Ball Four: The Final Pitch New Edition FROM THE PUBLISHER
When Ball Four was first published in 1970, it ignited
a firestorm of controversy. Bouton was called a
Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a "social leper" for
having violated the "sanctity of the clubhouse."
Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn attempted to force
Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book wasn't
true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn't read the book,
denounced it. The San Diego Padres burned a copy in
the clubhouse. It was even banned by a few libraries.
Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four, and
serious critics called it an important document. Fans
liked discovering that the athletes they worshipped
were real people. Historians understood the value of
the book's depth and honesty.
Besides changing the public image of athletes, the
book played a role in the economic revolution in
professional sports. In 1975, Ball Four was accepted
as legal evidence against the owners at the
arbitration hearing which led to free agency in
baseball and, by extension, in the other sports.
Today Ball Four has taken on another role as a time
capsule of life in the sixties. "It is not just a
diary of Bouton's 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots
and Houton Astros," says sportswriter Jim Caple.
"It's a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that
seems even further away than three decades. To call
it simply a 'tell-all book' is like describing The
Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting in
California.
SYNOPSIS
To commemorate its centennial, the New York Public Library created a Books of the Century collection, identifying works that played "defining roles" in the past 100 years. From the millions of books considered, Ball Four was selcted as the only sports book along with classics such as The Great Gatsby, Gone with the Wind, In Cold Blood, and Catch-22.
ACCREDITATION
In the 1960s Jim Bouton was an All-Star pitcher and a
20-game winner for the New York Yankees. In the 1970s
he was a TV sportscaster, wrote a sequel to Ball Four
entitled I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally, acted
in a movie called The Long Goodbye, and made a brief
comeback with the Atlanta Braves. His first novel,
Strike Zone, co-written with Eliot Asinof, was
published in 1994. Bouton, who is now a businessman
and motivational speaker, lives in Massachusetts with
his wife, Paula Kurman.
Leonard Shecter, who dies in 1974, edited the original
edition of Ball Four. He was also the editor of I'm
Glad You Didn't Take It Personally and the author of
The Jocks. an iconoclastic look at sports in America;
Roger Marris, a biography; and Once Upon The Polo
Grounds, a nostalgic history of the New York Mets.
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