@@Classicrocker6119 Trust me, if you love JB, you have to hear it. As he reads you can hear him relive the experiences… he chuckles at the same places that the book had put you on the floor with laughter when you first read the book. Ball Four is the world’s funniest English language book.
I used to babysit Jim and Bobby’s kids in the late 60s and 70s. They were good people. I remember his tapes of the accounts of his stories for the book. He gave me a copy when it was published. It was sad that he was so maligned by many in the profession because of his book. Great job on this piece; thank you!
Wow that was awesome. Jim used to respond to me on his website all the time and was great and actually remembered me and what a down to earth guy. I wrote to him one time Jim watch Marvin Miller will pass away and then they will put him in the HOF and he really became passionate and said so true Jack it's an outrage and of course that is what happened! Same with Alex Karras in the NFL. He was clearly a HOF player and dies in 2012 and around 2021 finally made it. Big Deal! At least the Yankees finally brought Jim back to Old Timers Day but it took his Son writing in the NY Times about his Sisters tragic death to make it happen! Bouton and I didn't agree on everything politically but that is ok. Honest debate and a difference in opinions is a good thing, not a bad thing. Bouton was a good dude!
I was a 14-year old baseball fan when this book came out. It had a huge impact on me. It was hilarious. In school all the guys read it and we would sit in the cafeteria during lunch and discuss it like it was some epic literary classic. In the long run it was good for us kids because it smashed the phony hero worshipping of ball players and let us start to think more realistically. Pound that Bud.
I graduated HS in 72 so I was a couple years older when I read Ball Four. As Dirty Lemon says, the book was full of hilaroius accounts and it was equally credible, revealing and constructively influential. A truly excellent groundbreaking read.
Another Book along the same lines only about football is North Dallas Forty by Pete Gent , it is a thinly veiled account of the Dallas Cowboys in the 1960's
Man, I could have written this comment myself, word-for-word! I was 15 years old in 1970. Amazing how we got mesmerized by the book. What did that say about our culture? I have always been a Ball Four promoter, but the older I get, the more I see that Bouton wrote this book largely out of a wellspring of bitterness. He was on top of the world, then he got the sore arm. You can tell in the book that he always considered himself a Yankee.
@@brianwilliams8635 Hey, Brother, I hear you. Ball Four infected a certain segment of my high school team in ‘72. There were four or five of us who had higher intellectual aspirations than pee distance competitions. There was a definite, tangible line between us (all pitchers and catchers) and those knuckledraggers (only one of whom was a pitcher, a cro-magnon lefty with 90 mph speed and absolutely no control).) I remember playing a high school game and hearing my buddy, Jimmy C (RIP, bro) call from across the visitors dugout. He was leaning on the ledge, craning his neck around the corner to look back in the stands. “Hey, D, scope me!” While some of us were trying to copy the Yankee slugger’s swing, Jimmy C was Shooting Beavers at Ogden High School- just like Mickey Mantle!
Read it when I was 13 and have never forgotten it. Many of the stories and anecdotes from it I carry with me to this day (not only the outlandish ones, of which there are many). Bouton was a gifted storyteller, keenly observant and highly intelligent. For a baseball player, he was like an "Einstein", and that did not go over well with the vast majority of other ballplayers. He's been one of my heroes ever since.
So funny. True story: today I was driving by the local junior college's ball field and I remembered the quote from Mickey Mantle after he got up and hit a home run whilst suffering from a vicious hangover,: "those people will never know hard that was!".
@@mikejohnson5900 I remember that quote as well. And as JB said, if Mantle had been loosening up with the boys at the bar a little less, maybe he could have had an even better and longer career. But, we all have demons, Mantle no exception. He feared an early death like his father, and I think that was his way of coping with everything.
Ball Four is one of my favorite books of all time. I wrote Bouton before he died, over forty years after the first time I had read it, to let him know. He wrote me back a hand-written nice note. RIP, Jim.
I read when I was 13 and it changed my perception of baseball for the better. Realising players were human made me forgive them for failing, like the 1973 Mets. All my friends read it too
I read it when I was about 20...frankly I didn't see what the big deal was...those guys weren't pumping up their arms and brains on steroids...they were just like guys I went to school with...we are human...we will misbehave occasionally...
I'm a Brit and I love the book, I reread it almost every year. I lent it to my dad who knows and cares nothing about baseball, but he still loved the book because it's so much more than a sports book. Bouton had great observational skills and made hilarious anecdotes out of the mundane. It's so innocent compared to the tell all exposes of today, but none the worse for that.
