Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

Preface

Editor’s Foreword

Introduction

Ball Four

Part 1  They Made Me What I Am Today

Part 2  “My Arm Isn’t Sore, It’s Just a Little Stiff”

Part 3  And Then I Died

Part 4  I Always Wanted to See Hawaii

Part 5  The Yanks Are Coming, The Yanks Are Coming

Part 6  Shut Up

Part 7  Honey, Meet Me in Houston

Statistics

Ball Five
—
Ten Years Later

Ball Six
—
Twenty Years Later

Ball Seven
—
Thirty Years Later

The Pirates Live! In Cyberspace!

Acknowledgments

About the Editor

Suggested Search Terms

Rogue’s Gallery

Personal Photos

There was a time, not too long ago, when school kids read
Ball Four
at night under the covers with a flashlight because their parents wouldn’t allow it in the house. It was not your typical sports book about the importance of clean living and inspired coaching. I was called a Judas and a Benedict Arnold for having written it. The book was attacked in the media because among other things, it “used four-letter words and destroyed heroes.” It was even banned in a few libraries because it was said to be “bad for the youth of America.”

The kids, however, saw it differently. I know because they tell me about it now whenever I lecture on college campuses. [These days I do motivational speaking to corporations and the “kids” are often gray or bald or paunchy.] They come up and say it was nice to learn that ballplayers were human beings, but what they got from the book was moral support for a point of view. They claim that
Ball Four
gave them strength to be the underdog and made them feel less lonely as an outsider in their own lives. Or it helped them to stand up for themselves and see life with a sense of humor. Then they invariably share a funny story about a coach, a teacher, or a boss who reminds them of someone in the book.

In some fraternities and dorms they play Ball Four Trivia, or Who Said That? quoting characters from the book. And there is always someone who claims to hold the campus record for reading it 10, 12, or 14 times. Then they produce dog-eared copies for me to sign. I love it.

Sometimes when people compliment me about my book I wonder who they’re talking about. A librarian compared
Ball Four
to the classic
The Catcher in the Rye
because she said I was an idealist like Holden Caulfield who “viewed the world through jaundice colored glasses.” Teachers have personally thanked me for writing the only book their nonreading students would read. And one mother said she wanted to build me a shrine for writing the only book her son ever finished.

The strangest part is that apparently there is something about the book which makes people feel I’m their friend. I’m always amazed when I walk through an airport, for example, and someone I’ve never met passes by and says simply, “Hey,
Ball Four
.” Or strangers will stop me on the street and ask how my kids are doing.

Maybe they identify with me because we share the same perspective. One of my roommates, Steve Hovley, said I was the first fan to make it to the major leagues.
Ball Four
has the kinds of stories an observant next-door neighbor might come home and tell if he ever spent some time with a major-league team. Whatever the reasons, it still overwhelms me to think that I wrote something which people remember.

I certainly didn’t plan it this way. I don’t believe I could have produced this response if I had set out to do it. In fact, twenty years ago when I submitted the final manuscript I was not optimistic. My editor, Lenny Shecter, and I had spent so many months rewriting and polishing that after awhile it all seemed like cardboard to us. What’s more, the World Publishing Company wasn’t too excited either. They doubted there was any market for a diary by a marginal relief pitcher on an expansion team called the Seattle Pilots.

With a first printing of only 5,000 copies I was certain that
Ball Four
was headed the way of all sports books. And then a funny thing happened. Some advance excerpts appeared in
Look
magazine and the baseball establishment went crazy. The team owners became furious and wanted to ban the book. The Commissioner, Bowie “Ayatollah” Kuhn, called me in for a reprimand and announced that I had done the game “a grave disservice.” Sportswriters called me names like “traitor” and “turncoat.” My favorite was “social leper.” Dick Young of the
Daily News
thought that one up.

The ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, picked up the cue. The San Diego Padres burned the book and left the charred remains for me to find in the visitors clubhouse. While I was on the mound trying to pitch, players on the opposing teams hollered obscenities at me. I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, “Fuck you, Shakespeare.”

All that hollering and screaming sure sold books.
Ball Four
went up to [500,000 in hardcover, 5 million in paperback], and got translated into Japanese. It’s the largest selling sports book ever. I was so grateful I dedicated my second book,
I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally
, to my detractors. I don’t think they appreciated the gesture.

