Rating: 
Summary: You will pull your hair out
Review: This book is Erin Brockovich, the Insider, It's a Wonderful Life, A Civil Action, and Field of Dreams all rolled into one awesome book. I just read this in two days. It is both fantastic and infuriating. I am so mad I want to go up to Pittsfield and shoot some of these people. The situation faced by Bouton is so frustrating; yet this kind of behavior goes on every day all over America. The book is both inspiring and discouraging. It makes me want to go full bore for a similar cause; but it also reinforces what I already know: That it's almost impossible to change anything. But this book has an unknown (at the time of publishing) happy ending. Read the book and then check out Bouton's www.foulball.com for the latest news. Anyway, this is an absolute must read for ANY AMERICAN. You don't have to be a baseball fan, or even know what a bunt is to appreciate it.
Rating: 
Summary: Bouton does it again! Baseball and muckraking, too
Review: This is a book that answers the question so many people ask about so many aspects of American life, and not just baseball: "Why are things so bad, and why aren't they fixed?" The city leaders of Pittsfield, Mass. were trying to jam a trendoid, taxpayer-funded new stadium down the throats of the people they were supposed to represent. Bouton and associates, in the nearly dead tradition of American capitalism, offered to take the financial risks instead. Bouton et al.'s plan: save the old ballpark and use Pittsfield's assets to put the city in the driver's seat, instead of letting the city get jerked around and fleeced like nearly every other city in the country with a professional sports team. And the people of Pittsfield would get to own 51% of the team: a veritable Green Bay Packers of minor league baseball! You'd think any city would jump at that offer, but it takes a free press and a democratic form of government to ensure that kind of common-sense decision. And therein lies the compelling story in "Foul Ball." The book, a diary of Bouton's efforts, reads like a Michael Moore movie script. And even though you know Bouton's going to lose, just like Michael Moore's not going to get Roger Smith to fess up or Charlton Heston to apologize, it's a fascinating tour through the demosclerotic, upside-down fruitcake of modern America. Of particular note is Bouton's jousting with the "local" paper, in fact a chain-owned rag that distorts the truth reflexively. By the end of the book, you find out why the paper was pushing so hard for a new stadium on its own property. General Electric and its sliming of the Pittsfield area with PCBs play key roles too. I've seen my share of battles in small-city America, and Bouton's stories have the complete ring of truth--the shifting strategies of deception, the comical mockery of democratic process, the works. It's at the Parks Commission level where the American dream lives or dies, and it's refreshing to have Bouton talk about this with such passion. Try getting any journalist interested in doing a 400-page book on Pittsfield and its local government! Not to mention a book with enough detail on GE's hanky-panky that the original publisher wanted Bouton to soft-pedal things. Bouton tossed the publisher and published the book himself. Bravo! In this sense, "Foul Ball" is an important contribution to American studies, the kind of book a "Washington Monthly" would review and applaud if Charles Peters were still the editor. More than a few journalists and city activists with no interest whatsoever in baseball could read this book with pleasure. My only criticism of "Foul Ball" is a forgivable one: at the point where Bouton's diary admits he and his partner are going over the top to gain approval of their proposal, the diary starts to drag. As a reader, I was ready to "call for the question" instead of reading more about Bouton's increasingly elaborate campaign strategies. But this is a completely honest mistake: Bouton is passionate about his cause and goes on a little too long, just like he probably would in person, just like I would about my favorite cause too. If this were a journalist's account instead of a first-person diary, we'd probably have been spared this--but we'd have lost the best aspect of the book too, Bouton's spot-on honesty. Buy this book, and learn a lot about what's wrong with baseball, journalism, and local government in today's America. And keep tabs via the Web of the crummy team with the three-digit attendance that Bouton's rival has foisted onto Pittsfield. Why are they so bad? Not because no one tried to fix things, but because things were 'fixed.' Read the book, and you'll know exactly how and why the fix was in.
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