Ball Four by Jim Bouton Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.24 You Save: $7.71 (48%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.40 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Ball Four
Book Review: A hilarious inside look to why these are not men playing a kid's game. They are just big kids.
Summary: 4 Stars
Jim Boutin was a very successful pitcher with the New York Yankees before injuring himself and having to become a knuckleball pitcher for the expansion Seattle Pilots. He wrote a diary of his comeback and it is nothing short of hilarious. The picture he paints of major leaguers is that of young boys who play pranks on one another and get their feelings hurt very easily. The only difference is these kids drive sports cars and pick up women during games. One scene in particular where they put talcum powder in another player's blow dryer makes me laugh every time I think of it. What makes the book so good is Bouton's natural way of writing so that the diary entires are not disjointed like Jim Brosnan's "The Long Season", but they have a flow to them. Even though I did not know many of the players he referenced in the book because it was before my time, it still remains a timeless classic.Book Review: A period-piece that will continue to endure
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm one of the many whose lives were enriched by Ball Four and who gained personal inspiration from it. In addition to all else that the book is, it is the story of someone who at the moment was an underdog, in a difficult and sometimes hostile setting, seeking to bring himself back to a better place, little by little -- AND HE MAKES IT! I'm sure that wasn't a part of the original intent of the book, but it's there, and it's very moving. That moment when Bouton runs into the Astro manager and coaches in the hotel lobby while they're talking about maybe giving him a start, is a great literary moment, and there are many others like it -- simple moments that rise surprisingly to the level of drama because of the book's fine pacing and the humanness of the narrative. Each next edition of the book -- "Ball Five," "Ball Six," "Ball Seven" -- has added significant new chapters. Ball Four is very much a book of that moment in which it originated, but its humanity, wit, and, yes, drama will keep it alive for a very, very long time.Book Review: A revealing book -- but not always as the author intends
Summary: 4 Stars
Ball Four is a good and important book to own. If one mark of a good book is its ability to provoke reactions, and often contradictory reactions, then Ball Four is a fine book.
What really makes the book a worthwhile read is the way that it reflects a time of momentous change in baseball. I'm not sure if younger fans can truly appreciate how rapidly things were changing in baseball back then. America experienced a broader social revolution throughout 1967 and 1968, but it really took until 1969 for it to work fully its way into baseball. If you look at the baseball cards from 1967 and 1968, they're bland grey items whereupon the players all look like crew-cutted astronauts. Come 1970, 1971, and beyond, everything is different: sideburns, Afros, wild psychadelic colors. Ball Four came out at the leading edge of these changes, and it captured festering tensions between baseball's old guard and a skeptical generation of young players.
Ball Four is widely hailed as a great classic. It's not quite as pathbreaking as its reputation, however. For one thing, it had a predecessor earlier in the decade, The Long Season, by Jim Brosnan, another "kiss and tell" book written by an active player. Brosnan's previous book is better written and more insightful. Ball Four created more of a sensation, but mostly because it was slummier -- it revels a bit more in the drinking and carousing than does the previous book. Because of this, Ball Four upset the baseball establishment a bit more, and it titillated young readers a bit more. Other aspects of the book were equally shocking (back then, anyway): for example, the portrayal of many authority figures -- coaches, managers, and baseball executives -- as dunderheads. This was an anti-establishment book in many respects.
Baseball was changing on all fronts, and these changes are well reflected in this book. Bouton pitches for the Seattle Pilots, in their first and last year of their existence, and the first season of the newly created league divisions. You also read of the attempts of baseball players to create a union, and the divisions among players this caused. You've also got the new turf parks, such as the Houston Astrodome where Bouton finishes up his season. And there are all of the social changes: the sexual revolution, the hashing out of racial issues, and perhaps first and foremost, the generation gap.
Bouton captures all this and more. Having said all that, my enjoyment of this book is limited by the fact that Bouton's own perspective is often arrogant and intolerant, in much the same way that he derides the older coaches and managers as being. You get the clear sense while reading him that the 1960s generational wars were caused not only by an older generation stuck in its ways, but equally by a younger generation that assumed it was automatically right and that they had nothing to learn from anybody. For example, Bouton persistently quotes his managers and coaches only to show how stupid they are. Now, there is such a thing as stupidity among the old, but all rebellious kids usually think that the older generation has missed a beat. Sometimes they're right, and sometimes not. Bouton's always convinced he's right, but there's little reason to believe he always is.
