It's important because at the time it blew the lid off the use of "Greenies" (amphetamines) womanizing, overdrinking, and other such habits rampant in the baseball world. In the clubhouse [manager] Joe [Schultz] delivered his usual speech: “Attaway to stomp ’em.
Bouton’s goal was to paint a portrait of baseball as it existed circa 1969. Sportswriter George Vecsey wrote that “it could very well be the most provocative ever written by an athlete,” after hearing snippets of what was promised to be contained therein. Players thought it broke the sacred bonds of The Team. I have read dozens of baseball books before getting around to “Ball Four,” and I wish I had read Bouton’s book earlier. If any book could be said to have changed my life, it would be this one. Really?! Once a flame-throwing, twenty-game winner and starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, Bouton lost his fastball and found himself working middle relief for the expansion Seattle Pilots, desperately trying to develop a knuckleball and taking notes about pro ball player shen.
Really?! And it makes the perfect bar mitzvah gift: totally delights the boys and terr. He is probably best known for winning two games for New York in the ’64 World Series against the Cardinals. Some of those people might even be members of his family—one of his notes contains a quote from one of his brothers, who knew what was coming: “This is a great book Jim but what’s mom gonna think?”. It got to be funny as hell after a while, because not only did he get no opposition, but he was taken seriously. To see what your friends thought of this book. Are you a Stathead, too? I'm not a baseball fan, but early this year I heard a brief interview with Jim Bouton and there was something about him that caught my attention - perhaps his voice (you can hear his smile in his voice), perhaps it was his word choice or maybe it was his humor. Some defensive statistics Copyright © Baseball Info Solutions, 2010-2020. Young men engage in locker room hijinks, drink to excess and chase skirts. All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. Fifty years ago this month Jim Bouton set the baseball world on fire. Many historical player head shots courtesy of David Davis. “Smoke him inside,” said Bell. He knew there would be trouble, though, because he knew both Bouton and Shecter. ― Jim Bouton, quote from Ball Four “The day he is out of baseball will be the day he starts to think about what comes next. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. The sports world is said to have been "shocked" and "outraged" by the goings on behind the scenes that were previously unknown to the outside world. Even his prose at times recalled Salinger’s Caulfield: The meeting before the game was marvelous. Jim Bouton wrote a funny, honest book about baseball. I have read dozens of baseball books before getting around to “Ball Four,” and I wish I had read Bouton’s book earlier.
In an era when it’s not unusual for sports figures to tweet their comments about coaches, fans, and fellow players immediately following a game, I’m not sure that today’s fan realizes what a big deal “Ball Four” once was. Even in 1970 when it was written it shouldn't have raised an eyebrow. Correction, Ball Four might be the greatest sports book ever written. What made Ball Four a Nehru? Bouton and Shecter had an eye for what would make their book stand apart from the factory of sports diaries—presumed tell-alls—that were already the rage at the time. “I knew he was writing a book from day one because he told me,” Miller continued, “but there had never been anything like that. Mitchell Nathanson’s book Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original is available now. Copyright © 2000-2020 Sports Reference LLC. Jim Bouton was a young fireballer who was used as piece of meat by the Yankees then discarded a few seasons later when he blew out his arm. I read it because it was most often cited as the favorite book of so many guys I knew who came of age in the '70s. Frankly, it gave me more useful insight into "guys" than anything I've ever read. Do you have a blog? Frank Howard, McMullen, Brinkman, Epstein—every hitter. Published in 1970, Ball Four, subtitled: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues is in the form of a journal kept by Jim Bouton. Win Expectancy, Run Expectancy, and Leverage Index calculations provided by Tom Tango of InsideTheBook.com, and co-author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. That book's depiction of the way that "baseball men," like all men who have given themselves to an institution and convinced themselves that said institution has given them everything of value in their lives, make almost all their of decisions based on fear, habit, nostalgia, and misplaced loyalty. Stomp ’em when they’re down. My mom recently tried to read Bouton's baseball diary, but couldn't get past March 7. There had been sports diaries before, which, structurally-speaking, was what Ball Four was, but there had never been a sports diary like this one—one that was also a de facto political statement. Be the first to ask a question about Ball Four. Correction, Ball Four might be the greatest sports book ever written.
It's unheard of to have a pitcher play for that long, because of eventual and certain damage to a throwing arm. Suffice to say, it's the perfect analogy for corporate drudgery. “I want it to be the book that’s recommended 25 years from now when someone asks, ‘What was baseball like way back then?’”, “It could very well be the most provocative ever written by an athlete.”, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), Willie Perdomo on Poetry as a Decolonial Practice, Elif Shafak on What It Means to Belong in Many Places at Once, Prince Was One of the Loneliest Souls I've Ever Met, How a Scrap of Papyrus Launched a Reconsideration of Early Christianity. I've always heard this was one of, if not the best, baseball memoirs, but I find Bouton somewhat unlikable and the book itself a bit boring. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Ball Four traces Bouton's 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and his trade to the Houston Astros. Pitcher Jim Bouton’s candor about his teammates (past and present), coaches, managers and Major League Baseball itself was ground-breaking and best-selling. His goal was to capture as much of this as he could, and he used nearly every inch of available scrap paper to do so. https://bpv.baseball-reference.com/bpv/index.php?title=Ball_Four&oldid=1094801. Jim Bouton is a Wit. A classic of it's genre. In the clubhouse, brains and ballplayers don't mix, management treat players more like inventory than people, and the worst thing you can do is question any of it. All rights reserved. He spends quite a bit of time analyzing the managers, and you sense Bounton feels he needs to understand his managers to their fullest in order to excel in his own craft of pitching knuckleballs. My answer: "Jim Bouton is full of shit.". But then along came Jim Bouton. Bouton was a major league pitcher for several teams, most notably the Yankees. And because I am reading this book nearly fifty years after its publication, I don’t have the immediate impact of its release, although it is not hard for me to imagine. Every Sports Reference Social Media Account. I enjoyed Bouton’s diary-like description of his season. "Ball Four is a people book, not just a baseball book." Some of them contained writing tips to himself: “When writing a critical piece, start gradually with the weakest stuff and build a case—then come with the big stuff at the end.” Some contained his predictions as to who would make the club once the season started or his pitching strategies when facing a particular team; some contained his musings on the mercurial slugger Dick Allen, who at the time was engaged in an undeclared, unprecedented midseason sit-down strike against the Phillies: “This might just be a man trying to be one around people who expect something less and used to something less.”. Billed as one of the most (if not the most) important sports book ever, Ball Four reads as a diary of Jim Bouton's struggle to stay relevant in 1969 having reinvented himself as a knuckleball pitcher. It was also cool to see the contrast of baseball and book writing between then and now. Like a lot of people, the first baseball book I enjoyed was Michael Lewis' "Moneyball." In the early '70s, he tossed off one of the funniest, most revealing, insider's takes on baseball life in Ball Four, his diary of the season he tried to pitch his way back from oblivion on the strength of a knuckler. Keep an eye on that, Shecter suggested. Not for the first time, I couldn't be more delighted to be proved completely wrong.