We last spoke with Dan Epstein for his second book, Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76 in 2016, which followed his 2014 release, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s. As you can see from the picture, sandwiched between me and Jay Goldberg, the proprietor of the sorely-missed Bergino Baseball Clubhouse a few years back, “big hair” is quite apt when referring to Danno.
Epstein, a journalist who also writes about music, pop culture, and yiddishkeit, is one of the few guests I feel I can just drop a line to chat about this or that so I was pleased to see that he picked up a co-writer gig with another one of my favorite people, Ron Blomberg, on The Captain & Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson.
This latest project proved to be different from the usual collaboration one thinks about with “as tol to”: kind of books since their conversations were all held over the phone (not even Zoom) as opposed to more conventional face-to-face sit-downs. I guess we all have to make adjustments because of Covid.
Another adjustment: Epstein is also a member of the ever-growing Pandemic Baseball Book Club. If necessity if the mother of invention, it is also a boon to authors in the PBBC, allowing them them to get out the word about their projects at a time when meeting the public — one of the great things about Bergino — is improbable, if not impossible.
This was the first “Conversation” after my Memorial Day car accident. Since we recorded this, I’m happy to say the neck and wrists braces have come off. If I’d known that ahead of time, I would have waited and spared everyone the spectacle.
is available on Amazon.com,
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