Ball Four

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: Bouton's An Ace
Review: The original text of Ball Four is not as funny or as original as I remember from reading it years ago (1974?), but maybe I've become jaded over the decades. Still, Bouton's diary is hilarious in places, and it gives an inside look at the game any baseball fan has to love. The real bonus is in the appendices Bouton has added to subsequent editions, all of which are included in the "Final Pitch." They are excellent. The section on meeting with former MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn over Kuhn's demand that Bouton sign a statement admitting Ball Four is erroneous and largely a fabrication is as hilarious as it is chilling. Bouton's takes on the owners' interference in the game, the commercialization of the "product" via television, and the corruption of the reportage of all sports that occurs when media forces own teams or control the broadcast of games are spot-on. Twenty years ago Bouton knew exactly what was wrong with baseball, and the corruption and venality of baseball's owners has done nothing to obviate his complaints or apply his remedies in all this time.
Bouton would have been a baseball iconoclast even if he had never played the game. His insights are too piercing for the tender skin of the sport that his diary exposes as parochial, insular, and inbred. Clearly, Bouton loves the game of baseball -- he played at one level or another from age seven to 57 - and it is his love of the game that is at the root of his writing. Bouton wasn't out to destroy baseball, he gave it a loving nudge in the ribs and said,... That was evidently too strong a medicine for the Lords of Baseball to bear. If baseball's ownership had any guts or an appreciation of the game as anything but a profit center, Jim Bouton would be commissioner of baseball today, instead of some owners' puppet like Bud "Lite" Selig. P.S. My copy came signed by the author.

Rating:
Summary: More Than Just a Baseball Book
Review: Unlike most sports-themed book, written by the athletes who seem to always be willing to glad-hand themselves, this terrific account into the year in the life of a ballplayer is irreverent and uncompromising. As a former ballplayer, Jim Bouton played hard but always lived by a higher code. Never willing to place himself in a compromising situation, he nonetheless becomes a somewhat outspoken critic of what baseball had become (remember, this book was written during the 1969 season, well before free-agency and the Enron-esque manner by which MLB seems to handle itself as an organization these days). Yes, he does seem harsh on some teammates, past and present, and doesn't fail to criticize himself on many occasions either. But he ultimately reveals himself to be a fan of the game, warts and all. It's easy to understand why this book generated so much controversy. It still manages to convey an important message that athletes and their sport are, at the end of the day, completely fallible. Despite the somewhat shallow character baseball players and managers reveal throughout "Ball Four", you still get the sense from Bouton that you wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world. And, more than anything, it destroys the myth that the game was so much better back in the "good old days."

Rating:
Summary: Pitcher Hits Home-Run!
Review: It's easy to see why this extraordinary book created such a sensation when it first came out in 1970. Bouton, a sporadically successful pitcher nearing the end of his career, airs ALL of Major League baseball's dirty laundry--all those long and carefully concealed nasties and naughties, from relatively minor stuff such as the pervasive use of profanity to more serious issues like habitual drug use, heavy drinking and rampant womanizing. He also documents anti-intellectualism, lingering racial bigotry, homophobia and the casual cruelty of established stars towards rookies and fans. I kept wondering, as I read, to what extent Bouton himself participated in the activities he describes. He admits to drinking and popping the occasional "greenie" (speed, I assume), but never directly owns up to any marital infidelities.

He also exposed the dirtiest baseball secret of all, which wasn't sex, but salaries. It may come as a shock to present-day readers, accustomed to multi-millionaire baseball stars, to learn that players 30+ years ago earned barely subsistence wages and were totally at the mercy of club owners. I was flabbergasted to learn that Bouton, with a wife and three kids, earned LESS than my own extremely modest salary at that time as a (single) university Instructor!

But this book isn't a heavy-handed, moralistic indictment of Major League baseball. Instead, it's gloriously goofy and hilariously funny! As a writer, Bouton has a genuine, unique "voice," which I suspect owes very little to his editor. Someone could hand me a copy of any paragraph from _Ball Four_ and I'd recognize it instantly as Bouton. How many authors can you say that about?

To me, the funniest anecdote in a book full of marvelous stories is Bouton's report that the Seattle Pilots' manager fined players for appearing at the clubhouse post-game buffet--as Bouton delicately puts it--"with Charlie uncovered." In itself, this is a funny, somewhat crude anecdote; it's Bouton's additional comment that raises it to the level of high comedy art. He notes that if the Yankees had instituted the same rule they'd have made a fortune in fines, since Elston Howard and Yogi Berra both were "famous for dragging Charlie through the cold cuts." That line alone is worth the price of the book!

Rating:
Summary: Childhood revisited
Review: Ball Four takes me back to a time when heroes were icons.

This is the first Kiss and Tell novel on baseball, and it was the best of all of them. Bouton may have been the most hated man in baseball for a long time. Unlike a Pedro Martinez, a low life Red Sox headhunter, It was not for his play that he was despised.

Bouton was hated for the best real reason: He told the truth. None of the stories that he told were ever discounted that I have heard. He ripped the label of honor off of the old ball game and many will never forgive him.

The book is funny, and hip for its time.

Rating:
Summary: Stands the test of Time
Review: While many of the "kiss and tell" books that followed "Ball Four" failed to age well, and were much more graphic and revealing, "Ball Four" has become a classic. The story is told honestly and simply. Bouton doesn't hold back his own views, thoughts and beliefs in the tale. He does not try to aggrandize himself, but gives truthful and humorous views of the life as a washed-up, knuckleball pitcher trying to play another year in the Bigs.

The humor and stories, at one time were considered bawdy, now it appears very innocent and tame. Not in a naive or rose-colored way, but the stories are of guys being guys, playing a game. It makes you smile and wistful. Wishing you could have been a part of it, or wishing you were still a part of it.

Reading it gives greater insight into why players hang on in any sport as long as they do, beyond simply the money to be made.

Rating:
Summary: Simply put: My favorite book.
Review: I've been a baseball fan all my life, and I heard of this book during an appearance that Jim Bouton did on a radio show. I decided to get a copy, and once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. This book brings out a side of baseball that most people don't realize is there. It is required reading for ANY baseball fan.

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: Outrageous Book!
Review: This was the most contreversial book of it's time. Jim Bouton used this book to poke holes in America's game baseball. This novel earned Bouton the status of public enemy number one in all of the world of baseball. He gave wild insights into playing for the most prestigious baseball team in the world,the New York Yankees. Bouton also gave away guarded secrets into some of America's most respected heros(Mickey Mantle).This publication by Bouton does not miss a lick. Nothing is sacred in this book. This book was also a bestseller during it's time. Buy this book and read it. You will agree that it is a masterpeice.

Rating:
Summary: Not a simple sports book
Review: I picked this book up in 1972, when I was 12...and I haven't put it down since. Much more than a "baseball book," Ball Four is an expose of the changing attitudes in post-war America. Myth-shattering, yet inspiring, Ball Four is one of the most important books of the last 50 years.