Big Hair and Plastic Grass

Where Chicago Rocked — And I Did, Too

When I moved with my mom and sister to Chicago from Los Angeles at the tail end of 1979, I knew little about the Windy City beyond which sports teams called it home. But there were two things that I was certain would happen once I set foot in Chicago: 1) I would become a White Sox fan, and 2) WLUP (a.k.a. "The Loop") would be "my" radio station.

These two things were, of course, inextricably linked via the infamous "Disco Demolition" promotion at Comiskey Park during the summer of 1979, wherein WLUP DJ Steve Dahl blew up a mountain of disco records in the outfield between the halves of a double header, and hundreds of wasted rock fans swarmed the field to celebrate. The controversial event put Dahl and the radio station on the national map, and put them squarely on my radar, as well — even though I was seven hundred miles away (spending part of my summer vacation with my grandparents in Tuscaloosa, Alabama) at the time.

I loved disco music, but I also had to admit that the market had become completely over-saturated with songs for and/or about dancing, the majority of them several notches in quality below what I considered to be the "good stuff" (Chic, Bee Gees, Sylvester, Donna Summer); and having already become completely cynical about the way the American public dutifully gobbled up any trend that People magazine or 20/20 told them was hip and happening, I found it refreshing to observe what appeared to be a consumer rebellion against the "product" foisted upon them by the record business. (That said "rebellion" had a racist and possibly homophobic undercurrent to it was entirely lost on me at the time.) And as a 13 year-old boy with an adolescent male's intrinsic attraction to all things rowdy and radical, I watched the TV news footage of the Disco Demolition riot and desperately wished that I could have been there to witness all the fuck-shit-upping in person.

My musical tastes were also shifting and changing, with the intense rapidity that only seems to occur when you're in your teens. Brilliant power pop singles like Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams," Sniff N' the Tears' "Driver's Seat" and Blondie's "Dreaming" were pulling me away from disco as the summer of 1979 turned to fall; and at the same time, the hard rock sounds of KMET-FM were increasingly distracting me from the Top 40 stations on Southern California's AM dial. As if my obsession with Strat-O-Matic Baseball wasn't sufficiently nerdy enough, I'd started playing Dungeons & Dragons with a couple of school pals, and the stuff KMET typically played — Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Queen, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd — had a heavier, more mysterious vibe that offered a better soundtrack for orc-slaying than anything on KHJ-AM or Ten-Q.

KMET also broadcast The Dr. Demento Show every Sunday night, and the good Doctor regularly played "Do You Think I'm Disco" and "Ayatollah," two novelty tunes (based on Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" and the Knack's "My Sharona," respectively) recorded by Steve Dahl with his backing band Teenage Radiation. So by the time we were ready to leave L.A. that December, my ears had basically become completely primed for what WLUP had to offer — namely, Dahl (and his co-host Garry Meier) hilariously pushing the bounds of comedic taste in the morning, and heavy AOR action the rest of the day. While my nascent White Sox fandom would never really flourish, despite my great affection for Bill Veeck (that uninspiring 1980 Sox squad was a long way down the road from the glory of the 1977 South Side Hitmen, and Comiskey Park turned out to be a pain in the ass to get to from our apartment on the Near North Side), The Loop was there for me from the first time I turned on my clock radio in my new bedroom. And it was everything I wanted it to be.

And much more, really. Within the first week of regular listening, the station turned me on to AC/DC, UFO, Thin Lizzy, Rush, ZZ Top, April Wine, Angel City (a.k.a. The Angels), Montrose and Rainbow, to name several bands whose existence I'd been (at best) only dimly aware of before moving to Chicago. WLUP dug deeper into aforementioned Led Zep, Tull, Queen, Purple and Floyd catalogs than KMET ever did, while also serving up proggier stuff like Yes, ELP and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and more straight-up rock fare like the Who, Heart, Aerosmith, Foghat, Bad Company, Humble Pie, Robin Trower, Joe Walsh, Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen, much of which was pretty new to me, as well. And not just these artists' hits, but deep cuts as well — especially if you tuned in later on in the evening.