It's one of the funniest books ever written, and does a great job of capturing the Zeitgeist of the era. It has always frustrated me that Robert Altman didn't make a movie of it right after MASH. The Kurt Russell of the early 70s would have been perfect casting as Bouton.
He can't take direct credit, because he wasn't a lawyer. Ball Four was a huge push for free agency and the doom of the reserve clause. The parts of the book with contract negotiations have stuck with me, today. 50 years later. You gotta have courage to, "climb those golden stairs." !!
Great guy who corresponded with me probably 15 times over the years. His book along with The Glory of Their Times about the Deadball era are my go to books to start my season every spring. I read each to get my mind ready for the long season and Ball Four still causes me to laugh out loud. RIP Jim and so many of your teammates who have passed away.
@@adamdorgant9454 There were so many like Schultz looking at a HS clubhouse kid's biology book and he says hey look a picture of a cunt and then says hey boys don't forget to pound those homemade cookies. Another is a guy is banging a chick in a pickup truck outside the stadium and a guy drives up congratulating him not realizing he was getting laid. He says shit I thought he was going to ask for my autograph. Another was they are in the team bus driving through NYC if I remember and they see a statue that says erected in like 1929 or some far away date and then someone say's that's some erection!
I was a 12-year-old lifelong baseball fanatic when that book was published. It was so subversive that I had to read it. Didn't change the way I felt about baseball but it was very entertaining
Jim Bouton went to college at Western Michigan University before being called up to the majors. My grandfather was Bouton’s roommate for a year at WMU, and Bouton and my grandfather both passed away a couple months apart in 2019.
@@timothyhastings5933 WOWZERS....That is some serious Trivia! Was curious to know Timothy if your Dad tried to pursue his passion of the game after College possibly? Very stoked to read what you shared! Cheers From Ohio
Bouton was a sportscaster in New York in the 70's. He had a great sense of humor when he did his reports. He came to my town for a celebrity softball game, I got to talk to him for a couple of minutes and he signed my copy of Ball Four. He also did a short lived sitcom about a minor league team during those years.
My favorite story from Ball Four is about how, on the way to the game, the team bus stops by a statue with a plaque stating “erected in 1890.” Naturally, one of the players points it out and suggests “that musta been one helluva erection.”
How about the one about the ballplayer having sex in a car or something and a fan drives up and starts chatting. The guy says something like Christ I thought he was going to ask for my autograph! Oh man so funny or the roommate spying from the closet as his buddy was having sex with some local talent! Yeah sure! I read Ball Four every March to get ready for the new season and it never gets old. I'm getting ready to break it out and read it again and I'm ready for a new season to start! I told Jim that on his website and he was so happy to read it and respond back to me. What a great guy!
How about the one about the ballplayer having sex in a car or something and a fan drives up and starts chatting. The guy says something like Christ I thought he was going to ask for my autograph! Oh man so funny or the roommate spying from the closet as his buddy was having sex with some local talent! Yeah sure! I read Ball Four every March to get ready for the new season and it never gets old. I'm getting ready to break it out and read it again and I'm ready for a new season to start! I told Jim that on his website and he was so happy to read it and respond back to me. What a great guy!
I absolutely loved Ball Four as a 15 year old and the book turned me on to the game. Made my dad get me a subscription to the “Sporting News.” As I got older I realized how good a book it really was - poking holes in the mythological facade that was baseball made the game all the more fascinating and the players more human. I have Jim’s autograph and still love the game to this day.
Nicely done. Jim Bouton was an interesting guy. He became a really good speaker and I had the pleasure of having him talk to the sales staff for my company. He was great. He had so many interesting and funny stories, but he also had a great message about the importance of perseverance and that the difference between winning and losing was most often not huge. Smart and funny.
Being born in July 1996, I never read the book. But will do so as soon as possible. I wanted to contact this man when I watched the video, then found out he passed away, in 2019. Great video sir! Nicely done.
Haven't reread Ball Four in a long time, but I remember it as a revelation at a time when baseball was pitched to fans as a wholesome collection of happy ballplayers striving to give their all, all the time. Well written, too, but that's only a recollection from when I was a less discriminating reader. Bouton seemed like a genuinely good guy, though, trying for years to salvage minor league baseball in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Enjoy!
Great video about a tremendous book; probably the only reason anyone remembers the Seattle Pilots at all (they left Seattle DURING SPRING TRAINING the following season and became the Milwaukee Brewers from 1970 to present). Topps baseball cards of Seattle Pilots players were printed in 1969 and 1970 (but not of Bouton; his career was so marginalized by then that his last cards came out while he was still a NY Yankee), and because of this book they’re popular to collect, much more than you would expect for players considered to be “commons” in the baseball card hobby.
