Ball Four by Jim Bouton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ball Four
Book Review: Ball Four was a HIt
Summary: 4 Stars
Ball Four is a journal of Jim Bouton's days in baseball. It is light hearted and pokes fun at himself and tells it like it was in the 1960's. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the behind the scenes and what happens in the locker room.Book Review: Ball Four: Required Reading for Ball Fans
Summary: 4 Stars
Bouton's diary-style take on professional baseball in the late 1960s makes for a very funny book that ought to be required reading for any sports fan.
Bouton spent a large part of his career pitching his knuckleball for a variety of big-league teams, including for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series. In Ball Four, Bouton goes from the minors to the Seattle Pilots, then to Houston, over the course of the 1969 season. The book really captures a bygone era of baseball. Salaries were low, bus rides were long, and a lot of big names were still in the game.
The book has a reputation for being funny, and it is. Bouton has a wry sense of humor and a keen eye for human foibles.
A few subjects felt burned, but in this day of athletes accused of drug abuse and criminal behavior, some of the antics that Bouton writes about seem very tame, almost quaint. It's a little hard to see what the fuss was about if you're planted firmly in 2005.
Bouton's observations are fascinating, capturing an era in baseball (and more broadly, in our nation) that has all but disappeared. These were the days before million-dollar contracts and when the length of their hair and sideburns sometimes held the key to a player's future.
Bouton brings the moments alive, so the reader can feel the nerves of a pitcher blowing a game, the joy of running across a big-league field, the frustration of trying to get Gatorade, the speechlessness of finding one's shoes nailed to the clubhouse floor.
Readers should be grateful that someone with a clear, ironic eye had the foresight to take notes and write this book. As Bouton himself says, so many of the funny details would have been lost forever.
For baseball fans, young and old, put this at the top of your summer reading list.
Book Review: Baseball Fans Will Enjoy
Summary: 5 Stars
Well written book and expose about the baseball industry. Anyone who enjoys baseball will enjoy this book. Don't be discouraged by the book length. It's an easy read, you can skip around and read just about any place in the book without ruining the story.Book Review: Baseball classic
Summary: 4 Stars
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?
Book Review: Baseball through the eyes of a player
Summary: 5 Stars
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.