Ball Four

Rating:
Summary: Great after many years
Review: Seems pretty tame after all I read about it over the years. A great history about the little known Seattle Pilots.

Rating:
Summary: Baseball classic
Review: When "Ball Four" was published in 1970, Jim Bouton was attacked by players, sportswriters, and the owners for revealing the secret, sordid underbelly of professional baseball. Which should be enough right there to get you to read this thing. But in "Ball Four," Bouton also reveals the humanity of baseball, the fear, the hate, and the fun, which makes it one of the classics of baseball literature and a must read.

Basically, "Ball Four" is a diary of the 1968 season written by a journeyman middle-relief knuckleballer. Before injuring his arm, and turning to the knuckleball, Bouton was a fireball pitcher for the New York Yankees. In his rookie season in 1962, Bouton won two games for the Yanks in the World Series. He played with Mantle and Ford. Then his arm went dead, and he found himself back in the minors, where he taught himself to throw the knuckler. The Yanks didn't think much of him anymore and traded him to the expansion Seattle Pilots (which left Seattle after a single year for...get this...Milwaukee), where he earned a spot as a spot starter and mopup long relief man.

The book reveals the personalities of the players and managers and owners. It tells what the players do on the road, in the bullpen, in the minors. It reveals the petty nature of the coaching staff, who are usually all old-time baseball men, not very clever, not prone to trying new ways. It talks about the dicey contract negotiations by players in the days of the reserve clause, when average players made an average wage.

Bouton travels in the world of boys. The players are mostly kids in their 20s, not educated, and spent their formative years in baseball. They like pranks. They like women, but they don't know either how to talk about them, or how to talk with them. Most of the time, they just try to look up their skirts. They drink. They sneak in past curfew.

But Bouton also works in a competitive business market. Pitchers hide their arm injuries for fear of being sent down. Players fume over bench time. Coaches think small, because to be creative and new means being out of a job. And baseball is all these guys have. They have nothing else to turn to.

Certainly in light of recent ballplayer behavior - think of the Pittsburgh cocaine scandals, Strawberry and Gooden, and the thuggish, drug-addled violence associated with football and basketball - "Ball Four" depicts a harmless and almost nostalgic view of baseball. But it still stands as a baseball classic for its honesty, its authenticity, and you wonder how much has changed since 1968.

In the end, the players, owners, and writers should have celebrated the publication of "Ball Four." Sure, it did spawn a string of subsequent tell-alls, and it did forever swing aside the curtain shielding the ballplayer from public scrutiny, but this is a modern age, and we want heroes with all their flaws. Who is it more fun to root for on the field, a straw dummy propped up by a marketing machine, or a man?

Rating:
Summary: Best Baseball Book Of All Time
Review: I just finished reading this book for the third time, and it honestly never loses any of its superiority. Hands down, there has never been a better book written by an professional athlete.

I remember reading this book in high school, thinking that it was truly amazing. Now, having read the book in it's 31st year of print, it is still truly amazing. The best thing about the book is that it gives you an honest perspective of the game from the player's point-of-view. And Jim Bouton holds nothing back. He is very straightforward and candid as he pulls no punches and just tells it like it is.

In today's day and age, anybody can, if not already has, written a tell-all book, and this truly wouldn't have been entirely possible if not for Bouton's ground-breaking Ball Four. Written in a diary-style, Bouton tells of his adventures with two Major League Baseball teams, the expansion Seattle Pilots, now the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Houston Astros. He cronicles his wild year, experimenting with his "Superknuck" knuckleball and more importantly, just trying to be one of the guys.

Ball Four is well-written, not to mention, quite funny. Bouton is a very intelligent man, and he clearly shines in this book, and comes across very well. This is not your typical tell-all book, but more of a book loaded with wonderful behind-the-scenes stories, that really need to be told to really appreciate the game of baseball today. The section added to the end of the book dealing with the aftermath of the publishing is priceless, and a super addition. This is one complete book and a teriffic read. You will not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, Socially Conscious, Irreverent
Review: Bouton wrote a revealing, funny, and socially conscious diary from his days with the expansion 1969 Seattle Pilots (today's Milwaukee Brewers). The author exposes ballplayers as fallibly human rather than as the falsely promoted role models, and discusses such once concealed issues as salary fights, pep pills and groupies. Bouton also confesses his own insecurities as a washed up pitcher hanging on via the knuckleball. This book dates from the era before free agency, when established players had to fight to get paid incredibly modest salaries. "Ball Four" also reminds us that long hair, civil rights, and Vietnam were controversial in 1969. Unfortunately, Bouton's "kiss-n-tell" insensitivity towards certain teammates (some of whom disliked him) detracts a bit from his writing.

This book annoyed the baseball establishment when published in 1970. Bouton (and editor Leonard Schecter) exceeded "The Long Season," a mildly irreverent 1959 diary by pitcher Jim Brosnan that also upset the baseball lords. "Ball Four: The Final Pitch," contains successive ten-year updates that each add a nice perspective. The last update also contains very emotional reading concerning a tragic death in Bouton's family. This is a very funny and thought-provoking read.