After decades of ossified "classic rock" programming, where "Free Bird" is inevitably followed by "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Stairway to Heaven," it's kind of hard to convey just how exciting and eye-opening this all seemed at the time; I felt like I'd gotten a free ticket to a far cooler world than the one I actually inhabited, and every week I seemed to hear something else that opened up new dimensions in my musical universe. Come the spring of 1980, The Loop would be the station that hipped me to Def Leppard's first album, On Through the Night, as well as Van Halen's Women and Children First, Pete Townshend's Empty Glass, and Judas Priest's British Steel, all of which I still love to this day. And while the station pushed "local boys" Styx, REO Speedwagon and Survivor way too hard for my taste, they made up for it with endless spins of Cheap Trick deep cuts — I swear I must have heard them play every single song off Heaven Tonight and Dream Police at one time or another in the spring of 1980...

Cheap Trick really were the consummate Loop band, circa 1980, in that they embodied a musical world in which hard-driving, arena-ready guitar rock could happily co-exist with sharp, crunchy, catchy-as-all-hell power pop. Because along with all the bong-rattling sounds mentioned above, WLUP program director Sky Daniels kept the New Wave-friendly likes of Tom Petty, Blondie, Pretenders, Pat Benatar, the Romantics, the B-52s, Flying Lizards, the Clash, the Ramones, Todd Rundgren (and Utopia), Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Joe Jackson, and even the syntho-futurist sounds of Gary Numan's "Cars" in regular rotation. Off Broadway, a brilliant power pop band out of nearby Oak Park, had a massive local hit at the time with the song "Stay In Time," but The Loop also gave regular spins to three other killer tracks — "Full Moon Turn My Head Around and Around," "Bully Bully" and "Bad Indication" — from On, the band's debut album.

My ears were wide-open to all of this, but even at the time I sensed it was an unusual mixture. I have a vivid memory from that spring of walking down Michigan Avenue on a Saturday morning, on my way to the animation class I was taking at the Art Institute, and seeing three scary-looking, denim-clad stoner dudes in their late teens walking towards me, one of them carrying a giant boom box. As they got closer, I noticed that the radio was completely covered with Loop stickers, and that it was blasting "Back of My Hand" by British band the Jags — which was being played on WLUP at that moment. These were exactly the kind of guys who, back in L.A., would have called me "Devo" for wearing short hair and a skinny tie, and threatened to kick my ass unless I could name at least four songs off of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. But on this morning, we just gave each other a friendly grunt of "The Loop!" over the sprightly tune of a track that was essentially Costello-lite; after all, if The Loop was playing it, it had to be cool, right?

That was the kind of cultural impact The Loop had in those days, at least among rock listeners in Chicago; I would estimate that at around 75 percent of the things I talked about at school with my friends that spring were based on what we'd heard on The Loop. (Most of the other 25 percent had to do with either embattled Mayor Jane Byrne and convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, both of whom were also subjects of Teenage Radiation parodies.) We would sometimes even go to Steve & Garry's early-morning "Breakfast Club" broadcasts from the Carnegie Theater (which was only a few blocks away from Ogden, where I attended the second half of eighth grade), or hang out after school around the elevator banks of the John Hancock Building, where WLUP's studio and offices were located, in hopes of catching Steve Dahl on his way home — and despite his stature as the premiere radio bad boy of the day, he was incredibly pleasant to us the few times we actually met him. When we went to Chicagofest '80 that August at Navy Pier, the Loop booth was probably the most popular attraction outside of the live music stages; it was completely swarmed by long-haired guys and gals wearing faded plaid flannel shirts over black t-shirts that read, "The Loop FM 98 — Where Chicago Rocks". It was like a tribe, one which I felt stoked and proud to belong to.

