Bowling, Tim Matheson, and “Dreamer”

“You just dream about something, that’s all it’s ever gonna be.  Just a dream.” So says Harold Nuttingham in the 1979 film Dreamer, a post-Watergate, feel-good movie with a down-to-earth vibe. Nuttingham dreams of being a bowling...

The Landmark Case of Ludtke vs. Kuhn

In the 1970s—the decade of disco, Watergate, and bell bottom pants—the women’s rights movement escalated to a new level, continuing a legacy ignited by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Ida Harper. Billie Jean King’s defeat of Bobby Riggs in...

Mickey, Whitey, and the Class of 1974

During the summer of 1974, excitement charged the air.  We watched with wonder when Philippe Petit walked on a wire between the Twin Towers, with dismay when President Nixon resigned because of the Watergate scandal, and with awe when the Universal Product Code...

Rick Monday’s Star-Spangled Play

Old Glory.  Stars and Stripes.  Star-Spangled banner. America’s flag is, for some, a sacred fabric.  Rick Monday represented those devotees during a Cubs-Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium on April 25, 1976, when he prevented a duo—father and son—from igniting the...

“Ball Four Goes Hollywood”

When Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four hit bookshelves in 1970, it exploded myths, revealed secrets, and offered tales of baseball, theretofore kept protected from the public.  If reporters knew about Mickey Mantle’s alcohol problem, for example, they...