Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious and Unprecedented
Review: Ball Four is a great book about life in the Major Leagues. You must read it.
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 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious look at baseball
Review: Even aside from its baseball aspects, Ball Four probably deserves recognition as the funniest string of anecdotes ever put on paper. There really isn't much that can be said about this book that isn't positive; hilarious, a quick-moving style of writing, interesting stories, and a great picture of what life in a clubhouse is really like. Bouton's limited observations on politics and individuality on a team are interesting, even if they're dated by now. The only drawback to this book is that it won't impact a reader today as it would someone who read it at its publication. For someone like me who has grown up with public salary negotiations and open discussion of the private lives of athletes, there's no shock value or revelation to be had. Nevertheless, even if it's no longer groundbreaking, it's still more than a worthwhile read for anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Iconoclast on the Pitching Mound
Review: I read this book when it first came out. It was quite an eye-opener although it may seem tame by today's standards. There was, we were told, an unwritten (and in some cases WRITTEN) rule that what happens in the club house stays in the club house. Jim Bouton certainly trashed that maxim as well as a lot of other sacred icons in "Ball Four". In the process he became more famous for his writing than he ever was for his pitching. This book is actually a diary of a pitcher's season. Bouton was a flame-throwing pitcher for the Yankees but he blew out his arm when he was still relatively young. He attempted to come back as a knuckle ball pitcher with the Seattle Pilots (remember them?). Pitching on an expansion team in its' first year gave Bouton an interesting perspective. Afterall, his previous service in the majors involved pitching in the World Series for the almighty Yankees. He went from a great team to a lousy team; from being a very good pitcher to a slightly below mediocre pitcher. With this background, the author shares what it was like to be at the top and what it is like to be at the bottom. We go day to day through the season. Bouton critiques his various pitching performances as well as the rest of the expansion team. Much of the book is hilarious, especially the parts about his manager, Joe Schultz. It is, however, Bouton's comments about his former Yankee teammates that have ruffled so many feathers. For example, he ponders how many more home runs Mickey Mantle would have gotten if he hadn't come to so many games hungover. Well, so much for Bouton being invited to Old-timer's games at Yankee Stadium. Yet his book is tame compared to today's slash and burn sports reporters. Mickey actually comes across as a loveable hero rather than the tragic figure many later portayed him as. Many people have tried to portray the life of a major league athlete. Most have made it too complicated or glamorous. Bouton's version still stands out as the best. He makes it sound like fun. You'll have fun, too, if you read "Ball Four".
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