So it's kind of amazing, in retrospect, to look back and realize that I was pretty much "done" with The Loop by fall of 1981. Part of it had to do with WLUP's unexpected firing of Steve & Garry that February, which made mornings a lot less fun and cast a pall over the station as a whole; but a bigger part of it had to do with the changes that were happening in the rock landscape, as well as in my own head. When I first started listening to the station, the perfect rock dreamworld that WLUP presented and represented seemed magically infinite, like it was going to keep expanding (and rocking!) forever; in reality, it was on the verge of running out of gas. By the end of 1980, John Lennon was dead, Led Zeppelin was done, Queen had gone funky, Pink Floyd was on post-Wall hiatus, and UFO, Thin Lizzy and most of the other Loop mainstays were reaching the point of diminished artistic returns. The brief, Knack-fueled industry vogue for "skinny tie" bands had also cratered, which meant that most of the New Wave-associated acts that once dotted the playlist were now persona non grata. WLUP filled the void with the platinum-selling likes of REO Speedwagon's Hi Infidelity, Styx's Paradise Theater, Phil Collins' Face Value, the Who's Face Dances, Journey's Escape and Foreigner's 4, all of which were grisly enough on their own but profoundly depressing when taken in toto. I instinctively knew I was going to need something angrier and more interesting to help me survive the Reagan years, so I eventually gravitated down the dial to WXRT, which at least played the likes of the Clash, Costello, Parker, Ramones, etc., even if you had to sit through shitloads of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell to get to them...

Nevertheless, I have to admit that I felt some sadness when I heard the news that WLUP was bought out by a Christian broadcasting group and will, for the first time since its inception in 1977, cease to play rock music. I can't say that I've even listened to the station in 25 years, and I certainly spent much of the decade before that actively avoiding (and even mocking) it. But that first year-and-a-half of Loop listening completely changed my life — it made me care about music on a much deeper level than I ever had before, and made me want to play (and write about) it — and the news of WLUP's demise reminds me of how lucky and grateful I am that I got to experience the station during its early peak, at a time in my life where I was completely receptive to what it was layin' down. It's like hearing about the death of a ballplayer whom I passionately rooted for as a kid, or of a former best friend whom I hadn't heard from in 35 years; my current life won't be impacted at all by WLUP's absence, and yet respect must still be paid for the difference that it made. Thanks for rocking me, WLUP.

"Hey, Yankees..."

On Monday, August 8, I'll be doing my only Chicago-area book-signing for the paperback edition of Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76 , in conjunction with a rare 35mm showing of one of the biggest film hits of 1976 (not to mention the greatest baseball film ever made): The Bad News Bears.

This joyous event will take place at Chicago's legendary Music Box Theater, located at 3733 N. Southport Ave. in Chicago. I will be co-hosting the event with WGN radio's Nick Digilio, and copies of Stars and Strikes will be available for sale in the lobby via those fine folks at The Book Cellar, my favorite local indie bookstore. Tickets for the screening are $12, or $9 if you're already a member. The actual screening begins at 7 pm, and will be followed by a discussion of the film led by Nick and myself.

If you've already read Stars and Strikes, then you know how much this film means to me; the one-two punch of The Bad News Bears and the sudden emergence of spectacular Tigers rookie Mark "The Bird" Fidrych went a long way towards making ten-year-old Dan transfer his obsession with war comics and G.I. Joe dolls to all things baseball-related. If it wasn't for the Bears and the Bird, my life might have taken a much different path, and I almost certainly wouldn't have written Stars and Strikes or Big Hair and Plastic Grass many years down the road. So it's a huge honor to be able to present this wonderful film — whose slyly subversive script still holds up remarkably well 40 years later — on a big screen.

If you've never seen the film before, or it's been years since you've watched it, here — via a piece I wrote for Rolling Stone this spring — is a little reminder of why it remains the greatest baseball movie ever made.

There are no Cubs or White Sox games scheduled that night — so if you're in or near Chicago, I hope you'll come out and say hey. Buttermaker would have wanted it that way, man...

 

Stars and Strikes — Now In Paperback!!!

