Re-visiting "Ball Four" and other fun baseball books for summer reading

Enable frames

Re-visiting "Ball Four" and other fun baseball books for summer reading

By Mark Leffler

Many of us were serious baseball fans in our youth. We played catch

in the street after school, rotted out teeth with the sugar powdered strip

of gum that came with each pack of baseball cards we bought, and fell

asleep listening to the play-by-play on hand-sized transistor radios (their

tiny rectangular nine volt batteries dying out when we fell asleep,

especially during late, late west coast games).

But somewhere along the lines either the game changed, or we changed or

maybe both. Million dollar salaries, mid-season strikes, gluttonous owners

and prima donna athletes, paying for $20 for autographs and new stadiums

with skyboxes for the wealthy paid for with tax payer dollars...it all

chipped away at the esteem we once held for the game.

Still, even though we may have shifted our fandom to the Red Wings or

Pistons, baseball still seems to produce the best and most entertaining

books year in and year out. And now that the Pistons have finished their

season, and the Wings have nailed down their tenth Stanley Cup (ya-hooo!)

perhaps the time is right to enjoy some truly fine summer reading with the

men and women who write about the boys of summer.

'Boy of Summer - Jim Bouton in Savannah, 1978'

A recent re-reading of former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton's scandalous tell-all book, Ball Four (400 pages, Stein and Day, 1981), can do much to remind one what a fine and fun game baseball can, indeed, be. It revealed, when it was published in 1970, some of the earthier pursuits, shall we say, involved in the major leagues.

Ball Four was as much about players' lives off the field as it was about Bouton's attempt, at age thirty, to hang on to a slot with the Seattle Pilots (now the Milwaukee Brewers) by virtue of his knuckleball, pretty much the only pitch in his arsenal. To illustrate how much baseball has changes in the more than thirty years that have passed, just sample the opening paragraph and try not to laugh:

"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."

Wow. When was the last time a major league baseball player put on his

cleats for such a paltry sum? But the joy of Ball Four isn't just the

nostalgia for a simpler time (for that, the reader is better off enjoying

Roger Angell's excellent The Boys of Summer, about the 1950ís Brooklyn

Dodgers). Bouton is a pretty hilarious story teller and his anecdotes will

keep you entertained as he struggles, literally by his fingertips (that's

how the poorly named knuckler is thrown), to avoid being cut or sent down

to the minors.

Ball Four only had an initial printing of 5,000 copies, but a few advance

excerpts appeared in Look magazine and the baseball establishment went

nuts. Bouton was summoned for an appearance before baseball's commissioner,

Bowie Kuhn, who treated him pretty much like an errant child. Kuhn urged

Bouton to avoid a lot of trouble by signing a statement Kuhn had prepared

that claimed that the books more salacious and controversial portions were

fabrications of his editor and publisher. Bad Boy Bouton told Kuhn where to

shove it.

Ten years after, Bouton returned, both to writing and to pro ball. A chance

meeting with Atlanta Braves owner, Ted Turner, when Bouton was a sports

announcer in New York, led to a try-out with the Braves. The experiences

ended up in Ball Four plus Ball Five: An Update 1970-1980. (465 pgs.,

Steint Day, 1980)

Surprisingly enough, Bouton was still not happy with the baseball

establishment even though by 1980 the players' union (largely through the

efforts of their leader Marvin Miller) had wrangled several concessions

from the owners and the dreaded reserve clause had been considerably

loosened.

In addition to his attempted comeback, Bouton also discusses the travails

of being a major market sports reporter while trying to resist the

pressures to shill for the home team. He also discusses the strange process

whereby Ball Four became, for a very short time, a network sitcom complete

with a Seventies catch phrase (catch phrases were considered integral for

sitcom success).

Readers who enjoy Bouton's style can search out Ball Four: The Final

Chapter, and his second stab at baseball, (I'm Glad You Didn't Take It

Personally). Bouton also has his own website that can easily be found

through a Google Search.

Fans who enjoy the history of the game could do no better than the hefty

coffee table book that served as a companion piece to Ken Burns' PBS

nine-part documentary, Baseball. Produced with frequent collaborator

Geoffrey C. Ward, Burns' Baseball: An Illustrated History (485 pages,

Alfred A. Knopf, 1994) is breath-taking for it's depth and accessibility.

Even younger readers, who might otherwise be intimidated by its heft, can

enjoy the hundreds of illustrations and dozens of interviews.

Baseball also prominently examines the role of race in baseball's history,

pulling no punches in depicting the shameful way owners conspired to keep

managers from integrating the game, depriving players such as Josh Gibson

and Satchel Paige from the money and fame they surely would have achieved

in the majors.

Also of interest is Tory commentator George Wills' thoughtful Men At Work:

The Craft of Baseball (353 pages, Macmillan Publishing, 1990). Wills'

conservative punditry aside, Men At Work expertly examines the game through

four of it's aspects by focusing on four individuals who illustrate those

positions: The Manager: Tony La Russa, The Pitcher: Orel Hershiser, The

Batter: Tony Gwynn, The Defense: Cal Ripkin.

The National Pastime has, of course, inspired finer fiction than any other

sport. Bernard Malamud's The Natural and W. P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe are

both excellent reads, which were successfully adapted into movies (the

latter becoming the father-son bonding classic, Field of Dreams).

Kinsella's book, by the way, featured reclusive author J.D. Salinger as the

hermit writer the main character kidnaps to take to a ballgame.

Mark Harris' novel Bang the Drum Slowly is, perhaps, better known from the

movie it became starring Michael Moriarity and a very young Robert DeNiro

who plays the "doomed" Bruce Pearson. The movie is one of those films that

men allow themselves to cry over, like Brian's Song, or the part of The

Dirty Dozen, when Jim Brown gets shot and killed by those damned Nazis.

Harris' novel (254 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, 1956) is a winner, detailing the

mythical New York Mammoths season and their dying third string catchers

final season.

"Stick to Pearson," a Mammoth player admonishes the book's narrator, a

pitcher on the team and roommate to Pearson. "Stick to Pearson, Pearson.

You must write about dying, saying, "Keep death in your mind."  Harris

entertains on several levels, and like Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Maury,

he uses sports to write about life and death.

Finally, a few bits of advice from a few other fans for your summer reading

pleasure:

Review's own sports master Jack Tany recommends Ball Four, too. He also

likes Charles C. Alexander's biography of Ty Cobb.

Don Bethune, one of the founders, with Tany, of the Saginaw County Sports

Hall of Fame, likes Lawrence Ritter' s The Glory of Their Times, Robert

Cramer' s Babe, Eight Men Out by Elliot Asinof, Veeck as in Wreck by the

late fun loving owner and prankster Bill Veeck as well as the Ernie Harwell

books.

Don also like the Mickey Rawlings baseball mysteries by Troy Soos, including

one titled Hunting a Detroit Tiger.

Yankees fan, bon vivant and raconteur Chris Miller also weighs in on his faves:

"There are two books by David Halberstram, talking about the (1949) and '64

Yankee seasons that are pretty good. The '49 one is better. Also, I seem to

remember a book called Lefty, which was based on the career of Lefty Grove,

and in which at some dinner, he refers to gefilte fish as "filter fish".

And don't forget the official record book, always great reading.

"Oh, and read anything you can get your hands on by Roger Angell, who is

probably my favorite baseball writer. You might want to check out collected

writings by Red Smith, et al, for some of their great baseball columns. And

you should probably ignore that recent book about Joe DiMaggio, since the

guy did a real dump job on him. I don't like finding out my heroes are also

schmucks."

Enable frames