Ball Four: The Final Pitch |
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| Title: | Ball Four: The Final Pitch |
| Author: | Jim Bouton |
| Publisher: | Bulldog Publishing |
| Type: | Book / Hardcover |
| Publication Date: | 01 April, 2001 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 097091170X / 9780970911704 |
| List Price: | $24.95 |
| You Save: | $8.48 |
| Amazon Price: | $16.47 |
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This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $16.47.
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Ball Four is a baseball classic, a number one bestseller when it was published; it still is in demand throughout the U.S. Now in a new updated hardcover edition, Ball Four will reach a whole new generation of avid baseball fans. In fact, Ball Four has been selected by the NY Public Library as one of the "Books of the Century." And David Halberstam writes: "a book deep in the American Vein, so deep in fact that is by no means a sports book." Bouton has written a baseball book about the reality of the game. Thirty years after its publication, it remains as wonderful to read as ever.
Amazon.com Review
As a player, former hurler Jim Bouton did nothing half-way; he threw so hard he'd lose his cap on almost every pitch. 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. The real curve, though, is Bouton's honesty. He carves humans out of heroes, and shines a light into the game's corners. A quarter century later, Bouton's unique baseball voice can still bring the heat.
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Customer Reviews:
• The Original Iconoclast Of Mlb
02 October, 2009
I recall reading Jim Bouton's revealing expose when it was first released, at the conclusion of the 1969 season. By today's standards, it seems somewhat innocuous; certainly, Bouton revealed that baseball players are human beings who are not only skilled at their craft, but flawed as well. The performance enhancing drugs of the day were "greenies", although it's clear, the performance was enhanced only in the minds of the players popping those pills. The players themselves were depicted as womanizers, or at least, voyeuers, and some of the frank observations Bouton made probably didn't set too well with the soon to be ex-Mrs Bouton.
Clearly, Bouton is a very bright guy, playing a game where being an intellectual was considered somewhat detrimental to the "team" aspect of the game; it's no wonder he was considered to be somewhat of an oddball; but he also comes across as being more than just a little self-absorbed. There's no doubt he's got the gift of gab, and his commentary on some of the pettiness he encountered, especially with the front office, coaches and managers, is quite compelling; although perhaps more than a bit self-serving. He seems way more concerned with his individual success than the overall success of his team, and his flagrant bias against his original team, the New York Yankees, seems motivated by revenge, more than anything else. While insightful, he comes across as equally petty as any of the "villains" he writes about.
Still, his writing was irreverent, at times hilarious, and always very fascinating. Even 40 years after the fact, it's a story filled with candor and remarkable insight into the previously private world of MLB. The game has never been the same since; the iconoclastic perspective was unleashed with all its fury, and certainly, it's still a most compelling tale four decades later.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Funny, Profane And Honest. Play Ball
17 June, 2008
This was a provocative book when it was first published. Jim Bouton, who had been a star pitcher for the New York Yankees, was trying to mount a comeback by working on a knuckleball in the bullpen of the expansion team Seattle Pilots less than five years later. He was a world away from pitching in two World Series in two successive seasons with players like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris as team mates.
His fastball could no longer shatter a pane of glass, but his astute observations about professional sports broke many barriers that had existed between the owners, players and the fans. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn publicly condemned the book.
Bouton was traded to Houston before the season ended. The last place Seattle Pilots faded and died. The team was sold and transferred to Milwaukee after only one year. As such, it is something of a historic artifact of the failed Pilots team as well as a humorous look at the National Pastime.
- Amazon Customer Review
• The Knuckleball- The Oddest Thing In All Of Sports
08 May, 2009
It's hard to imagine an odder pitch than a knuckleball, or a better metaphor for the Jim Bouton "comeback" season he chronicles in Ball Four.
Once a back to back twenty game winner for the Yankess with a blistering fastball, Bouton is now so injured he can barely hold a fork. He decides to re-learn how to throw a knuckleball, and manages to do it well enough to latch on to the Seattle Pilots. This also gives Bouton the vehicle to write a behind the scenes tell all book about baseball- the first of about thirty billion to come but one of the best in all sports, not just baseball, and remaining so to this day.
As other reviewers have pointed out, it is a bit tame by today's standards, and even for it's day it relied more on good writing and storytelling than on shock value, but it is still real enough that the reader comes away with a pretty good sense of what the locker room must've been like.
Bouton's non-baseball worldview in Ball Four is all too familiar, but at the time he was also ground-breaking in his cynical disparagement of American values. He left Mom and apple pie alone, but he decided to unmask baseball the way American Beauty went after the family.
Still, for all his ahead of his time pc cynicism he was still pretty funny, and he's not a hard guy to cheer for. Kind of a likeable Keith Olbermann, if there is such a thing. And the book isn't as political as I'm making it sound, it's just that it has a kind of undercurrent that at once reflected the counter-culture of the 60s/70s but also was a forerunner to much of today's sports writing. About as important a book about a game as you are likely to run across, and it still makes me root for a knuckleball pitcher to this day.
- Amazon Customer Review
• The First To Expose How Players Used The Groupies
05 April, 2008
Jim Bouton is a very bright man who probably could have been a scientist if he didn't go into baseball. In the 1960s when he played nobody wrote colorful exposes of the behind the scenes and road trip life of major league ball players. Bouton was the first with this book. It ended many friendships with teammates and probably broke up his marriage. The book might seem tame by todays standard. Alcohol was the players drug in those days and no one was shooting up steroids back then. But the book was racy, groundbreaking and controversial in its time much like Canseco's books are today.
You will also see that it led to several other books by Jim Bouton and even one by his ex wife (another analogy to Canseco whose ex wife also wrote a book). Bouton was a great pitcher but alas for only the period from 1961-1964. 1963 was his best season but even though he pitched well in that world series the Yankees got steamrolled by the Dodger staff with Drysdale and Koufax leading the way. After retirementhe came back to pitch for the Seattle Pilots expansion team in their first year. He had developed a knuckle ball and that allowed him some limited success. Bulldog Jim wrote a book about that experience too. He had a trick when he pitched for the Yankees. He wouldd deliberately wear a very loose fitting cap that would usually fall off his head as he delivered the pitch. This was distracting for the hitters. But in his day Bouton had a good fastball and a deceptive changeup and he was part of a great pitching rotation in 1963 that included Ford, Downing and Terry.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Not Just A Baseball Book
11 March, 2010
This is BY FAR the best baseball book I have ever read. But in addition to that, it's one of the best books of any genre that I've ever read.
Funny, provocative, insightful, and unique are just a few of the words I'd use to describe Ball Four.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who likes baseball, and even to those who don't, because they may become fans after reading it.
- Amazon Customer Review
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