The first time you see your new book in print is a huge thrill — but it's an almost equally huge thrill to get a paperback edition of said book in the mail, because it means that enough people bought the hardcover version to make a paperback printing worthwhile for the publishers. So I'd like to thank everyone who has already bought Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76 for making the paperback possible!

And for those of you who haven't bought it yet — or already did, and dug it enough that you'd like to buy many, many copies for your baseball and pop culture-obsessed acquaintances — the paperback edition officially hits the streets via St. Martins Griffin on February 9. You can pre-order copies from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or of course from your friendly neighborhood indie bookseller.

I probably won't be doing a ton of reading events in support of the paperback — full-scale book tours require copious amounts of time and money — but I'm sure I'll schedule a few things in Chicago and the Midwest before the summer is out, especially since 2016 is the 40th anniversary of the Bicentennial. Watch this space for future updates!

Big Hair Blow-Out!!!

So, baseball fans, here's the deal:

My wife and I will be moving to Chicago at the end of July. While sorting through the stuff in our storage space in advance of the move, I discovered that I still have two big boxes full of first edition hardcover copies of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging 70s.

I really don't want to have to schlep these boxes to Chicago, and I could really use a few extra bucks to put towards this exciting (but also stressful and rather expensive) transition. Therefore, I've decided to blow these copies out at a mere $20 a pop, shipping included — and yes, I will happily autograph each copy you purchase to you, your friends or your family members. (Father's Day is comin' right up, folks!)

Just make your purchase using the PayPal button below, tell me how many copies you'd like, and what your favorite teams or players from the 1970s were (or those of your gift recipient, whose name you should also include in the message section of the order form). And I will do the rest!

Yes, that's right — you too can own an autographed first edition of my flashback to baseball's coolest, wildest and weirdest decade, a book that received an A- grade from the The A.V. Club, which described it as "enormously entertaining". Lose yourself in the polyester-clad antics of Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, Dave "The Cobra" Parker and a whole lotta other swingin' dudes with great nicknames and even more impressive hair. And it can be yours for only twenty bucks, shipping included! (All told, that's thirty-three percent less than I was previously asking for autographed copies of BH&PG! Such a bargain!)

This offer is good til the end of June, or until those boxes run out. (Wish I could offer you something similar with Stars and Strikes, but I'm all sold out of that one.) Also, please note that this deal only applies within the US; if you're in another country and would like to purchase a copy, please contact me through the email link on this blog, and we'll figure out what the shipping cost will be. As always, I am profoundly appreciative of your support, your help, and your good vibes. Please spread the word, above all — KEEP IT FUNKY.

Peace, Love and Soul,

Dan

UPDATE: All of the books have been sold. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

The Baseball King of Italy (and more!)

Ballplayer, musician, standup comic, photographer, international man of mystery, and answer to the trivia question "Who was standing at the plate when the NYC blackout plunged Shea Stadium into darkness?" — Lenny Randle is easily one of most interesting dudes I've ever interviewed. Read about him (and his ongoing attempt to turn baseball into a major Italian sport) in my latest piece for Rolling Stone Sports.

And hey, while you're at it, check out my recent Rolling Stone feature on Hunter Pence of the San Francisco Giants, another extremely interesting ballplayer (even if he doesn't think he is). You can also find my recent Rolling Stone feature on Detroit Tigers ace David Price HERE; he may not be as "out there" as the two aforementioned gents, but he's a helluva hurler — and he's the proud papa of Astro, the cutest dog in the majors!

 

Talk Like A Pirate

"We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I'm gonna hit these motherfuckers!" — Dock Ellis (May 1, 1974)

Posted in honor of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, of course...

And speaking of the 70s Pirates, in this week's edition of "High and Tight," my weekly baseball and rock n' roll column for Rolling Stone Online, we ask the burning question: Which MLB team (from the 70s or any other decade) would you want to be a bench player on... and why? Find out what our panelists, including Alice Cooper, Steve Earle, Ben Gibbard, Scott Ian, Handsome Dick Manitoba and Steve and Scott from The Baseball Project, have to say on the subject...

