Ball Four
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- ISBN13: 9780020306658
- Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
- Notes:
Product Description
A book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact it is by no means a sports book” —David Halberstam
“Ball Four is a people book, not just a baseball book.” —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
When Ball Four was first published in 1970, it hit the sports world like a lightning bolt. Commissioners, executives, players and sportswriters were thrown into a state of shock. Stunned. Scandalized. The controversy was front-page news.
Sportswriters called Bouton a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper.” Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force the leader to sign a statement adage that the book wasn’t right. One team really burned a copy of Ball Four in protest.And Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimers’ Day at Yankee Stadium.
Fans, but, loved Ball Four and serious critics called it an vital document. It was also very well loved among people who didn’t ordinarily follow baseball, because Ball Four is not strictly a book about baseball, but one about people who take place to be baseball players. And it’s hilariously amusing.
For the twentieth-anniversary edition of this historic book, Bouton has written a new epilogue, detailing his career as an inventor, his battles with the Wrigley Company over bubble gum, his take on the Pete Rose controversy, and how baseball looks two decades after he changed its public image forever.Amazon.com Review
As a player, ex- hurler Jim Bouton did nothing half-way; he threw so hard he’d lose his cap on nearly every pitch. In the early ’70s, he tossed off one of the most amusing, most revealing, insider’s takes on baseball life in Ball Four, his diary of the season he tried to pitch his way back from nothingness on the might of a knuckler. The real curve, though, is Bouton’s honesty. He carves humans out of heroes, and shines a light into the sport corners. A quarter century later, Bouton’s unique baseball voice can still bring the heat.
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I have been reading up on Mickey Mantle since seeing the movie 61*, about the Mantle/Maris race to beat Babe Ruth’s single season home run record. I checked this book out of the library to see why there was so much lack of sympathy towards Jim Bouton, and why he was never invited to NY Yankee Ancient Timer’s Days after writing this book. He permanently thought it was Mickey Mantle who was keeping him from attending. After Mantle died in 1995, he still didn’t get invited – so that shoots that one down. Bouton learned a lesson. People really LIKED Mickey Mantle and felt offended by what Bouton said about him in “Ball Four.”
He starts out talking about how nice Mickey was to him, different things he did that were touching, kind. But then he proceeds to tell us how he had mixed feelings for Mickey because he saw Mickey shut a bus window on a group of kids wanting autographs. And he refused to sign balls in the clubhouse one time. Jim Bouton was never Mickey Mantle, and its too terrible he never knew what it was to be hounded day and night and never have a minute of privacy. So Mantle shut a bus window on some kids once. Knowing what I do about the fame Mantle made and endured during his ball playing days, I can’t know why Bouton even establish that vital enough to write about.
Oh, that’s right. Money. He made alot of money writing this book to trash his fellow baseball players. Otherwise, would any of us remember Jim Bouton for anything else?
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
The so-called sports diary book is usually simplistic and misleading. Leader clutches tape and starts, “Dear Diary and Friend.” I could be incorrect, by profession I am a podiatrist, but I reflect this book was researched by Bouton and written by Schecter, a excellent but miserable fellow with very poor and painful feet. Schecter didn’t like many players and this work reflects his slant more than Bouton’s slant, when Bouton grew up enough to have any slant at all. Bouton was a marginal college student, who never tired talking of an evening with a gorgeous classmate, — no names here — later a smash hit star in Hollywood,and whose arrogance and self-promoting puffery Mantle and Maris could not stand. Terrible feet can make strong men weep. Schecter wept in my office. But this kind of generalized rage -having Bouton say all ball players but I myself, Saint James of Hoboken, are klutzes — makes for a work that while entertainig is no more than that. Treacherous, really. Frankly, it makes my feet hurt. Roger Angell, Robert Lypsite, who live on the hypothesis that they are smarter and more sensitive than ball players, like this book. Less neurotic people don’t agree. Entertaining, but like yesterday’s lobster tails, sheer garbage.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I thought it was very amusing when I first read it, but the attitude that he can trash so many additional people is a small hard to take. He rumor has it that made no attempt to know Mickey Mantle but felt okay about slamming him for drinking too much and yet wanted to make sure everyone knew he (Bouton) was a fantastic guy for supporting civil rights and adopting a kid. The book was an attempt to copy “Instant Replay”, but somehow Bouton and his editor thought it was okay to place in many negative comments about people who can’t respond. It’s no marvel so many people in baseball despised him after this. He seemed to reflect he was “telling it like it was” but to dump on teamates who can’t respond is pretty low. With friends like Bouton you don’t need enemies. I reflect he could have been just as amusing lacking going out of his way to try to hurt people.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
With all the uproar this book caused in 1970 when it came out, I expected more. More controversy. More about Mickey Mantle. More about loose morals on the road. Jim Bouton is a amusing guy, there’s small question of that. From the book, I get the tone that he’s reasonably an egotist as well. He has many self-depricating remarks in the book, but after a while, I came to judge he thinks too highly about himself. There are some fantastic tales about “beaver shooting” and additional games that ballplayers play that I thought were hilarious. As well, seeing behind the scenes of a baseball season was clean. But I wanted more of the scandalous stuff.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Even lacking personally meeting Jim Bouton I can say for certain that he his my friend. We share the same cranky attitudes, the same disrespect for power ( I sometimes wear my “Question Power” t-shirt to work) and his insistency on telling the truth. No matter what. I work as a Registered Nurse at a long term mental health care facility and could probably go mano-a-mano with Jim about the utter incompetence of “the all-purpose manger” or “the manager.” Jim is a man of fantastic courage and has the luxury of having a hottie wife who is also as smart and as skillful as a later day Anne Bancroft. Buy this book or forever live in purgatory. Ken
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5