 "The Original Iconoclast of MLB" | 2009-10-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3FHSO1SKHU378 |
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. |
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| "The knuckleball- the oddest thing in all of sports" | 2009-05-08 |
| - Reviewed By glennyates |
It's hard to imagine an odder pitch than a knuckleball, nor 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. |
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| "Funny, Profane and Honest. Play Ball" | 2008-06-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: ASAM6EGR6JQ08 |
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. |
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| "the first to expose how players used the groupies" | 2008-04-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: AQ7ZQWXAYT8HZ |
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. |
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| "important book" | 2008-03-17 |
| - Reviewed By nonehaseveraskedthatbefore |
even now, the contents of "ball four" are as equally as contrary to what you think about the order of things as say the first time you hear that hawaiians aren't happy about being american. what this book has to say about institutions make it as valuable an american document as "on the road".
the only real debate i think that could be made over this assertion is who took more speed; kerouac or bouton?
the answer is kerouac.
leaving only one other question:
who took more speed; kerouac or doc ellis?
i can't answer that question but i can say that beaning batters successively until you get thrown out of a major league baseball game is much cooler than anything kerouac ever did. |
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 "Ball Four was a HIt" | 2008-02-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A302KT76C7X1JH |
| Ball Four is a journal of Jim Bouton's days in baseball. It is light hearted and pokes fun at himself and tells it like it was in the 1960's. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the behind the scenes and what happens in the locker room. |
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