Don't Mess With Heathcliff

On this date in 1979, Indians DH Cliff Johnson approaches the mound to have "a brief word" with Yankees pitcher Bob Kammeyer. Kammeyer, pitching in only his first MLB game of the season (and just the eighth of his career), has just plunked Johnson; it will later be revealed that Billy Martin offered Kammeyer $100 to do it, in retaliation for Johnson's homer off Paul Mirabella earlier in the game. Having entered the game in relief in the bottom of the 4th, Kammeyer (who somehow narrowly avoided a Heathcliff beatdown) gives up eight runs on seven hits without recording an out, before being pulled for Don Hood — whom Johnson will homer off of in the fifth inning — as the Indians go on to stomp the Yankees 16-3 in Cleveland.

Heathcliff, of course, had begun the season with the Yankees, where he'd served as a platoon DH, backup first baseman, and unenthusiastic third-string catcher for two years. Though he'd given the Bronx Bombers a considerable shot in the arm when he arrived from Houston in June '77 — hitting .296 with a .405 OBP, 8 doubles, 12 homers and 31 RBI in 168 plate appearances, then going 5-for-16 with two doubles and a homer during the '77 ALCS — Johnson's offense tailed off badly in '78. He then made himself completely dispensible in April 1979, when he got into a fight with Goose Gossage, a naked shower contretemps which tore a ligament in the ace reliever's right thumb, and effectively sealed Johnson's fate with George Steinbrenner. On June 15, 1979, two years to the date of his arrival in the Bronx, Johnson was shipped off to Cleveland in exchange for pitcher Don Hood. That's right — the same Don Hood he tagged for home run #2 in this game.

As for Kammeyer, this would be his last-ever appearance in "The Show". Though he would be named International League Pitcher of the Year in 1980, after going 15-7 with a 2.91 ERA for the Columbus Clippers, the Stanford University grad opted to take a gig as a CPA with Peat, Marwick Mitchell & Co, rather than pursue his pitching career any further. Kammeyer, who passed away in 2003, retired from baseball with a 0-0 record and a 9.14 ERA in 21.2 major league innings. But I'm guessing he probably spent that $100 wisely...

Felix Goes Flying

On this date in 1977, mustachioed Mets second baseman Felix Millan plays what will turn out to be the final game of his 12-year career, thanks to a fight with Pirates catcher Ed Ott.

After Ott breaks up a double play with a legal but brutal flying block, Millan responds by socking the Bucs backstop in the jaw while still holding the baseball. Ott, a wrestler in high school, then picks Millan up by the left leg and slams him to the ground from shoulder height, delivering a career-ending break to the second baseman's collarbone.

"What is a man to do when he's punched in the face with a baseball?" rants Bucs skipper Chuck Tanner to The Sporting News. "He don't fight with no guts. Millan got what he deserved. He deserved more."

Well, maybe he did... and maybe he didn't. Millan's career-ending injury was certainly another unfortunate blow for Mets fans, who just  two months earlier had to endure the profound disappointment of seeing Tom Seaver traded to the Reds.

But while Millan never got to play another game in the bigs, the slap-hitting second sacker was issued a Topps card for '78 — ironically picturing a Pirates player coming hard into second while he makes the pivot. That player? Dave Parker, who would be involved in a famously injurious collision in the summer of '78 with Mets catcher John Stearns.

Summer Madness

It's kind of amazing just how much crazy shit went down in baseball during the middle of July in the 1970s. Most of you probably know that yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of the ill-fated "Disco Demolition Night" promotion at Comiskey Park, wherein thousands of wasted kids high on beer, bad weed and general teenage idiocy rushed the field between games of a double-header, tearing it up and causing the second contest between the Tigers and the White Sox to be cancelled (and later forfeited to Detroit). G-Town Radio's Tom Casetta, who interviewed me earlier this week for his righteous Listen Up! show, referred to the event during our chat as the "Altamont" of 70s baseball, which seems pretty right-on, though I was hard-pressed at the time to come up with a "Woodstock" equivalent for the decade. (Though in retrospect, maybe it was the '76 All-Star Game?) But oh, babies, there was so much more that happened this week in 70s baseball...

