When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a "social leper" for having violated the "sanctity of the clubhouse." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn't true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn't read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries.
Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people-often wildly funny people.
Today Ball Four has taken on another role-as a time capsule of life in the sixties.
This ebook version of Ball Four includes the first edition, the 1980, 1990, and 2000 updates, and 138 photos.
"He has written . . . a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book."
David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam
"It is not just a diary of Bouton's 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros. It's a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a 'tell all book' is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California."
