Ball Four

Rating:
Summary: Let's Hope There Are A Few Pitches Left.
Review: After Thirty years I reread this book and it is not the book I remembered. It's better. It was then, it is now, simply the best Baseball Book ever.

But it is now more than that. It's history.

When the Original edition of Ball Four came out it was considered scandalous and an unflattering expose on Baseball. Now it's history. American history. And the continuing autobiography of a man who is so much more than just a ballplayer.

Jim Bouton reveals what baseball was like in the 1960's: Players getting less than $10,000 a year in salary, General Managers lying to players and tricking them into low salaries. It is just hard to believe all that was baseball then.

Ball Four is famous, or infamous for giving great insight into several players. Yet in retrospect, not much is really told about the individual players. Mickey Mantle drank a lot and didn't sigh autographs; Roger Maris didn't always hustle. This is small stuff compared with what is told today. Still this is the stuff that started it all.

But the best part are the epilogues, written in 1980, 1990 and 2000, because they add a new perspective to the book. The author points out that maybe if more time was spent dealing with Mantle's drinking problem and less time spent hiding it and blasting Bouton maybe the Mick would be here today.

The book is fascinating and funny. And Real. I began t o understand what it most be like to be on the road, bored, for so many months a year. I began to understand why they did what they did.

Mr. Bouton deflates the image of the baseball player: They drank, took greenies (speed) and looked at girls in the stands. Shocking news! But he also deflates the images of coaches and managers. A player that floats in and out of the book is a rookie to the new Seattle Pilots. He talent is not overlooked by the players but it is overlooked by management is sent down to the minors and then traded to Kansas City. His name is Lou Pinella. A similar story is told about Mike Marshall.

Jim Bouton discusses his return to Yankee Stadium for old-timers day and the events surrounding it. In the end, that is what affected me the most. Having read the book thirty years ago, I thought it would be interesting to read the epilogues first. Their you learn the heart-breaking news that the Boutons lost their daughter, Laurie, in an accident in 1997. It changed everything, even the original Ball Four section. Mr. Bouton was devoted to Baseball, but he was devoted to family. In Ball Four we are introduced to Laurie at age three when she comes to a doubleheader with Mrs. Bouton and their two other children. Then, she is ironically nicknamed "The Unsinkable Molly Brown." Yet it is her spirit that gets Bouton invited back to the Old Timers Day at Shea. Mel Stottlemyre is mentioned in the original 1969 part of the book. Yet it is his conversation with Bouton, about losing his son in 1981, that will remain with me. You can't read it without tearing up.

I guess we like to think that baseball is everything to those who play it. Ball Four was the first to show what it was really like to get go through a season. In his Final Pitch Mr. Bouton shows what it takes to get through life. I hope he has a few more chapters in him. I'm sure Laurie would hope so too.

Rating:
Summary: An Absolute Must-Have
Review: As almost every baseball fan knows, "Ball Four" was the best-selling inside account of former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton's 1969 season, split between the expansion Seattle Pilots and the Houston Astros. "Ball Four" was a compelling, autobiographical look at a fading star trying to make a comeback in a new city with a new pitch--it also tore the cover off the game by taking a very human and critical look at stars like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Carl Yaztrzemski and others. From an editorial standpoint, the kiss-and-tell and clubhouse secrets offered up in this book would be shrugged at today, but this was revolutionary a generation ago when the media held its heroes and baseball traditions sacred.

Bouton published "Ball Five" in 1980, which included the original and neatly updated his Pilot and Astro teammates. "Ball Four-The Final Pitch" goes one better, however. It includes the original "Ball Four" as well as the 1980 and 1990 updates. But the lengthy, moving 2000 update is packed with emotion--Bouton describes the tragic death of his daughter as well his return to Yankee Stadium for Old Timer's Day, a moment he never thought he would live to see.

"Ball Four" was my favorite book growing up. It's more than that now--it's a fascinating time capsule from 1969 as well as a still-fresh, highly-compelling story of a man who will not admit defeat under any circumstances, and the 2000 epilogue is worth the price of admission by itself. Strongly recommended for all baseball fans, and even non-sports fans will find the original story fascinating for its look at a turbulent time in our nation's history.

