It sounds like the beginning of an off-color joke from 1976, but it's actually the premise behind "Play That Funky All-Star Game," a really cool piece put together by Dave Jordan of Instream Sports, in which he and I speak with 1976 NL Cy Young winner Randy Jones and 1976 NL All-Star Al Oliver about the Midsummer Classic at Veterans Stadium — including the festivities that surrounded it, and the Legionnaire's Disease paranoia that followed it — and are later joined by Rob Parissi of Wild Cherry, whose "Play That Funky Music" soundtracked the second half of the summer of '76 for me and millions of others. It's a long piece, for sure, but it's full of wonderful tidbits and is well worth a read for any fan of 70s baseball...
Been getting a lot of coverage and praise for Stars and Strikes (which actually got up to #10 on Amazon's baseball books chart this past week!), all of which is of course very much appreciated. Star-spangled thanks in particular go out to Chris Vognar for his excellent write-up of the book in the Dallas Morning News, to Ron Kaplan for featuring it on his Baseball Bookshelf podcast and for his favorable Book Reporter review, and to Steve Keane for having me on his Keane On Sports radio show. Got a lot more radio appearances coming up, and even some TV stuff in the works, which I'll keep you posted about.
Also, wanted to thank everyone who came out to my reading events in Pasadena and Sausalito. I've got one this Thursday at 7:30 pm with fellow scribe Jeff Polman at Joxer Daly's (11168 Washington Blvd. in Culver City), and I'm doing a solo reading/signing this Saturday at 5 pm at Skylight Books (1818 N. Vermont in Los Feliz). Those are gonna be the last two LA-area events for me until at least late summer, so please come on out and get on down, 70s baseball style!
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