports agent who goes scouting for baseball’s next pitching superstars in an unlikely part of the world.

After hopeful negotiations to rep a pro footballer (played by Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Rey Maualuga) fall through, Hamm’s character, J.B. Bernstein, and his business partner (Aasif Mandif) turn their sights to baseball, hoping to find a young, unknown, unsigned player. But where? All the international hot spots (Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, even China) have already been staked out and tapped.

In a flash of inspiration, J.B. sees a cricket match on TV and gets an idea: Go to India, a country where baseball is virtually unknown, find cricket “bowlers” who can pitch, and bring them back to America.

MILLION DOLLAR ARMSo he concocts a contest, called the Million Dollar Arm, and sets off to the other side of the globe to discover what he hopes will be the next ballpark sensations—and the ticket to keeping his small agency afloat.

Hamm is the star of this show, clearly, but Million Dollar Arm is also a movie about journeys, geographical as well as emotional. As J.B. adjusts to his new surroundings in India, we meet the two young men, Dinesh (Madhur Mittal, from Slumdog Millionaire) and Rinku (Suraj Sharma, the star of Life of Pi), that will eventually be chosen for a shot—a long one, at that—at baseball’s big leagues, and we come to understand their anxieties about leaving their families, their rural villages, and the only ways of life they’ve ever known.

MILLION DOLLAR ARM

Madhur Mittal and Suraj Sharma portray the two contestants ultimately chosen to come to America.

J.B. is accompanied on his trip by a grumpy semi-retired American baseball scout (Alan Arkin, dialing in his usual comical crankiness), and he ultimately brings his new recruits home to learn fundamentals under the tutelage of a former MLB player now coaching college ball (Bill Paxton, portraying real-life USC coach Tom House with just the right dose of sunburn and seasoning).

MILLION DOLLAR ARM

Lake Bell and Jon Hamm

Bollywood actor-comedian Pitobash brings both heart and humanity to his sidekick role as J.B.’s volunteer Indian assistant, who dreams of someday becoming a baseball coach himself. But the movie’s real “heart” belongs to Lake Bell, as J.B.’s brainy med-student guesthouse renter, whose graceful, unforced acting keeps her character’s slow-blooming romance with J.B. feeling more sincere than sappy.

The Disney folks surely took some license, as moviemakers often do, but all of this really happened. To see just how closely the film paralleled the real characters, stay for the credits and the photos, video clips and other postscript highlights.

More cynical viewers might wish for a more cynical movie, a movie with more rough edges or tough breaks or dark corners. But for anyone who wants to bask in a ray of early summer sunshine, this uplifting, spirit-boosting tale of baseball, dreams, second chances and the grand, glorious game of life itself could be just the ticket.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Apr 30 2014
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Books, History, Pop Culture, Sports

Bicentennial Ball

In 1976, America’s pastime mirrored the celebration—and craziness—of the nation’s mood

Stars and Strikes

Stars and Strikes

By Dan Epstein

Hardcover, 400 pages, $28.99 / Kindle edition$12.74 (Thomas Dunne Books)

 

The author, who previously chronicled ’70s baseball in Big Hair and Plastic Grass, focuses here on one particularly distinctive year during that decade, looking at America’s pastime through a prism of current events and popular culture as the nation celebrated its 2000 birthday and the 1976 season unfolded in a colorful, often zany setting—changing fashions and hairdos on and off the field, disco-pop music, TV shows and movies, and news headlines about Patty Heart’s kidnapping, Legionnaires Disease and an election campaign that would lead to end of the Watergate era and a new president from the South. As the author says, it’s a tale “rich with electrifying moments, oddball events and unforgettable characters—all set against the star-spangled backdrop of the Bicentennial.”

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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