Ball Four

The Final Pitch

By: Jim Bouton

Narrated by: Jim Bouton

Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Ball Four: The Final Pitch is the original book plus all the updates, unlike the 20th Anniversary Edition paperback.

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries.

Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people--often wildly funny people. Many readers said it gave them strength to get through a difficult period in their lives. Serious critics called it an important document.

David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written… a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.”

In 1999 Ball Four was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the “Books of the Century.” And Time magazine chose it as one of the "100 Greatest Non-Fiction" books.

Besides changing the image of athletes, the book played a role in the economic revolution in pro sports. In 1975, Ball Four was accepted as legal evidence against the owners at the arbitration hearing, which lead to free agency in baseball and, by extension, to other sports.

Today Ball Four has taken on another role--as a time capsule of life in the 60s. "It is not just a diary of Bouton's 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros," says sportswriter Jim Caple. "It's a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a "tell all book" is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California."

©1970, 1981, 1990 Jim Bouton (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact it is by no means a sports book." (David Halberstam)

" Ball Four is a people book, not just a baseball book." ( The New York Times)

" Ball Four is out in a new e-book edition, available on Kindle. It also is available as an audio book, read by Bouton himself, through audible.com. The only thing better than reading Ball Four again might be listening to Bouton read it to you." (R. A. Dickey, columnist and senior writer for ESPN.com.)

A Great Follow-Up To Reading The Book

I read Ball Four when it was first released. I enjoyed it but it came to life when read by the author. He shed tears in the sad moments and can be heard laughing to himself in the funny parts. It’s also a huge bonus to listen to an extra three plus hours, telling us many things that happened post-Ball Four. Enjoy!

Great read even if you have no idea about baseball

I really enjoyed this book, I especially loved his narration, the fact that you can tell he was remembering his emotions as he read and laughing along or when he was sad and his voice broke really stuck with me. it almost felt like a friend telling me a story. I ll be completely honest, I know nothing about baseball I came up on this book after hearing about it on a podcast and I'm really glad I did, I can honestly say I really liked it. It really made the players feel like real people as opposed to the well behaved image of them you see on TV. Overall I recommend it to anyone whether you're a sports fan or just someone curious about the life of an old school athlete.

Memories

This brought back so many memories of Marty Pattin that’s mentioned in this book for me. I knew him as a child, and my father and my uncle grew up with him. I still remember his Donald Duck voice and trying to mimic the sounds. What a wonderful book; the update has me crying several times. Thank you for letting me have these memories back.

This is the best book ever written by a player.

Any additional comments?

As a teenager in the 1970s, my favorite book was Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues”. I had not read the book from cover-to-cover in over 30-years. As a 49-year old man, I am pleased to report that “Ball is still as humorous, insightful, and relevant today as when it was published in 1970. It is the best book ever written by a baseball player and the best account of a player’s day-to-day travails during the long baseball season.

After Jim Bouton had hurt his arm and lost his ability to throw his signature fastball, he turned to the knuckleball in desperation. Ball Four, written in diary form, is Jim Bouton’s account of his struggle to hold onto his career, literally and figuratively, by his fingertips. Jim Bouton had spent 1968 in the minors and was not even sure that he would play major league baseball in 1969. He was signed by the expansion Seattle Pilots (now the Milwaukee Brewers) and was used as a mop-up relief pitcher. Towards the end of the season, he was traded to the Houston Astros, who were in a five-way pennant race.

Ball Four was a best seller in 1970 and probably still is the best selling American sports book of all time. It was named as one of The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century. Roger Angell attributed to the success of the book to Jim Bouton’s ability as a “day-to-day observer, hard thinker, marvelous listener, comical critic, angry victim, and unabashed lover of the sport”.

Ball Four gained notoriety, because it exposed baseball players as girl chasing, drug taking, and beer drinking guys with stunted emotional maturity. The players entertained themselves with juvenile pranks, hilarious antics, and insults. The book depicts team owners and general managers as being selfish misers. The Seattle Pilots’ coaching staff are cliché spouting incompetents, hypocrites, and petty tyrants. “Pound the old Budweiser” was the favorite expression and all-purpose advice of the manager of the hapless Seattle Pilots.

