Ball Four - My Favorite Sports Book

I am not the normal sports fan that people envision. As a matter of fact, my husband likes to joke that he is the romantic and I am the sports nut.

The sport I am most likely to watch is baseball. And it is a book about this sport that I have picked as my favorite. I am a diehard Yankees fan and most people would think as such I would be pickingThe boys of Summer. But, I tend to like humorous anecdotes and reminiscences to straightforward stories.

That being true, there are two books in particular that never cease to make me laugh no matter how many times I read them. Actually, I had trouble deciding between these two.

But, my runner up is Leo Durocher's Nice Guys Finish Last (co-written with Ed Linn). Whatever you might think of Leo Durocher (and there were many who despised him as well as those that cherished him, especially as manager), for a good fifty years or so (from the 1920s until the 1970s) he played a part in almost every major event in baseball history (from the Gas House Gang to Jackie Robinson's entry into major league baseball). His book was filled with funny snapshots of some of our most treasured players. Whether you believe all of what you read, this book is a treasure for any true baseball fan.

The second of the two books is (drum roll...) Jim Bouton's Ball Four. This book was the first of the tell-all books. Before 1970, when this book was first published athletes were treated as if they could do no wrong. These were real role models and their foibles could not be shared with the public.

The book was about his journey with the 1969 Seattle Pilots (the following year they became the Milwaukee Brewers). But, this book set the industry on its ear. Jim Bouton was ostracized and condemned by the establishment for daring to tell things as they were. I remember reading somewhere that Bowie Kuhn (the Baseball Commissioner at the time) tried to get Bouton to sign a statement saying that everything in the book was a lie. Of course, Bouton never signed such a document. And, sports books were forever changed after that. Before this no one told such tales, not the sports reporters, book authors, or even the players themselves. But, Jim Bouton broke that unspoken rule.

He spoke about the players as people not heroic figures who could do no wrong. There were drug users, womanizers, infantile characters and more. And, he spoke about our favorites, those immortalized baseball favorites (Mantle, Williams, Yastrzemski, etc.). He particularly had it in for the Yankees, probably wanting them to know they were wrong for letting him go.

He also talks about race relations. Being the end of the 60s, this was a big issue and we see how the National League did so much better because the American League tended to not want African American players on their teams.

I like the style of reading it like a diary. It fit with the theme of the book and added to my enjoyment of it. Jim Bouton's book is filled with many humorous stories and anecdotes and just brings me back to when I was first getting involved and becoming a fan myself.

Definitely a must read. You don't even have to be a baseball fan to enjoy it, but it helps if you are.