For one thing, tonight is the 35th anniversary of the New York City blackout, which (among other things) plunged Shea Stadium into darkness — save for the ballpark's rudimentary emergency lights, as seen above — in the sixth inning of a Cubs-Mets contest, just as Mets third baseman Lenny Randle stepped to the plate against Ray Burris. In the interest of keeping the 14,626 people in attendance from panicking, Bud Harrelson, Craig Swan and several other Mets players drove their cars on to the field and performed a headlight-lit pantomimed ballgame for the amusement of the crowd.

And of course, on this date in 1971, Reggie Jackson went yard on Dock Ellis in the 4th inning of the All-Star Game, crushing the ball so mightily that it was still heading into orbit when it hit a power generator on top of Tiger Stadium's right field roof, at least 520 feet from home plate. Five other players homered in the AL's 6-4 victory that day: Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson and Harmon Killebrew. All of them, including Reggie, ended up in the Hall of Fame. Dock wasn't tripping that day, but — according to this piece by Jeffrey Radice, one of the guys behind the upcoming No-No: A Dockumentary (About Dock Ellis), he was pretty looped on screwdrivers and speed when he took the mound in Detroit.

A quick side note: Radice and his crew are trying to raise money to fund their film via Kickstarter; they've only got a few days left to go, and they're still far short of their $35,000 goal — which means that, if they don't make it to $35,000 in pledges, they won't get a single penny of the money that's already been pledged. This is going to be a really entertaining and important film, and anyone who loves baseball, especially the 70s version, should support it if they can. So please, if you have a few (or more) bucks you can spare, do the badass thing and click HERE to pledge before Tuesday...

 

Okay, where were we? Ah, yes — the Atlanta Braves' first "Headlock and Wedlock Night" promotion was held on July 11, 1976. One of many wacky-to-downright-bizarre promotions thought up by Braves publicity director Bob Hope during the early years of Ted Turner's ownership, when the Braves desperately needed to do something (anything!) to lure fans to Fulton County Stadium, the event began with a number of couples (reports range anywhere from 9 to 34 in total) walking under an archway of bats held by ten players from the Braves and Mets to home plate, where they were joined in holy matrimony. After the game (which the Braves actually won 9-8 on a bases-loaded double by Willie Montanez), a wrestling ring was set up in the stadium's "picnic area," where anyone willing to stick around and swelter in the July humidity was welcome to watch a four-match Georgia Championship Wrestling card topped by Abdullah the Butcher (pictured above), who was pitted against Mr. Wrestling #2. Hope claimed that the weddings and the rasslin' were supposed to be separate promotions, but that someone on his staff accidentally double-booked them for the same game. In any case, somebody seriously needs to bring this promotion back...

Which brings us to a memorable promotion that somebody IS bringing back. Two years ago, when my book  was first released, I did a reading/signing event at Liar's Club in Chicago that we called "AOR Demolition Night" — books were signed, 70s AM gold was spun, cold beer was quaffed, crappy 70s rock records were smashed in the name of redressing the karmic imbalance created by the destruction of all that sweet disco wax at Comiskey in 1979, and a rockin' good time was had by all. Well, now that Big Hair and Plastic Grass is available in paperback, it's time (in the immortal words of Steely Dan) to go back, Jack, and do it again!

One week from tonight (July 20), all baseball-loving Chicagoans are hereby cordially invited to join me at Liar's Club (1665 W. Fullerton, 60614) from 8:30pm to midnight for an evening of funky (and not-so-funky) music, cold beer, baseball talk and maybe a few surprises. I will be reading aloud from my writings and signing my book — paperback copies of which will be on sale at the venue via The Book Cellar, the Nort' Side's finest book emporium. DJ John San Juan will be spinning the '70s AM gold all night, and we're going to once again be destroying a whole mess o' crappy '70s rock vinyl. Bring a '70s album by Styx, REO Speedwagon, Survivor, Orleans, Tycoon, Starcastle, Point Blank, etc. to be sacrificed, and receive a "special gift" courtesy of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The event is FREE, so Don your afro wig, your '70s threads and/or retro baseball jersey, and get down with us! I wanna see a sea of 'fros out there, people! Do it for me, do it for you, do it for Oscar Gamble...