Rating:
Summary: Damn near perfect
Review: Jim Bouton's Ball Four has rightly been called the best sports book of all times by publications that actually matter, but I figure I'll throw my two cents in, too. In a day before an ol' ballplayer could hire a ghost and slap together some fond memories or pathetic pleas for forgiveness (hiya, Pete Rose), Bouton, making a comeback as a knuckleballer with the expansion Seattle Pilots, toted a tape recorder with him for an entire year in order to write this day-by-day account of life in the bigs.
The humor is at once anecdotal and observational, and, most importantly, consistent. The Seattle Pilots were rather like the Cleveland Indians in the film Major League - a haphazard collection of rookies and cast-offs trying to make it. Of course, Major League had to have the whole underdog thing going on.
The issues that face baseball today - drugs, salaries, lack of interest by hometown fans, the Yankees being the source of all evil - are all present in Ball Four. The only part of the book that hasn't aged perfectly is the scale of the salaries - Bouton and his teammates hold out for an increase of a few thousand dollars, instead of the millions today's players make.
In summation, there is no baseball book you should read before this one, and there are precious few books you should read, period, before this one. Ball Four is in every right an American masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: A Groundbreaking, Entertaining, and Funny Book
Review: "Ball Four" is a diary that covers the year of a baseball player, in this case Jim Bouton, who spent the 1969 season with the expansion Seattle Pilots and then the Houston Astros. Entertaining on many levels, "Ball Four" also serves as a mirror of the times -- in the late 1960s, many established concepts and ideas, in politics, music, mass media, and sports, were being shattered. Baseball, always about five years behind the curve, was always thought of as a game that was played by wholesome, All-American men. They were our heroes. Ball Four, however, sheds new light and revealed, for the first time, that baseball players, even some of the game's superstars, are human.
Bouton tells all, in, by today's standards, a tame fashion. We read about everything -- ballplayers cheating on their wives, playing with hangovers, racial problems between teammates, players taking uppers before a game, etc. Bouton is a very insightful writer and presents the material in a humorous manner, the humor, or barbs, is directed at his teammates, managers, coaches, and, in many instances, at himself.
Baseball was outraged when the book first came out in 1970. Many players and baseball executives considered Bouton a turncoat. But the years have shown that Ball Four was a groundbreaking book, one that set the standard for tell-all books to come. These other books, however, have never reached the level of excellence of Bouton's "Ball Four."

Rating:
Summary: Six Stars !!
Review: Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" is, without a doubt, the best book ever written by a professional athlete and is arguably the greatest baseball book of all-time. Dozens of kiss-n-tell sports novels have dotted the bestseller lists since "Ball Four's" publication in 1970, but none are as funny or revealing as Bouton's expose. All however, owe their very existence to "Ball Four" which shook the moral foundation of our national pastime upon its release. Bouton forever stripped away the All-American image of the professional sports hero with his humorous -- and sometimes X-rated -- locker room tales. Many, including then Commisioner Bowie Kuhn, felt that Bouton had forever tarnished baseball's image with his less than flattering portrayals of some of the game's biggest stars.(Namely Bouton's former Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle). Jim Bouton, in 1970, was Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of the baseball establishment. Truth be told, Bouton merely humanized the professional athlete. Many players--especially Bouton himself --are portrayed as being uncertain of their abilities and fearful of losing their jobs in the highly competitive world of major league baseball.(Such insecurity is best exemplified when Bouton is traded in mid-season from Seattle to Houston and lives to tell us about it!) Overall, "Ball Four" is one heckuva book. Bouton's sense of humor is absolutely side-splitting and his sensitivity, at times, is downright moving. This is a fantastic, groundbreaking novel which no sports fan should be without. Six Stars!!

Rating:
Summary: Nice Insight in Pro Baseball
Review: My teacher for my History of Sports class recommended this book and I bought it. He told us that is was a very controversial book at the time because it spoke of things that were better left unspoken. That is the best recommendation you can get!

It is a very funny book, sometimes Bouton describes things that could be in a movie about baseball, a National Lampoon version that is. There is drinking gambling and looking at girls from all angles. But didn't we all expect them to this anyway?

He was ostracized by baseball but it is really harmless fun, the new sections in this edition also talk about what happened after the first edition came out. Get it