Rating:
Summary: Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Review: I read this book when I was 16 years old--more into surfing and girls than i was into dreary old baseball--I wasn't even playing the game anymore. But, it certainly opened up my eyes to the "real world", not only of baseball, but the rest of it. Now, 30 years later, I count myself an avid baseball fan, and I have Jim Bouton to thank for that. Bouton's humor, humanity and sheer but simple love of the game come shining through in 'Ball Four', and the fact that it created such a "tizzy" in the baseball establishment, still today, is proof of the book's value and importance. To those of us who have read 'Ball Four'and continue to pull it off the shelf every March when spring training kicks in, it is a dear, old friend coming for a welcome visit--and, in many ways, those of us "in the know" about Bouton and his book consider the knowledge of it admission into a secret society--the wonderful thing about that, is that we welcome everyone! Come join! I promise, at the very least, that you will have lots of great lines to use for the rest of your life ("That's what happens when you can't hit the curveball!") and, as an added bonus, you'll fall in love with our "National Pasttime" all over again. I mean, haven't you ever wondered what they REALLY talk about when the manager goes out to talk to the pitcher!? Bottom line: Jim loved baseball--those who criticized him for his book just did not get it! He loved baseball despite its warts and mean spiritedness--he got past the B.S. and excelled at something he loved--may we all be so blessed...

Rating:
Summary: Read to get the greatest perspective on the sport
Review: In this age of mega free agents with quarter of a million dollar contracts, its easy to hate all players who switch teams like we switch socks. However, Jim tells of a time before free agency and shows us how back then the shoe was on the other foot. I think now more than ever people should read this book to understand how far salaries have come and actually see how free agency might have helped the game.

Like many of you, I hate the Ramirez and AROD deals, but this book talks about what the players had to deal with back then. It shows when salaries were in the other extreme; maybe giving hope that someday we will meet in the middle.

Besides this, this book is a MUST read for all baseball fans. It tells great stories of players some of us where too young to see play, but always hear about. Tells of a time when sports starts greatest sins were adultery and the occasional ball scuff. Not to say adultery is nothing, but it sure beats the coke rush of the 80's.

Simply put, this book will make you laugh so hard at times, at other times it will make you teary eyed with the yearning to have lived in that era if you are too young. Bye this book flat out, I promise you will read it more than once, and will pass it down to your children.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, charming story
Review: I really had a good time reading Ball Four. Over the last thirty years, the things that Bouton "reveals" about ballplayers are well-known in the year 2000 (such as the fact that baseball players are not demig-ds, and ocasionally have affairs outside of marriage or like to drink alcohol). History has shown that Bouton was right and Bowie Kuhn was wrong -- this book didn't destroy anything or anybody. Instead, what actually struck closer to home was Bouton's talk about how the advice he got from managers and coaches was usually run-of-the-mill tripe ("Keep the ball down! Keep the ball up!"). I've always thought so as well. This is a must-read for anybody who enjoys the game of baseball and its history.

Rating:
Summary: Rest in Royalties, Leonard Schecter
Review: The so-called sports diary book is usually simplistic and misleading. Author clutches tape and begins, "Dear Diary and Friend." I could be wrong, by profession I am a podiatrist, but I think this book was researched by Bouton and written by Schecter, a good but unhappy fellow with very poor and painful feet. Schecter didn't like many players and this work reflects his slant more than Bouton's slant, when Bouton grew up enough to have any slant at all. Bouton was a marginal college student, who never tired talking of an evening with a beautiful classmate, -- no names here -- later a smash hit star in Hollywood,and whose arrogance and self-promoting puffery Mantle and Maris could not stand. Bad feet can make strong men cry. Schecter wept in my office. But this kind of generalized anger -having Bouton say all ball players but I myself, Saint James of Hoboken, are klutzes -- makes for a work that while entertainig is no more than that. Dangerous, really. Frankly, it makes my feet hurt. Roger Angell, Robert Lypsite, who live on the hypothesis that they are smarter and more sensitive than ball players, love this book. Less neurotic people don't agree. Entertaining, but like yesterday's lobster tails, sheer garbage.

Rating:
Summary: Not Just for Baseball Annies
Review: I first read this book when I was about fifteen or so - way back in the 70's. That tattered paperback copy is one of the few books from my teenage years that I still own, having hauled it and a few other beloved reads in moves from Pennsylvania to Arizona to Colorado. I loved the book then and reread it every couple of years. Bouton's sense of humor pervades the book, and still keeps me laughing.

Aside from a fascinating insight into the sport of baseball, it was also a terrific insight into the male mind. The day -to -day accounts of the activities of the exclusively male environment of a sports team was quite engrossing to a girl living with a single mother and two sisters. (Someday, somehow, I am going to play that baby powder/hair dryer prank on someone!)

The book also offers a look into America's past that even in the mid-70's was no more. I can recall my shock and disbelief at Bouton's description of the restaurants in the South that would not serve the black ball players inside - forcing those players to take their food outside to eat on the team bus. Nothing like that existed in my Pennsylvania town; it was hard for me to believe such things occurred in my own lifetime. (And to this day, I am indignant that the ball clubs would patronize such restaurants, and the fellow players would accept this situation.)

I heard of the book from Mad Magazine, and read it in order to understand the joke in the magazine --something about you know you are Republican if you think Jim Bouton is a traitor -- (and yes, I was the kind of kid who would read a book in order to udnerstand a joke!). I had not been a baseball fan before reading Ball Four, but I've been a fan ever since. (And a lifelong democrat <g>)

Rating:
Summary: Baseball through the eyes of a player
Review: Ball Four is one of the most important, and enjoyable, baseball books ever written. Jim Bouton gives you an inside view of what actually goes on in the Major Leagues. Through him you get to see what all of the players you watch or listen to play are actually like. He doesn't leave anything out in order to avoid upsetting people. He touches upon everything that happened during the season and the result is a wonderfully insightful and funny book. If you're a fan of baseball, you must read this book.