“Forty years ago, while struggling to recast himself as a knuckleball pitcher, Jim Bouton chronicled his experiences with the expansion Seattle Pilots. Scribbling notes in the clubhouse and bullpen and talking into a recorder each night, he compiled a diary of the life of a ballplayer that would make him a pariah upon its release in 1970.
Ball Four changed both baseball and sportswriting, as Bouton went where most had feared to tread. He named names. He spilled secrets about baseball’s unofficial hobby of “beaver shooting.” He spoke about amphetamine usage. Even worse, he wrote about Mickey Mantle playing with—gasp—a hangover.
He pissed off a lot of people.
Bouton is best known to the generations who didn’t see him play as the author of Ball Four. Most fans might not realize he was a star pitcher early in his career, winning 21 games for the Yankees in 1963 and another 18 in 1964. The Bouton who was tarred a “social leper” for his dalliance in the literary world wasn’t the same pitcher. He was expendable, and when he was cuffed around by National League hitters in 1970, the Astros expended him. Bouton declined a return trip to the minor leagues and hung up his spikes, at least until making a comeback much later in the 1970s.
Did Ball Four cost Bouton a chance to hang around as a big league reliever in the early ‘70s? Quite possibly, though by that point he was much more effective as an author than a moundsman. The controversy stoked when Commissioner Bowie Kuhn attempted to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true helped turn a tiny 5,000-copy release into a bestseller. Bouton was a star again.
All these years later, Ball Four is still a hot seller. Bouton is still in demand. He does countless interviews with reporters all across the country. In August he appeared on Bob Costas’s Studio 42 on the MLB Network.
Bouton claims to have written Ball Four to “share the fun in baseball.” That doesn’t always come through when you read his journal entries. Possibly he convinced himself that was his rationale sometime later. Bouton himself has credited some of the book’s original popularity to the fact that questioning authority was a popular thing to do in 1970. His depictions of team authority figures such as general manager Marvin Milkes, skipper Joe Schultz, and pitching coach Sal Maglie are often less than flattering. Of course, there’s much more to the book’s near cult status than that.
Ball Four made us all insiders. We had access for a full season to what goes on not just in a big league clubhouse, but, more importantly, in a big leaguer’s head. We learned that Bouton faced many of the same concerns that we did. He worried about deposits on his apartment when he was sent to the minors, about seeing his wife and kids, about getting busted for being late to work. And about failing.
The battle to simply hold his job is one of the book’s major themes. All season long Bouton struggled to find and keep the feel for his fledgling knuckleball. On days he lost it, he got pounded. On days he had it, his manager still didn’t trust him. He was regarded as a kook, a clubhouse lawyer, a smartass, and worse. But he wasn’t seen that way by most readers, who found someone vulnerable that they could immediately associate with.
So while opponents and former teammates disowned him, Bouton found a new brotherhood of fans who have bought millions of copies of Ball Four in several different editions. Ten years after its original release, Bouton penned Ball Five, a short followup to run at the end of the new edition. Ten years later Ball Six was appended as yet another edition spurred new sales.
Bouton’s revelations are no longer juicy. Greenies don’t grab headlines when today’s players have been outed for steroid use. We all know players chase girls and stay out late drinking.
So why do we still read it?
Because it’s still funny. The stories hold up on their own merits 40 years later. You’re going to laugh when you read it, the first time or the fifth. And it doesn’t matter if you never saw Gary Bell or Steve Hovley play. They’re still the good guys. You might not know Fred Talbot from Fred Flintstone, but when you read Ball Four he’ll remind you of a two-faced jerk from your office or softball league.
“‘Ball Four’ seems to be something that’s become larger than me; it has a life of its own,” Bouton told Rob Neyer, who was then writing about the book’s 30th anniversary. “It was all out of proportion in terms of what I was intending to do. You know, in some respects I almost feel like it’s not really my book, more like it was a collaborative effort between me and my teammates. I look back now and I have much more reverence for the guys I played with.
“They’re not just teammates, they’re characters in my life. So they’ve become larger than life, at least to me, and they mean more to me now than they ever did when I was actually playing.”
Nearly 10 years after that interview, Bouton’s answers are about the same. He’s penned several books since Ball Four, but that’s the one everybody wants to talk about. Fortunately, Bouton, now 70, still enjoys plugging it. And we still enjoy reading it.”
James B wrote this review Thursday, September 17 2009.
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