Ball Four by Jim Bouton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ball Four
Book Review: Not a simple sports book
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked this book up in 1972 when I was 12...and I haven't put it down since. Much more than a "baseball book," Ball Four is an expose of the changing attitudes in post-war America. Myth-shattering, yet inspiring, Ball Four is one of the most important books of the last 50 years.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: 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: Best Baseball Book Of All Time
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished reading this book for the third time, and it honestly never loses any of its superiority. Hands down, there has never been a better book written by an professional athlete.I remember reading this book in high school, thinking that it was truly amazing. Now, having read the book in it's 31st year of print, it is still truly amazing. The best thing about the book is that it gives you an honest perspective of the game from the player's point-of-view. And Jim Bouton holds nothing back. He is very straightforward and candid as he pulls no punches and just tells it like it is.
In today's day and age, anybody can, if not already has, written a tell-all book, and this truly wouldn't have been entirely possible if not for Bouton's ground-breaking Ball Four. Written in a diary-style, Bouton tells of his adventures with two Major League Baseball teams, the expansion Seattle Pilots, now the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Houston Astros. He cronicles his wild year, experimenting with his "Superknuck" knuckleball and more importantly, just trying to be one of the guys.
Ball Four is well-written, not to mention, quite funny. Bouton is a very intelligent man, and he clearly shines in this book, and comes across very well. This is not your typical tell-all book, but more of a book loaded with wonderful behind-the-scenes stories, that really need to be told to really appreciate the game of baseball today. The section added to the end of the book dealing with the aftermath of the publishing is priceless, and a super addition. This is one complete book and a teriffic read. You will not be disappointed.
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.