One way I can tell is that I never get invited back to Old-Timers’ Days. Understand,
everybody
gets invited back for Old-Timers’ Day no matter what kind of rotten person he was when he was playing. Muggers, drug addicts, rapists, child molesters, all are forgiven for Old-Timers’ Day. Except a certain author.

The wildest thing is that they wouldn’t forgive a cousin who made the mistake of being related to me. Jeff Bouton was a good college pitcher who dreamed of making the big leagues someday. But after
Ball Four
came out a Detroit Tiger scout told him he’d never make it in the pros unless he
changed his name!
Jeff refused, and a month after he signed he was released. For the rest of his life, he’ll never know if it was his pitching or his name.

I believe the overreaction to
Ball Four
boiled down to this: People simply were not used to reading the truth about professional sports.

The owners, for their part, saw this as economically dangerous. What made them so angry about the book was not the locker room stories but the revelations about how difficult it was to make a living in baseball. The owners knew that public opinion was important in maintaining the controversial reserve clause which teams used to control players and hold down salaries. They lived in fear that this special exemption from the anti-trust laws, originally granted by Congress and reluctantly upheld in the courts, might someday be overturned.

To guard against this, the Commissioner and the owners (with help from sportswriters), had convinced the public, the Congress, and the courts—
and
many players!—that the reserve clause was crucial in order to “maintain competitive balance.” (As if there was competitive balance when the Yankees were winning 29 pennants in 43 years.) The owners preached that the reserve clause was necessary to stay in business, and that ballplayers were well paid and fairly treated. (Mickey Mantle’s $100,000 salary was always announced with great fanfare while all the $9,000 and $12,000 salaries were kept secret.) The owners had always insisted that dealings between players and teams be kept strictly confidential. They knew that if the public ever learned the truth, it would make it more difficult to defend the reserve clause against future challenges.

Which is why the owners hated
Ball Four
. Here was a book which revealed, in great detail, just how ballplayers’ salaries were “negotiated” with general managers. It showed, for the first time, exactly how owners abused and manipulated players by taking advantage of their one-way contract.

It turned out the owners had reason to be afraid. It may be no coincidence that after half a century of struggle the players won their free agency shortly after the publication of
Ball Four
. No one will know what part the book may have played in creating a favorable climate of opinion. I only know that when Marvin Miller asked me to testify in the Messersmith arbitration case which freed the players, I quoted passages from
Ball Four
.

The sportswriters, on the other hand, were upset at almost all the other things
Ball Four revealed
. Chief among these being that ballplayers will, on occasion, take pep pills, get drunk, stay out late, talk dirty, have groupies, and be rude to fans. The irony here, of course, is that if the
sportswriters
had been telling what went on in baseball there would have been no sensation around my book.

David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in
Harper’s
that was less a review of
Ball Four
than a commentary on the journalism of our times.

By establishing new boundaries,
Ball Four
changed sports reporting at least to the extent that, after the book, it was no longer possible to sell the milk and cookies image again. It was not my purpose to do this, but on reflection, it’s probably not a bad idea. I think we are all better off looking across at someone, rather than up. Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, “There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.” Besides, you can get sick on too much milk and cookies. And as far as damaging baseball goes, I haven’t noticed any drop-off in attendance. The most obvious impact of
Ball Four
has been on sports
books
, although I’m not sure I want to claim credit for those results. Traditionally, sports books are written like this: Joe Shlabotnik has a good year (wins 20 games, bats .300, etc.). At the end of the season a sportswriter comes over to Joe’s locker and says that money could be made from a book. The sportswriter says don’t worry, he’ll do the writing; all the player has to do is answer some questions into a tape recorder. The star’s picture goes on the cover, the writer cranks it out in a month-and-a-half, and they split 50/50.

Publishers like sports books because, while they rarely make a lot of money, they never
lose
money. Quality is not important. Any book with a big-name player on the cover is guaranteed to sell 5,000 copies, enough to recoup the printing costs.

These books usually talk about how important it is to get a good night’s sleep because the team sure needs to win that big game tomorrow. Since
Ball Four
things have changed. Now when an athlete and his ghost go in to pitch a book the publisher is likely to say, “How much are you willing to tell? If you’re not going to open up, we’re not interested.”

Of course the player and the ghost promise to write things which have never been written before, with the result that each new book promises to go further than the last. There seems to be a contest to see which book can be the most shocking. I’m always startled to see these books advertised as, “More revealing than
Ball Four
,” or “More outrageous than
Ball Four
.”