This is Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 21-game winner for the 1965 AL champion Minnesota Twins, and a man who once sported what were perhaps the greatest pair of muttonchops ever seen on a major league diamond. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and chatting with Mr. Grant during a 2002 event at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and will never forget the riotously off-color stories he told me about his old roommate Vic Power. So it pretty much goes without saying that I'm extremely stoked and honored to be appearing with him this October 7 on a panel presented by The Baseball Reliquary as part of their "Baseball in the Swinging '70s" exhibit at the Burbank Central Library, located at 110 N. Glenoaks Blvd in scenic downtown Burbank.
The exhibit, which runs from now til October 30, takes a look at baseball's most colorful, contentious and tumultuous decade through photographs, artwork, and such sacred 70s artifacts as Dock Ellis's hair curlers, (which Dock himself donated to the Reliquary) and charred 45s from Comiskey Park's "Disco Demolition Night". Much of the exhibit's written content has been excerpted from my book Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s. If you live in Southern California and love 70s baseball, you won't want to miss this!
You also won't want to miss the October 7 panel, which will also include Jeffrey Radice, director of the acclaimed new Dock Ellis documentary No No: A Dockumentary, which is now playing in theaters around the country and is also available via iTunes, Amazon Instant, Vudu and On Demand via select cable providers. Dock will understandably be one of the main topics of conversation — Mudcat was his teammate on the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates — but we will be hitting plenty of other 70s baseball topics, as well. The panel will start at 7 p.m. and run for an hour, and I will be signing copies of Big Hair and my new Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76 (both of which will be available for purchase thanks to the fine folks at Skylight Books) afterwards. Hope you can make the scene!
Both the exhibition and the panel are FREE and open to the public. For more info, call the Burbank Central Library at 818-238-5600.
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