Ball Four by Jim Bouton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ball Four
Book Review: Funny, Profane and Honest. Play Ball
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a provocative book when it was first published. Jim Bouton, who had been a star pitcher for the New York Yankees, was trying to mount a comeback by working on a knuckleball in the bullpen of the expansion team Seattle Pilots less than five years later. He was a world away from pitching in two World Series in two successive seasons with players like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris as team mates.
His fastball could no longer shatter a pane of glass, but his astute observations about professional sports broke many barriers that had existed between the owners, players and the fans. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn publicly condemned the book.
Bouton was traded to Houston before the season ended. The last place Seattle Pilots faded and died. The team was sold and transferred to Milwaukee after only one year. As such, it is something of a historic artifact of the failed Pilots team as well as a humorous look at the National Pastime.
Book Review: Funny, Socially Conscious, Irreverent
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: Good read, but not too shocking.
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a great journal of a marginal player for an expansion baseball team. It has got great stories, great gossip, emotional ups and downs, and is an insightful read.I, being so young (meaning desensitized by today's culture), I found nothing truly shocking. Though it must have been pretty ground shaking in 1970, it's tamer than I thought it would be.
It's a good book and granted it was the start of the trend that exposes athletes and heroes and mere humans, but if it was released today, most people would not have given it a second thought.
Book Review: Great after many years
Summary: 5 Stars
Seems pretty tame after all I read about it over the years. A great history about the little known Seattle Pilots.Book Review: Great story about "teammates" working together
Summary: 5 Stars
I know nothing about Baseball, mainly because I am English, and I still know nothing about Baseball but this is one of the best sports books I have ever read. Funny, moving, clever but mainly funny it is about a man struggling to get buy watching and involved with a load of others guys struggling to get by, they are allegedly on the same team - but it is hard to tell. I came to this book because of an English Soccer book 'Only a Game' written by Emanon Dunphy. Dunphy based his diary on `Ball Four' and I liked 'Only a Game' so much I bought the original. I recommend heartily 'Only a Game' it has the same crazy, abrupt and crazily sporting relations that make `Ball Four' so revealing and funny - but the original is still the best. One of the few books I've read where all I want to do is sit and read and the rest of the world can go hang.