—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “BORN TO RUN” August 25, 1975 CHICAGO REDS VS. CUBS Team record: 84–44 First place by sixteen and a half games Bruce Springsteen was not happy, not at all, not with the sound, not with the hype, and most of all not with the album. Born to Run, his new album, hit the stores on August 25, and it was a monster. He had spent fourteen hard months making it. He felt like a failure. Springsteen was twenty-five years old, and he wanted only one thing, but it was the biggest thing he could imagine: to make the greatest rock-and-roll record ever. He had spent fourteen hours a day in the studio, every day for more than a year, leaving at six o’clock most mornings, sometimes later, and still he could not get the sounds out of his head and onto the tape. His friend and coproducer, Jon Landau, kept telling him to get the record done, to set a release date, and Springsteen would growl: “Hey, man, the release date is just one day. The record is forever.” The pressure was intense.