Ball Four: The Final Pitch (Updated) (RosettaBooks Sports Classics #1)

Synopsis

The 50th Anniversary edition of &“the book that changed baseball&” (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the &“100 Greatest Non-Fiction&” books. 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. David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper&’s that said of Bouton: &“He has written . . . a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.&” Today Ball Four has taken on another role—as a time capsule of life in the sixties. &“It is not just a diary of Bouton&’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros,&” says sportswriter Jim Caple. &“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.&” Includes a new foreword by Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman &“An irreverent, best-selling book that angered baseball&’s hierarchy and changed the way journalists and fans viewed the sports world.&” —The Washington Post

Copyright:

2012

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

496 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780795323249

Publisher:

RosettaBooks

Date of Addition:

09/17/23

Copyrighted By:

Jim Bouton

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Sports, Biographies and Memoirs

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.