Baseball Book Review: Ball Four, by Jim Bouton

Back in the days before Americans decided they preferred spending Sunday afternoons guzzling beer, eating enough hot wings to feed most third-world countries, and watching 300-pound behemoths smash into one another, baseball wore the title of "America's National Pastime." It was the all-American game played on sunny summer days by superheroes with names like "Lefty," "Rube," and "the Babe." Baseball was pristine, wholesome family entertainment-at least we thought so. But the 1970 release of "Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues," a book by former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton, changed all of that.

Chronicling the exploits of Bouton-a former star and now a 30-year-old has-been-from spring training 1969 through the final day of the season, "Ball Four" gives readers for the first time an uncensored look into what goes on in the locker rooms, dugouts, bullpens, planes, buses, and hotels of major league baseball teams. And what we learn is that the men who populate the big leagues aren't far removed from the pimply-faced boys who attend our local high schools-at least mentally, they're not. In revealing the game's warts, Bouton breaks a longstanding unwritten rule of baseball: What happens here stays here.

And "what happens here" on Bouton's travels through the '69 season are told in stark detail-the kind of stark detail that later inspires baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn to insist that Bouton tell the world his book is pure fiction. But that's something our rebellious teacher won't do, and so we, the students benefit.

What is it about "Ball Four" Commissioner Kuhn objects to?

Well, there is sex...

Bouton educates his readers on, among other "boys-will-be-boys" pastimes, the art of "shooting beaver" or more simply put, looking up women's skirts-an activity so valued by some ballplayers, they will take extraordinary steps to get a peak. And there are the countless locker room stories of legendary sexual conquests handed down, recounted, and no doubt hyperbolized over the years to the point of fiction. One story has a player hiding in the closet of a hotel room while his roommate has sex on the bed with some "local talent." These women are commonly referred to by ballplayers as "Baseball Annies"-the National Pastime's version of groupies who regularly provide fringe benefits to lonely ballplayers on long road trips.

Drugs and alcohol...

Years before steroids would become an issue in baseball, "Ball Four" reveals the rampant use of amphetamines ("greenies") among players looking for an added burst of energy on the baseball diamond. And when the boys aren't giving their metabolisms a boost through pharmaceuticals, they're drinking away their failures, or in some cases using booze as a performance enhancing drug. One of Bouton's teammates claims, "I can't play if I feel good. I've got to have a little bit of a hangover to get the best out of me."

Crude language...

Breaking news: Baseball players have potty mouths! "Ball Four" introduces readers to the colorful locker room banter commonly uttered by the men who occupy seats in major league dugouts as well as spots in the hearts of America's youngsters. The language runs from sexual innuendo-much of it homosexual-to the seven words comedian George Carlin would make famous a few years later.

And worst of all, chinks in the armor...

Perhaps Bouton's most egregious offense is his willingness to reveal that some of baseball's biggest legends are, of all things, human. He tells of the hard-drinking, late night exploits of former teammate and baseball legend Mickey Mantle, recounting the time a severely hung over Mick belts a home run and circles the bases to the roar of the crowd. Upon reaching the dugout, Mantle confesses to his teammates, "Those people have no idea how hard that really was."

For Bouton, the '69 season is a rollercoaster ride of ups-and-downs as he makes it back to the big leagues with the baseball-challenged Seattle Pilots, a lousy expansion team that the following year would move to Milwaukee and become the Brewers. A mid-season trip to the minors and a late-season trade to the far more talented Houston Astros allows us to meet more of the men who play ball for a living. What we learn is that, other than being much better at baseball, these fellows in Houston aren't terribly different from the ones in Seattle.

Through it all Bouton provides us a fly on the wall view of what goes on far beyond the box scores of runs, hits, and errors. But in addition to exposing the seamy underbelly of major league baseball, "Ball Four" lets us in on a bygone era where ballplayers are working stiffs with winter jobs and plenty of worries of what to do when they can no longer throw or hit a curve ball. Several years before free agency would make millionaires out of professional athletes, Bouton's salary is a mere $22,000-roughly what Alex Rodriguez earns every time he adjusts his cup.

With so much money to be made, it's easy to understand why today's players put up with the constant travel, nagging injuries, and pressure to perform, but how about the men from Bouton's era? What makes a guy with eroding skills endure an emotionally draining ride through another baseball season?

Bouton closes "Ball Four" answering that question:

"You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."

Reference: "Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues" (1970). Jim Bouton. The world publishing company. Cleveland, OH.