It’s that time of year again. Major League Baseball camps have opened in Arizona and Florida and you can now see a bunch of guys you’ve never heard of in reasonable facsimiles of uniforms that you recognize playing baseball for the first time since October (September in Cleveland, Kansas City, Pittsburg, etc...). This is a bitter-sweet time for me as I love baseball but it really means I have a long, hot summer to get through before college football begins again. With that being said, its time for you to read the best baseball book ever written (I know this because I've read, like, three of them), Ball Four by Jim Bouton. Jim was a hard throwing young right hander for the Yankees in the late '50's and early '60's who blew out his arm (long before Tommy John or the surgery named for him) and chronicled his comeback as a knuckleballer in the 1968 season with the expansion Seattle Pilots.
Now, if you are one of the dreaded 'baseball purists' that we hear so much about on sports talk radio during the baseball season, you know this book and probably hate it. Why? Because Bouton was the very first (as far as you know) professional athlete to break the code of the locker room (you know, 'what happens in here stays in here'). He took notes on all the goings on of a big league ball player, from spring training to the regular season, from the big club to the minors and back again, and shared the stories with us. Nothing was off limits. He basically confirmed what we already suspected, baseball players get laid a lot, party like, well, big leaguers, get paid a bunch of money, and basically live the life we all wish we could live (the bastards!).
Keep in mind, if you are younger than say, 50, you have to know your baseball history. He tells unbelievable stories about the guys who played in that era that, if you are in your 20's or 30's, will mean absolutely nothing to you. But for those of us who know, this book is solid gold. The stories are funny as hell and it is almost impossible to put this book down. At better than 400 pages, it is a bit of a read, but it is so good that the pages fly by. I've probably read this book ten times, and it is always funny. If you like baseball, boozing, and broads (and who doesn't?) this is a must read.
Nats