A typical battle between Bouton and his pitching coach Sal Maglie concerns Bouton's attempt to survive on the knuckleball. Sal Maglie gets on his case about it, and discourages him from throwing the knuckler exclusively. Bouton is convinced that his other stuff is basically gone, and the only way he's going to hang on is if he relies on the knuckler, and he wants to be left alone to concentrate on that pitch.
Let's just examine this from both sides for a moment to get a sense of whether Bouton's contempt for Maglie is justified.
When Bouton came up, he was a very successful pitcher with the New York Yankees. But although he had a reputation for having a young, live arm, the stats show that he was never really an overpowering pitcher. In 1964, he struck out only 120 men in 271 innings, while winning 18 games. Historically, pitchers don't get by on finesse like that for very long. It's not at all surprising that a few years later, Bouton no longer had hard enough stuff to get major league hitters out. Bouton's self-assessment in Ball Four seems to be justified: he probably doesn't have a good enough fastball or slider by 1969 to make it as a major league pitcher, and unless he gets the knuckler to work, that's it for him.
Now let's look on the other side. If there were ever a guy who knew something about such a situation, it was Sal Maglie. Maglie's emergence as a good major league pitcher was delayed by his "outlaw" years in the Mexican league. Like Bouton, Maglie wasn't overpowering -- in his finest year he struck out only 146 in 298 innings. But unlike Bouton, Maglie was very successful in his 30s. When Maglie tells Bouton that a key ingredient for success of an older pitcher is not walking too many hitters, he's onto something. Bouton gave up 12 gopher balls in only 92 innings with Seattle in 1969, and if you're that vulnerable to the gopher, you've got to keep the walks down. Most importantly, Maglie had accomplished what Bouton was trying to do -- not with overpowering physical gifts, but by assessing his own situation accurately; there was something to learn there.
The point is not that Bouton is right or Maglie is right, but that there are two good perspectives here, and if Bouton weren't so full of himself, he might be able to pick up what good things Maglie had to offer him, combining them with his own valid insights. Instead, Bouton spends the whole book making fun of Maglie and anyone else in a position of authority, refusing to learn anything from anyone older.
Bouton is a hero to everyone who has ever been fed up with their teachers, their boss, or "the establishment" at large, because many readers find it cathartic to read someone's rantings against stodgy authority figures. But in the final analysis, Bouton isn't necessarily all that brighter or more insightful than those he critiques: he's just as closed-minded, he just has a different opinion. He's not Galileo; he's not even Bill James. He's just a guy speaking his mind, always candidly, often rudely, and only sometimes with a valid point.
Ball Four is a worthy read because there's no other book quite like it; Bouton is always brutally honest about his feelings, and he conveys the full flavor of a turbulent era in baseball history. The book was considered sensational at the time, but it's not such a prurient interest anymore: now it's useful mostly to convey what all the fussing and fighting was about back then. But in the end it's a fallible set of perspectives by a very fallible individual.
Book Review: An outstanding book
Summary: 5 Stars
In all my time of being involved with baseball, playing baseball, and coaching baseball on both the little league and the high school levels, never have I read a book that is this informative. I reccomend this book to any little leaguer trying to get the fundamentals of baseball down pat. Whether it be something as complex as teaching the proper execution of the drag bunt, or something as simple and elementary as good sportsmanship, this book covers it all. It is a wholesome book, and wholesome, clean entertainment is so hard to find these days. As official scorer, I score this one a hit!!!Book Review: An outstanding book
Summary: 5 Stars
In all my time of being involved with baseball, playing baseball, and coaching baseball on both the little league and the high school levels, never have I read a book that is this informative. I reccomend this book to any little leaguer trying to get the fundamentals of baseball down pat. Whether it be something as complex as teaching the proper execution of the drag bunt, or something as simple and elementary as good sportsmanship, this book covers it all. It is a wholesome book, and wholesome, clean entertainment is so hard to find these days. As official scorer, I score this one a hit!!!