I'll never forget seeing the Seattle Pilots playing in Boston in August 1969. I don't know how many times I have read Ball Fall, but I greatly enjoy it each time that I do.
Great job. Read Ball Four 4 times. Opened my eyes as a kid. Im 63 now. I still use its ideology in my life. You nailed it as best you could in a short timeline. Thank you! Catfish Hooker 🐈🐟J
I appreciate this commentary on Ball Four. I was one of those young American boys that devoured that book when it came out, and I recall loving it for many reasons, including the ribald humor and inside baseball anecdotes. It really made the game that much more real, and the players - my heroes - seem that much more accessible. Kudos to Jim Bouton. Sad to learn that he died, but he left an indelible mark on the game he and many others of us loved.
When I read this headline, had the book not been "Ball 4" that my dad recommended I read not long after its release, I was surely going to post that it had the most impact. You nailed it, Professor.
Great synopsis of the book, the man and the times he lived and played in. My dad had that book when I was a kid. He didn't want me to read it at first; said I wouldn't like it. But as a little league player I did anyway. It was just as fantastic as you described! Thanks for posting!
Still remember Bouton's quote : You spend the greater part of your life gripping a baseball until one day, you realize that it was the other way around, all along . . . "
Yeah, that was a beautiful turn of phrase that summarized the rapturous devotion some little boys had for the game in more innocent times. The juxtaposition of poesy and guttural exposition in the book was enthralling and kept the narrative varied and interesting.
Great job Professor. Love videos that display a care for content over the presenters personal "No, look at me!!!" And this really takes me back, with a much better knowledge of this books impact. Thank you sir!
Changing the subject, i wish i had kept a diary or journal of my career in motorsports. The first two years were some of the most fun times in spite of going through the most difficult time of my life. It would have made for great comedy.
I'm of the mind that just about anything is fascinating. I would read any number of edited diaries about an activity or career so long as the author isn't self-important and can illustrate the humor/humanity/challenges of whatever the field is. Bouton cracked the code. I would totally read a well-written diary about motorsports.
@thebaseballprofessor the first two years was like living in the movie "Stroker Ace." One of my former teammates made that comment and it seems to fit best. It was a lot of fun to be working in a low level regional traveling series. It would be similar to class A minor league baseball. A lot of us made it to the NASCAR Cup Series, but the ProCup people stuck together like family after the series disappeared.
Great report. A few years later, "tell all" books became the fashion with many players. In fact, Jim's book was rather tame by comparison. He worked as a TV sports journalist for WCBS in NYC and did a good job. He was quite accomplished both on and off the field.
I didn’t read the book until it came out in paperback but I loved it so much that I kept it. Years later Bouton was pitching in Knoxville, TN as he was trying to get control of the knuckleball and get back to the majors. One of my cousins was married to a player on the roster with Bouton in Seattle and mentioned a couple of times in the book and he and I went to see him and I took my book which Bouton autographed. A couple of days later my cousin brought me an autographed hardcover that Bouton had sent me. My son has it now.
Neat story and thanks for sharing. When I had mlb.tv a few years ago, I would make a very effort to watch RA Dickey pitch because I like to watch knuckleballers work. Also, I knew how long RA Dickey struggled in the minors before he figured out how to throw the pitch effectively. Every outting for him was a victory of sorts.
I read Ball Four more times than I can count. I never read it as a kid. I wore out my library's copy so I bought my own , then lost it in a house fire. Now I just read it online.
A rite of spring. I read it every year since it came out. An incredible document of history. Shows how players were treated before free agency. And all the players mentioned. How they turn up when reading other baseball history books. A treasure we can never repay. Thank you Jim. God Bless.
@@adamdorgant9454 Absolutely. So many great bits. The paternity suit. Classic. The telegram after the grandslam. But to show that his critics never read the book, how about things like bringing the fan into the bullpen for a half inning. His obvious love of the game.
@@brianbiechele1958 You’re right about that, Or this one, Ray Oyler in the Back of the Bus, Boys, I had all the ingredients for a great piece of ass last night, plenty of time, and a hard-on. All I lacked was a broad!!!!
I went to almost every Pilots game. I was 17. Tailwind Tommy Harper, Ray Oiler, Don Mincher. I'm probably last man in Seattle who still pissed off that we went to spring as Pilots and left spring training as Milwaukee Brewers.
This is how life is.. you work hard to get your chance and then when you get to the top, it’s just a bunch of kids. I’m in the medical field and it frightens me how things are run by kids… it’s just older folks with the managerial roles which makes it look professional.
