Turned out, the person who owned that publication also owned the one I was working for at the time.Īfter talking to Bouton and comparing notes, the story I wrote in July 2004 somehow ended up reprinted in the Eagle, followed by a disclaimer: “The story in Friday’s Eagle by Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News, a story marred by a number of factual errors, did at least reveal clearly that Jim Bouton’s instinct for self-pity and tendency to fictionalize history is still intact.” My first pitch in tracking Bouton down was in 2003 when his new book, “Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark,” told about his attempt against the local establishment to preserve Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Mass., one of the oldest ballparks in America.Įven the only daily newspaper in town, the Berkshire Eagle, endorsed the facility’s demolition.

“You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out it was the other way around all the time,” was Bouton’s most famous excerpt. Deeper moments resonated: Bouton made timely observations about racism, unequal pay, hero worship and outdated traditions. Pitch after pitch, revision after revision, “Ball Four” was about more than exposing the juvenile manner in which the game existed. It was not my purpose to do this, but on reflection, it’s probably not a bad idea.… Besides, you can get sick on too much milk and cookies.”

The “Final Pitch” edition in 2000 allowed Bouton to acknowledge in the new intro: “ ‘Ball Four’ changed sports reporting at least to the extent that, after the book, it was no longer possible to sell the milk and cookies image again. With Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” it was in excellent company. Enough so that five years later, the New York Public Library named it as one of its Books of the Century - the only sports-genre title included among the “Popular Culture and Mass Entertainment” subset. The 20 th anniversary edition in 1990 had a David Halberstam endorsement on the cover: “A book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.” Now we had distance and perspective. Much of it recalled his comeback attempt with Ted Turner’s Atlanta Braves, and a memorable televised September game against the Dodgers, who, on that day, smoked him and his knuckleball pretty good. The second edition in 1981 landed during my blur of academic training and understanding of the profession in college. I tried to do a book report on it, but my fifth-grade teacher discouraged it. The first edition set a foundation of entertaining the idea of becoming a sportswriter. It is with profound reflection that we also come to realize each of those “Ball Four” reissues offers a chance to review our own journalistic journey.

Ball four book review