I recently started reading Dan Epstein’s 2014 book Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76. I picked it up mainly because I figured the Reds wouldn’t be very good this year and I thought it would be nice to read about a season in which they won the whole shebang. One of the joys of fandom, unless you’re a Cleveland sports fan, is being able to claim past success in the face of current futility. It helps ease the pain.
One of the most interesting parts of the book for me has been reading about the various promotional tools teams used to try to drive fans to the ballpark that summer.