![]() ![]() The San Diego Padres burned the book and left the charred remains for me to find in the visitors clubhouse. The ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, picked up the cue. Many players and others involved in the game were angry Bouton let the sec ret out that ballplayers got drunk after games, cheated on their wives and took amphetamines. Bouton portrayed those players, and every other one, as human beings, not heroes. Much of the book reminisces of his time with the mighty Yankees of the early sixties of Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle. ![]() ![]() Bouton breaks the code of the locker room that says everything said and done within the team should stay there. The book was extremely controversial when released. Pitching for the expansion Seattle Pilots (who would move to Milwaukee and become the Brewers the next season) and eventually being traded to the Houston Astros, Bouton begins journaling his season in the offseason before the season and ends it in the winter after the 1969 season. He won 39 games in 19 and then his career, and the Yankees’ dynasty, went downhill. He’d spent the previous season in the minor leagues after beginning his career in 1962 with the New York Yankees. Ball Four was written during the 1969 season by Bouton, a knuckleball pitcher trying to get his career back on track. Having recently reread Ball Four by Jim Bouton, it’s hard not to share the humor and wit of one of baseball’s finest books. ![]()
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