I wonder how the baseball commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, felt about the book? Ahh yes, he called Ball Four “detrimental to baseball.” This book hit baseball players/managers/owners like a psycho nun with a steel studded ruler was rapping their knuckles over and over again. He was taking notes and immortalizing most of the one year this team was in existence. Probably few would remember this organization except for the fact that Jim Bouton was with the team. They only existed for one year, 1969, and then they were moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers. Now if you haven’t heard of the Seattle Pilots, don’t feel bad because I’d never heard of them either. When we catch up with Jim, he is with the Seattle Pilots expansion team, trying to learn how to throw a knuckleball in an attempt to resurrect and lengthen his career. Jim Bouton won two World Series games in 1964 with the New York Yankees, but in 1965 he developed arm troubles that turned the pitching phenom from a starter into a bullpen pitcher. It is interesting how the words honest and controversial seem to travel together like a Harley Davidson with a sidecar. This is probably the most controversial book and the most honest book ever written about baseball. “A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
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