Bouton's "Ball Four" gets a 9.5 out of 10
I know it might sound a little weird, but I confess that I’ve got some pretty strange reading habits. For example, before the start of each major sports season (football, baseball and basketball), I read a book about the sport to put me in the mood for the season to come.
With this year’s pro baseball season just around the corner, I decided to read "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton to put me in a baseball frame of mind. I finished it last Thursday and, without a doubt, it’s the best sports book that I’ve ever read and one of the funniest.
"Ball Four," ranked by Sports Illustrated as the No. 3 best sports book of all-time, is based on Bouton’s diary of his 1969 season as a knuckleball pitcher with the expansion Seattle Pilots and then the Houston Astros. (The Pilots eventually moved to Wisconsin and became the modern-day Milwaukee Brewers.)
Before "Ball Four," big league baseball and players like Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams enjoyed an All-American, milk and cookies image. Bouton’s tell-all book, a truth-telling expose, changed all of that forever. The book, the first of its kind, showed pro baseball players as they really were: cheating on their wives, playing with hangovers and taking uppers before a game. Not only did Bouton write about these things, he named names.
The book’s publication outraged the baseball establishment and many players and baseball executives, including then Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, labeled Bouton a Judas, a traitor to the game of baseball. Bouton, a former pitching phenom for several New York Yankees championship teams, still doesn’t receive invitations to any Yankee Old-Timer’s games.
Many thought that Bouton had done pro baseball a grave disservice. Bouton, also famous as the creator of Big League Chew chewing gum, stripped away the apple pie image of the American pro sports hero with his hilarious locker room tales.
In 1970, Bouton was baseball’s public enemy No. 1, but the passing years have shown that "Ball Four" was an important groundbreaking book, a book that set the standard for the many tell-all books that followed in its footsteps. "Ball Four" is also, without a doubt, the best book ever written by a pro athlete and is arguably the greatest baseball book of all-time.
Will this book be read 100 years for now? I think so, mainly because there’s no other book quite like it. Bouton is always brutally honest about his feelings toward baseball, and he gives readers the full flavor of a time of great change in the sport of baseball. I also think that Bouton will be remembered for this masterpiece of sports literature for far longer than any of his former teammates or the baseball execs of his day.
In the end, I liked the book a lot. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve every read, and as far as sports books go, it’s unlike anything I’ve read about baseball. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the book a 9.5.
With this year’s pro baseball season just around the corner, I decided to read "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton to put me in a baseball frame of mind. I finished it last Thursday and, without a doubt, it’s the best sports book that I’ve ever read and one of the funniest.
"Ball Four," ranked by Sports Illustrated as the No. 3 best sports book of all-time, is based on Bouton’s diary of his 1969 season as a knuckleball pitcher with the expansion Seattle Pilots and then the Houston Astros. (The Pilots eventually moved to Wisconsin and became the modern-day Milwaukee Brewers.)
Before "Ball Four," big league baseball and players like Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams enjoyed an All-American, milk and cookies image. Bouton’s tell-all book, a truth-telling expose, changed all of that forever. The book, the first of its kind, showed pro baseball players as they really were: cheating on their wives, playing with hangovers and taking uppers before a game. Not only did Bouton write about these things, he named names.
The book’s publication outraged the baseball establishment and many players and baseball executives, including then Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, labeled Bouton a Judas, a traitor to the game of baseball. Bouton, a former pitching phenom for several New York Yankees championship teams, still doesn’t receive invitations to any Yankee Old-Timer’s games.
Many thought that Bouton had done pro baseball a grave disservice. Bouton, also famous as the creator of Big League Chew chewing gum, stripped away the apple pie image of the American pro sports hero with his hilarious locker room tales.
In 1970, Bouton was baseball’s public enemy No. 1, but the passing years have shown that "Ball Four" was an important groundbreaking book, a book that set the standard for the many tell-all books that followed in its footsteps. "Ball Four" is also, without a doubt, the best book ever written by a pro athlete and is arguably the greatest baseball book of all-time.
Will this book be read 100 years for now? I think so, mainly because there’s no other book quite like it. Bouton is always brutally honest about his feelings toward baseball, and he gives readers the full flavor of a time of great change in the sport of baseball. I also think that Bouton will be remembered for this masterpiece of sports literature for far longer than any of his former teammates or the baseball execs of his day.
In the end, I liked the book a lot. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve every read, and as far as sports books go, it’s unlike anything I’ve read about baseball. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the book a 9.5.
posted by Lee Peacock at 11:07 AM
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