Replacement Players

Episode 2 is here! I talked with Dan Epstein, writer for Rolling Stone and author of the great chronicle of 1970s baseball, Big Hair and Plastic Grass, one of my favorite books about the game in recent memory. Dan and I watched a game between the Detroit Tigers and the New York Yankees from June 28, 1976, started by rookie sensation Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Fidrych enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top and became an enormous celebrity that transcended the sport (appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone before the Bicentennial year was out, for instance). He was kind of a kook, but a genuine kook, the kind you don’t seen in any sport anymore, let alone baseball. This game was only his ninth major league start, but since it aired on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball, it was his coming out party of sorts, and the atmosphere at Tiger Stadium was almost playoff-like. Watching The Bird do his thing in this game was a treat, and it was even more of a treat to talk to Dan about it.  He shared his memori