Rating:
Summary: The Knuckle(ball)head Who Started It!!!
Review: Ball Four, Jim Bouton's fine diary about life with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros in the year 1969 (the same year man landed on the Moon), has been hailed as a groundbreaking, revolutionary book about baseball, sports, and life in general. Most people are correct when they say it was the first truely successful "tell-all" book, pointing out the human fallacies of such superstars as Mickey Mantle, Elston Howard, and Alvin Dark, as well as the dubious effectiveness of executives in general and managers in particular. Most critics are also correct when they say that this book violated the sanctity of the locker-room by showing a professional sports team as a profane, prank-filled, rather juvenile bunch of guys rather than as cardboard heroes. Still, many people who write about Ball Four miss it's most significant contribution, one voiced by Bouton himself: He told the American public how much (and, more importantly), how little professional athletes really made at the time. According to Jim, most people read the headlines and knew that Mickey Mantle made $100,000 a year or so in the mid-1960's. But they didn't realize that Yankee rookies (the team Bouton started his career with) only made $7000 a year, and that Jim himself only made a salary in the low 20's even after three years of experience, twenty wins a season, and two World Series wins as a pitcher! In other words, most people felt that if Mantle made 100K, then Elston Howard, Tom Tresh, Jim Bouton, and other Yankees of the day must have made about 40-60K each season. The fact that Bouton broke the most sacred code of all and TOLD HOW MUCH MONEY PLAYERS EARNED (or not, as the case may be) made him a pariah to the baseball establishment and forced his exclusion from Yankee's Old Timer games for the next quarter century. Still, you may ask, why would I want to read this 30-year old book? The funny stories, the rude and crude language, the camaraderie among a group which binds them together despite significant differences? Yes, and something much more fundamental. Jim Bouton is the champion of the outsider, the knucklehead, the rebel in all of us who feels, right or wrong, that no matter how good he gets, he will never truly fit in. His daily diary entries prove that all of us, even professional athletes, suffer from what actor Roy Schieder called "flop sweat," i.e., fear of failure. This quality, along with all the wild, zany, and utimately touching stories, makes Ball Four such an excellent read after all these years. Pick up Ball Four today. You'll find that no matter how much you sometimes feel a misfit, you'll always have a champion in Jim!

Rating:
Summary: Six Stars !!
Review: Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" is, without a doubt, the best book ever written by a professional athlete and is arguably the greatest baseball book of all-time. Dozens of kiss-n-tell sports novels have dotted the bestseller lists since "Ball Four's" publication in 1970, but none are as funny or revealing as Bouton's expose. All however, owe their very existence to "Ball Four" which shook the moral foundation of our national pastime upon its release. Bouton forever stripped away the All-American image of the professional sports hero with his humorous -- and sometimes X-rated -- locker room tales. Many, including then Commisioner Bowie Kuhn, felt that Bouton had forever tarnished baseball's image with his less than flattering portrayals of some of the game's biggest stars.(Namely Bouton's former Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle). Jim Bouton, in 1970, was Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of the baseball establishment. Truth be told, Bouton merely humanized the professional athlete. Many players--especially Bouton himself --are portrayed as being uncertain of their abilities and fearful of losing their jobs in the highly competitive world of major league baseball.(Such insecurity is best exemplified when Bouton is traded in mid-season from Seattle to Houston and lives to tell us about it!) Overall, "Ball Four" is one heckuva book. Bouton's sense of humor is absolutely side-splitting and his sensitivity, at times, is downright moving. This is a fantastic, groundbreaking novel which no sports fan should be without. Six Stars!!

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: Ball Four is a must read for all sports fans. The first of it's kind, Bouton takes readers on the wild ride of a baseball pitcher that has played with the greats (Yankees) and the not so greats (Pilots). Ball Four is a book that reaches all generations and should be on every book shelf.

Rating:
Summary: "BALL FOUR" by Jim Bouton (1970)
Review: "BALL FOUR" by Jim Bouton (1970)

The truth about athlete as role models occurred with the bombshell publication of Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" in 1970. The result was a diary of the 1969 season, in which the former star pitcher talked about drinking, drugs, sex and RACE, all subjects the liberal "clubhouse lawyer" had an axe to grind on. "Ball Four" had more edge than a Doors concert, breaking new ground long before Watergate, the Internet and Monica Lewinsky. The old protocols had protected J.F.K.'s sex life, but Bouton, who probably idolized Daniel Ellsberg, felt the clubhouse adage "What you do here, what you say here, what you see here, let it stay here," did not apply.
Bouton pissed off Commissioner Bowie Kuhn with his expose of players' common habit of popping amphetamines. He pissed off a lot of wives by revealing a peculiar member of the female species known as "Baseball Annies," attractive young women who enjoy sleeping with ballplayers. He pissed off his old Yankee teammates by putting the myth to Mickey Mantle's legend, paying homage to The Mick's Olympian abilities, but talking about Mantle's equally prodigious drinking habit.
Bouton describes "beaver hunting," a popular player pastime in which they drilled holes in the dugout in order to look up the dresses of girls in the front row. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "box seat," doesn't it?
Bouton comes from the "white man is to blame for all the black man's problems" ideology, and he put the lie to baseball's claim of being color blind, with enlightening racial statistics that revealed that many of the game's stars were black, but few journeymen were.
Many of his conservative teammates felt he was a bit of a Communist. It has been said that Stalin would have had a job in baseball if he brought the high heat, which Bouton could do, but the Yankees dropped him like a bad habit as soon as he hurt his arm.
"Ball Four" made Bouton rich and famous, holds up well today, and is a gem of humor, irony and inside baseball.