Ball Four
(Jim Bouton)
Smoke him inside. Baseball Annies. Pound that Budweiser. Mr. Small Stuff. Beaver shooting.
Keywords from the first, and still one of the funniest, baseball tell-all books: Ball Four, Jim Bouton?s diary of the 1969 season, published in the spring of 1970.
St. Louis Cardinals, and later Cincinnati Reds, pitcher Jim Brosnan chronicled 1959 in The Long Season, and 1961 in Pennant Race. Both narratives play it straight, reading like the minutes of a village council meeting when compared to Ball Four.
The reader learns things from Jim Bouton. That Seattle Pilots players made a game of pretending to kiss each other on the lips. That certain stars accomplished mighty feats on the diamond while playing hung over after a night of partying. That greenies (amphetamines) were used in relative abundance years before steroids. That sex is the topic of choice in the bullpen as a baseball season winds down, and at other times as well.
Montreal Expos outfielder Rusty Staub said of Bouton?s first literary effort: "I hope the book is damned good, because it might be the last one he writes." (The sequel, I?m Glad You Didn?t Take It Personally, came out in 1971.)
It IS good. It reminds the reader that ballplayers also have families and the same day-to-day dreams and fears of us mortals, that they get bored during the six month long season, and often think about things other than baseball, and sex, and what?s in the postgame clubhouse spread. Like: if you pray to God to help your team win, do the guys in the other dugout ask for the same thing, and whose side is God really on?
Ball Four is a historic document in another respect: it?s a day-by day account, until its author was traded to the Houston Astros that August, of the Seattle Pilots? only season (they moved to Milwaukee in 1970). Ask your baseball fan friends to name the only player to lead the Pilots in hitting. Hint: he?s still in baseball. Answer: Cleveland Indians? radio announcer Mike Hegan.
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