Sports writers and the baseball establishment hated the book, because they thought it was their self-appointed job to protect the wholesome, milk and cookies image of baseball players. Fellow players thought that Jim Bouton had violated locker room sanctity, as embodied in the familiar clubhouse sign stating: “What you see here, what you hear here, let it stay here when you leave here”. Of course, many of the players who criticized the book would eventually write their own kiss-and-tell memoirs.

Jim Bouton attracted the most attention and criticism for his stories about Mickey Mantle. Jim Bouton revealed how Mickey Mantle once hit a homerun while drunk. It wasn’t Jim Bouton’s intent to destroy heroes, but to humanize them. Why couldn’t Mickey Mantle be a hero who has a bit too much to drink from time to time? Mickey Mantle would later capitalize on his reputation as a drinker by appearing in a series of Miller Lite commercials.

The real significance of Ball Four was that it was written on the cusp of the players successfully challenging the reserve clause and winning their right to become free agents. Jim Bouton addresses how players were grossly underpaid by the team owners. When the minimum salary was raised from $8,000 to $10,000, the owners acted as if they were granting rookies and marginal players a raise.

The players tolerated this one-sided economic relationship, because the status quo is all that they that had ever known. Jim Bouton’s New York Yankees teammates in the early 1960s laughed when he proposed that the players should request that the minimum salary be increased to $25,000. The fact that players were property of the owners, to be underpaid, sold, traded, and released on a whim, was ingrained by a 100-years of organized baseball tradition.

The book recounts his one-side salary negotiations with the Yankees. He embarrassed the Yankees by telling reporters how much he wanted, so everyone knew that he was being reasonable and the Yankees were being unfair. After winning 20 games in 1964, the Yankees agreed to pay him $30,000 in 1965 on the condition that he not disclose his salary.

Team owner’s tightfistedness had not improved by 1969. Ballplayers roomed together on road trips, the team flew commercial flights, and the coaches kept track of baseballs during practice. The Seattle Pilots refused to reimburse Jim Bouton for a $50 case of Gatorade that he had purchased for the players during spring training.

Jim Bouton’s disdain for the monopolist owners and their treatment of players should be viewed in the context of rampant anti-establishment culture of the Viet Nam War era. His attitude towards authority is mirrored in the counter-culture films of the era, such as M*A*S*H, Alice’s Restaurant, and Easy Rider.

This version of Ball Four contains updates written in 1980, 1990, and 2000. Jim Bouton’s emotive narration places the listener in the moment. He laughs when telling comical stories and repeating the manager’s absurd one-liners; and he cries when describing the tragic death of his daughter. He also sings the country western parody song that he co-wrote in the bullpen and the Houston Astros’ bawdy fight song.

Interesting Perspective on Baseball and Life

I read the original edition of Ball Four in 1970 or 1971 when I would have been 13 or 14. At the time, I thought it was a great book (probably in part because it was risque for the time) and that Jim Bouton was positively a great guy.

Fast forward nearly fifty years. With baseball (which has been part of the summer soundtrack of my adult life) missing due to the COVID-19 crisis, I decided to re-read it. From the perspective of late middle age (or perhaps early old age), I drew a much more nuanced perspective.

To begin with, this book is not merely the original Ball Four. It is Ball Four with three separate updates from Jim Bouton's later life. The last update would have been written, if my math is correct, when Jim was about 60 (not far from my age now). Do not skip the updates.

Let's start with the original Ball Four, which caused so much of a stir when it was originally written for offering an unvarnished and inside look at baseball. At the time it was written, Bouton was about 30 and was a former star pitcher of the New York Yankees. Having lost his fastball to arm trouble, Bouton was trying to hang on as a relief pitcher relying on a knuckleball for the expansion Seattle Pilots (in what was the team's only season in existence).

I'm not sure there is anything in the original book that is particularly shocking, with one exception: It is surprising how badly the players treated women--attempting to look up skirts and into hotel rooms, among other things. To show how times have changed, Bouton (who would characterize himself as an intellectual and rather extreme liberal) seems to have found this hilarious and to have joined in at times. To say things would be viewed differently now is an understatement.