Thanks for the reminder of this great book and fellow human being. I read Ball Four at some point in the late 80s as a young man in love with the game. I will definitely put it on my list to read again. Great video. And just a reminder to baseball fan and players alike, unwritten rules, are not rules.
Thanks for the fine video. Because I read BALL FOUR as a 13-yr old rabid fan and PONY player, the book really served as a pivot in my own sense of coming of age. As if, in gaining Bouton's insight, it made me not quite a kid anymore. I borrowed my grandfather's hardcover copy (still have it) very shortly after it came out. Laughed and laughed. It increased my empathy for the players and made them human. Bouton also plays a great role in the terrific Netflix documentary, BATTERED BASTARDS OF BASEBALL, about the Class A Portland Mavericks in the mid-70's.
@@tomreedyjr3631 Have a copy of it, it was great to read and Laugh out Loud Funny, and Manager Joe Schultz was quite a character in it, he had some very funny quotes in it!!!
True story. College baseball. Pre-season I make the team & we're picking out jerseys. I see #56 & yell out "56, Ooohh the bulldog"! Manager got so pissed he physically took the jersey & ripped it with his bare hands.
It's a great book, extremely well-written and funny, and my personal favorite book of all time. Bouton may not be a Hall-of-Famer, but his book sure is.
First read the 1980 update (in 1985), then probably 4 times over the years, to a point where I had to order the latest, this one (autographed!) from Bouton himself! The commentator is spot on that Ball Four was more perceptive than all the tell-all and more revealing books by athletes since. That book is a gem, even for those who are not baseball fans.
I have a 1990 edition and a 50th anniversary edition of Ball Four, I enjoyed reading both of them, they were great to read, and Laugh out Loud Funny!!!!
I am curious what MLB's rule changes for the 2023 season will do to baseball as a spectator experience. Like you, I enjoyed watching the game more during previous eras.
What a great observer. That whole story of drilling out the blood blister under a finger nail with the drill and blood flying around the clubhouse ... classic.
Same sentiment here. Read Ball Four on the sly ( from a friend who “stole” it from his dad after his dad finished reading it.) in eighth grade. Thought it was great as it was the first adult book I had read after a steady diet of Hardy Boys novels. Get to high school and we were assigned the then controversial Salinger “Catcher in the Rye”. Compared to Ball Four, “Catcher” was weak sauce. After finishing Catcher, my only thought about it was that it was not as good as Bouton’s tome and Salinger never made it to the big leagues.
I read the book in 1982 and was fascinated about the real life stories. I got to meet Billy Martin in 1989 and he was great. He gave me a pair of Yankee sunglasses. I would have gotten to meet Mantle when he came back to Calif but he died before I could meet him.
Before Bouton's book, knuckle ballers were pretty much used exclusively out of the pen. Bouton however made an excellent case in Ball Four for them being used as starters, and managers like Tony LaRussa seeing the merit in that argument caught on to it, later using Wilber Wood in his rotation with great success.
Wilbur Wood was starting for the White Sox before LaRussa was their manager; in fact by the time LaRussa was White Sox manager Wood was done. You’re onto something though-during the ‘60s what knuckleballers pitched tended to do so out of the bullpen or in swing roles. But the change is not so much Ball Four but Phil Niekro and Wilbur Wood and then Charlie Hough. Wood and Hough started their careers in the bullpen then became workhouse starters. Ironically, starting knucklers are far more common historically speaking-the 1960s are the atypical time. Really, it’s Hoyt Wilhelm and his success that had people using knuckleballers out of the ‘pen; before and after his career this is essentially unheard of.
@@davidlafleche1142 Hoyt Wilhelm, Hall of Famer and primarily a reliever for most of his long career was used as a starter in the Oriole rotation for one season in 1959 and led the majors in ERA at 2.19. But for the rest of his career of another nine seasons, it was back to the pen.
I was a perfect candidate for appreciating Ball 4: I was a 15-year-old male in 1970!! So I am now age 69. Maybe a little more wisdom now? So I re-consider Ball 4 and now I sense bitterness behind Bouton's attitude. And I'm not pointing fingers: Here was a very young man who gained fame, soaked it in, then saw it go away because of a sore arm. This in a time when young players did not have agents to guide them in a whole lot of things including how to handle fame. How to insulate yourself some, to understand people's motivations. I think this is all standard now.
Bouton did an interview with Johnny Carson when he was playing fo the Portland Mavericks (mid-1970s). It's an interesting interview because Bouton had already played for the Yankees, wrote Ball Four, and worked as a sports broadcaster in NYC. Then he gave it up to pursue the dream of remaking the major leagues as a middle age knuckleball pitcher. Bouton explains to Carson that it was confusing for his children. They used to see their dad on TV. They knew he had once been a star pitcher. Now he was making very little money and traveling around with a lowly minor league team dreaming of a shot at the show. There is a groundedness and humility to the guy that makes him very likeable.
