Ball Four begins “I signed my contract today to play for the Seattle Pilots at a salary of $22,000 and it was a letdown because I didn’t have to bargain. One player hitching up his pants, saying, “I add 20 points to my average if I know how bitchin’ I look out there.”Ībove all, here was a proud man wrestling with failure. Players shouting “Ding-dong!” when a catcher took a foul ball to his protective cup.
Jim Bouton’s diary of the 1969 major league baseball season may seem tame today, but Ball Four’s release 50 years ago caused a furor. Pound that ol’ Budweiser into you and go get ‘em tomorrow.”Īnd here was a fresh side to the grand old game - fun. Acknowledgments, bibliography, epilogue, index, notes, photographs, prologue, 34.95 hardback. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a social leper for having violated the sanctity of the clubhouse. When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Here were veteran managers saying the stupidest things - “Attaway to stomp ‘em. The 50th Anniversary edition of the book that changed baseball (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Non-Fiction books. Here were “heroic” New York Yankees prowling a hotel roof to “shoot beaver” by peeping into windows. The nonsense included stories every sportswriter was sworn not to tell. I’d call Shecter and say, ‘Is this interesting?’ And he’d say: ‘Are you kidding? Keep going!’” Every once in a while, I would transfer the notes to audio and send in my tapes.
“I didn’t know the value of it,” Bouton recalled.
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