In writing Ball Four, Bouton broke baseball's rule about not telling the outside world about what goes on in the clubhouse. Bouton seems bemused by just about everything, and has a hard time understanding why the coaches and players reacted so negatively when the book first came out. Bouton seems incapable of understanding why his teammates might be justified in having hard feelings when he writes about things he had promised to keep secret. He does not seem to understand why his former manager--who is basically portrayed as an idiot, albeit with some good qualities--would not speak to him after the book was published. Jim seems to think that the manager ought have no problem with the characterization because he (Jim) also professed to like him.

After finishing the original Ball Four part of the book, my former impression of Bouton had changed: I certainly no longer viewed him as a great guy (as I had at 14), but instead as an amusing but utterly self-absorbed person with a rather large lack of regard for others' feelings. On the other hand, the revelations about baseball--the boozing, skirt chasing, and amphetamine use--were important, and the on-field antics were often hilarious. Bouton's observations about the tribulations of black players in the 1960s were also perceptive.

The updates, however, bring a different view of Bouton and make this a better book. Bouton's story of making a brief comeback with the Savannah and Atlanta Braves in 1978 is inspiring. Bouton's nickname was "bulldog," and this part of the story really reveals this side of Bouton's character. I remember watching the game that Bouton won for the Atlanta Braves that year on the old Superstation. It seems that this effort helped him rediscover not only his love of baseball, but also a better part of himself.

The last update includes a gut-wrenching account of the death of Jim's daughter Laurie. The family called her the "Unsinkable Molly Brown," and Laurie was apparently a vivacious and popular young woman willing to take on any challenge. She was tragically killed in a car accident (not her fault) at 31. Bouton's love for his daughter and the immense scope of his grief are palpable. It is incredibly emotional to hear it in Jim's own voice.

There is a lot more in the original book and the updates, but let's leave those for you to read.

Jim had a stroke in 2012 which caused a form of dementia. He passed away in 2019. What are my final impressions nearly fifty years after first reading the book? Jim Bouton was a bright and interesting guy who wrote a very important book about sports that remains well worth reading. However, he seems to have expected his teammates to give him every benefit of the doubt in reacting to the book even though he did not do so for them in writing it.

After writing the original Ball Four, Bouton seems to have become a much more mature and nuanced individual. He was a good father. He was a good husband the second time around. He lived a good and interesting life and reconciled with most of his former teammates later in life. As he grew older, he became a better person.

And he was a pretty good ballplayer.

interesting old ball player with some fun stories

it took a while to get into but he's got some gems in there. if you wanted to hear about how ball players were like in the 60s then this is for you

great book that is more timeless than I expected

this was a great book made all the more enjoyable by the emotions that came through as Bouton read his own words

A NO HOLDS BARRED LOOK BEHIND THE SCENES

Would you consider the audio edition of Ball Four to be better than the print version?

With Jim Bouton actually reading the book, complete with appropriate inflection, the listener can really get a better notion of what he was feeling at the time.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Ball Four?

Hearing an interested and involved onlooker actually cut down some of the great players of the day. Today sports interviews are generally so staid and trite, with a litany of cliches, that met out very little actual information

Which scene was your favorite?

The whole book was pretty interesting, especially when Bouton makes his comeback years after his career was ostensibly over.

Any additional comments?

This is a pretty interesting insiders look behind the scenes. My one criticism would be that while Bouton does mention some of his own misgivings, others, that my own reading outside of this book, are glossed over or ignored. I'm pretty sure I was paying attention throughout and there is no mention of his retirement in the 70's.

it's a homerun

great book for an old school baseball fan. especially hearing the inside stories ESPN doesn't tell.

A must read for any baseball fan, and for non fans too

Jim Bouton tells it how it is. He gets some flak for appearing self-centered or apparently capitalizing on teammates’ addictions or infidelity for personal gain, but the book doesn’t come across that way at all. He simply wrote a book telling it how it is because that’s the kind of guy he was. He frequently mentions his own shortcomings, and nowhere did he try to portray himself as somehow morally above his teammates.

The epilogues he has added through the years are emotional and nostalgic, made even more so by his recent passing.