Something Heavy Going Down

Can't let this day pass without acknowledging that it's the 38th anniversary of Cleveland's jaw-droppingly ill-conceived "Ten Cent Beer Night" promotion, when the Indians organization invited fans to drink their fill of Stroh's at a dime a pop on a Tuesday night at the "Mistake by the Lake". Over 25,000 fans took them up on it, and a notable percentage of them wound up either drunk, naked, in a pitched battle with both Rangers and Indians players, or all of the above. Indians reliever Tom Hilgendorf (above) took a folding chair to the head, and the always-up-for-a-fight Rangers manager Billy Martin told his players and coaches to arm themselves with bats. It's kinda surprising that no one was killed in the melee.

For a few more hours, you can celebrate that iconic and emblematic 70s baseball event by taking advantage of the HOMAGE website's deal on "Ten Cent Beer Night" cups, koozies and t-shirts. I have no affiliation or financial stake in these folks, but I commend them for doing God's work. (I also bought THIS t-shirt, which you Pirates/Dave Parker fans will surely appreciate.)

But there's sad news out of Ohio tonight, too — Pedro Borbón, the iron-armed reliever for the Big Red Machine of the 1970s, has passed away from cancer at the age of 65. Borbón is best known today for being referenced in the movie Airplane!, for chewing up Buzz Capra's cap following the infamous Pete Rose-Bud Harrelson brawl in the 1973 NLCS, and for allegedly placing a voodoo curse on the Reds after they traded him to the Giants in 1979. But he was also a formidable (and seemingly indefatigable) competitor, who anchored the Reds' bullpen from 1972 up until that aforementioned 1979 deal. From 1972 through 1977, Borbon pitched over 121 innings per season, appearing in four different NLCS and three World Series in the process, including the 1975 and 1976 ones that the Reds won. He was well-loved in Cincinnati, where he was elected to the Reds Hall of Fame in 2010. (His son, Pedro Jr., pitched in the 90s and 00s for several teams; given Pedro Sr.'s alleged penchant for voodoo, I initially thought there might be some kind of Marie Lavieux thing going on...) Rest in peace, Señor Borbón...

In other news, I have nailed down a date for a Big Hair & Plastic Grass paperback publication celebration in Chicago: It will take place Friday, July 20 at Liars Club, and will be a reprise of the immensely successful "AOR Demolition Night" event we held there in 2010. (I don't generally like to repeat myself; but that was so nice, I just gotta do it twice!) Might even be a few special guests this time... more information to come — but if you're gonna be in Chicago that weekend, by all means save the date!

And yes, the Big Hair & Plastic Grass paperback comes out tomorrow, which I'm incredibly excited about — and I'm just as stoked for next week's reading/signing/selling event, which happens 6:30-9 pm at Manitoba's in NYC on Tuesday, June 12. Some folks have asked if there will be books for sale at the event, so let me reiterate — YES, there will indeed be books for sale! And if you can't make the scene, but would still like a signed, personalized copy of Big Hair & Plastic Grass, all you've gotta do is email your contact information (before 12 noon on Sunday, June 10) to Harriet at [email protected]. She will email or call you back regarding personalization (let her know if you have a favorite team or player from the era), payment and shipping. The price for each signed copy, which includes the book and tax ($17.00) plus shipping ($5.25) will total $22.25. I will sign the book for you on June 12 at Manitoba's, and Harriet will wing it to you forthwith!

Okay, that's all for now. I'm off to drink my fill of Stroh's, and maybe fling a few folding chairs around.