Bill Freehan's "Behind The Mask" was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I'd heard of Ball Four, but I only found out this year that it was another diary of the '69 season and was about the Pilots, one of my all time favorite teams, to boot. It took 50 years but I'm finally catching up.
I was one of the baseball-crazy kids who read this in the 70s. And i remember being a little confused about all the controversy. Humanizing these guys, and showing how funny and real the game was, only made me love the players and MLB all the more. I was particularly perplexed by Mickey's reaction. I admired Mick before, but after reading this book, he became something more to me. Bouton's portrayal made me love the guy. Bouton made him funny and profane and kinda heroic. The real kind, not the TV-fake kind. Bears pointing out that this is a damn well-written book, too. Maybe that's why at least some of the sportswriters then hated it so much. He was a far better writer than nearly all of them. RIP, Bulldog. You made a lasting contribution to the best game there ever was.
Bouton said on many occasions that his "controversial" anecdote about Mantle hitting a homerun while hungover illustrated what an incredible athlete he was. Thanks for the comment.
I read his first two books. I watched him as a sportscaster here in NY back in the mid 70’s. Funny guy. I asked him one time when he did a walk on tryout for the Yankees wearing a disguise if he made the cut would he pitch for them. His reply was “at least a few innings”.
Good job, learned a lot. I actually owned the book at one time. I was too young to grasp its meaning. Reading it now would be a different experience for me.
Totally. Bouton made $400 a month playing for the Mavericks. It meant moving his kids around and he said something interesting about the experience and I'm paraphrasing. "My kids have to see me struggle and that's good. I think before they thought you just sign up to be a Yankees pitcher or sports broadcaster. Now they know how hard it is."
@@thebaseballprofessor Agreed. Jim was a man with many talents. one that not mentioned often enough was his interest in the common man and the fight for righteousness. Here enclosed is a brief documentary of his other worldly pursuits. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OGA9Y0bz8ZA.html
What Bouton said in that audio clip about managers and coaches is 100% true. The coaches were almost uniformly the managers' drinking buddies. For example, wherever Billy Martin went to manage he brought along his favorite drinking and carousing pal, Art Fowler. Art was basically just an average pitching coach, but he was also a serious elbow-bending boozer, as was Billy. Whether it was Detroit, Minnesota, Texas, New York or Oakland, Fowler was his pitching coach. And they closed a lot of barrooms and taverns together in their day.
@@adamdorgant9454 Yep, an essential baseball read. I remember the Seattle Pilots, but you don't need to remember them to find the humor in the book. Hilarious book.
Great GREAT book; somewhere packed away in a dusty old box is my childhood copy of Ball Four. I'll bet the audio version of Bouton talking about pitcher Bill "The Spaceman" Lee's dislike of manager Don Zimmer is hilarious. Lee the free spirit often clashed with Zimmer's old-school ways of managing; Lee soon came up with the nickname "the Gerbil" for Zimmer.
I was a fairly illiterate - or at least didn’t like to read - at the age of 10, when I got a hold of this book. I read this one, Ball Five, and Ball Six, at least 3 times. It exposed me to some very advanced composition of the English vocabulary (“fuckshit, shitfuck”) and what grown men supposedly do in hotel rooms (beaver hunting) but it exposed me to a lifelong love of reading and fueled my lifelong love of baseball. Thank you, Jim Bouton.
I read the book and own a copy. Jim opened my mind to the world of pro ball. I have pitched in amateur baseball and the politics and shenanigans of pro vs amateur go side by side. RIP Jim Bouton.
The pilots played in sicks stadium , a minor league park with short center field walls . As fans , we loved em. Still have my kids pilot cap from that year. I read the book when it came out too. It ripped the cover off the baseball . Almost forgot : pound that Bud fellas , it makes a fella proud to be an Astro .
I remember when that book created quite a controversy back in 1969. Even us kids (I was just 12 then) were a little shocked by its revealing's but not to the point of utter discontent or total disbelief. And I'm not one bit surprised the (then) commissioner Bowie Kuhn sought to involve himself by attempting to intimidate Bouton into retracting his story. Fact is, Kuhn was anti union and 100% conservative... a true asshole and bully. Good riddance Kuhn. Much respect to Jim Bouton for his actions... R.I.P.
Just read this classic work this year, 2022. Finally. Don't know why it took me so long to get around to it. If you wanna read another humdinger of a baseball book, check out 'Men At Work' by George Will. Masterpiece.
