Ball Four was a great book by Jim Bouton. Bouton is a former Major League Baseball pitcher who wrote the book while he was still playing. It may not be just the greatest baseball book ever written but the best sports book ever written. The book is a hysterical and well-written daily diary of his 1969 season when he pitched for the Seattle Pilots. That was their only season.
Bouton was traded midway through the 1969 season to the Houston Astros. In Ball Four, He tells many previously unknown locker room secrets about baseball. Along the way, he reveals that professional athletes are normal human beings. They have emotions like fear, apprehension, nervousness, and joy. The book is much more than a baseball book and should appeal to everyone. Bouton kept a journal. Do you?
The Secrets Revealed by Bouton in Ball Four
In Ball Four, Bouton gives readers a look inside a major league baseball locker room. What the reader needs to know is that up to the book’s release in 1970, people thought baseball players were superheroes. He revealed them to be normal people, much to their chagrin. The book told a side of baseball that was previously unseen by showing baseball players were normal people. They told obscene jokes, participated in drunken womanizing (including by Mickey Mantle), and, unfortunately, routinely used drugs. On that latter vice, Bouton and many of his teammates took ‘greenies’ amphetamine pills that gave players energy.
Bouton wrote with candor about his anxiety over his pitching and role on the team, which is refreshing. He detailed his rocky relationships with teammates and management. Included are his funny sparring sessions with Pilots manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie, who played in the major leagues for a long time. In Ball Four Bouton detailed the lies and minor cheating that has gone on in baseball for decades. He also comments on politics in the book.
The Shocking Reaction to Ball Four
Ball Four changed baseball and probably sports in America by enabling fans to see professional athletes as normal people. The reaction to the book in the sport was shocking. It was mentioned above that Bouton wrote the book while he played. No less than Pete Rose took to yelling, “F___ you, Shakespeare!” from the dugout whenever he was pitching.
The book made Bouton unpopular with many players, coaches, and officials on other teams, and they felt he had betrayed the long-standing rule: ‘What you see here, what you say here, what you do here, let it stay here. ‘Many of his teammates never forgave him for publicly airing what he had learned in private about their flaws and foibles.
The New York Yankees banned Bouton for revealing Mickey Mantle was a womanizing drunk. That meant he could not visit Yankee Stadium, where he played, and he was not invited back for Old-Timer’s Day ceremonies. That was nothing. Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who was the Commissioner of Baseball at the time, called Ball Four “detrimental to baseball” and tried to make Bouton sign a statement saying that the book was completely fictional. He refused to deny any of the revelations in the book.
Ball Four’s Legacy
Ball Four has sold over one million copies, and there was a twentieth-anniversary edition. It was widely read by baseball fans of all ages, including by children under their covers with a flashlight. The book is 50 years old now, but it is a classic. Bouton is remembered as one of the most outspoken professional athletes of all time. He died in 2019 at age 80, but his legacy lives on in the hundreds of base players who have since written books.
Conclusion
The book is well-written and recommended to everyone. In particular, baseball fans should read it and probably own it. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a “social leper” for violating the “sanctity of the clubhouse. We relish the legacy of Ball Four. No other than noted author David Halberstam said, “A book so deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.”
