Bouton's 'Ball Four': a book that afflicted the rich and comfortable of the baseball world

 When someone writes a book that thoroughly offends and discomfits people who are well off, in positions of influence, rich, and comfortable, it should merit our attention.

That was the case when Jim Bouton, briefly a star pitcher for the New York Yankees, wrote his tell-all memoir Ball Four that centered on stories from inside the locker room of the then most successful team in Major League Baseball.

When it was published in 1970, “Ball Four,” which reported on the selfishness, dopiness, childishness and meanspiritedness of young men often lionized for playing a boy’s game very well, was viewed by many readers, either approvingly or not, as a scandalous betrayal of the so-called sanctity of the clubhouse. Source: Jim Bouton, Author of Tell-All Baseball Memoir ‘Ball Four,’ Dies at 80 - The New York Times

Bouton was thoroughly excoriated by the likes of Bowie Kuhn, commissioner of Major League Baseball, and Dick Young, baseball columnist for the New York Daily News and dean of baseball writers at the time. Young wrote:

People like this, embittered people, sit down in their time of deepest rejection and write. They write, oh hell, everybody stinks, everybody but me, and it makes them feel much better.

Not everyone was offended.

Some astute reviewers recognized the ardor and the poignant tension in Bouton’s tale; in The New Yorker, for instance, Roger Angell described “Ball Four” as “a rare view of a highly complex public profession seen from the innermost inside, along with an even more rewarding inside view of an ironic and courageous mind. And, very likely, the funniest book of the year.”

Bouton took Dick Young's criticism and turn it, somewhat, to his advantage. After the book was published, Bouton saw Young at spring training and decided to approach him in a gentlemanly fashion. They shook hands, and Young said, "Well, I'm glad you didn't take it personally." Bouton took that line and used it as the title of his next book, I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally, which chronicled the reactions to Ball Four.

Ball Four has since risen to the level of a classic tale, named as one of the 100 best sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated in 2002 and the only sports book in the New York Public Library's centennial exhibition in 1995.

Bouton died at the age of 80 in 2019. In addition to his authorship, Bouton lived an interesting and varied life that is chronicled in his New York Times obituary (Jim Bouton, Author of Tell-All Baseball Memoir ‘Ball Four,’ Dies at 80 - The New York Times).

Timothy Webster: The Pinkerton Who Paid the Full Price

Of all the agents that spymaster Allan Pinkerton ran during the Civil War, Timothy Webster was the most effective and the one who paid the highest price. 

An English-born detective who had worked for Pinkerton since the 1850s, Webster infiltrated Confederate networks in Maryland and Virginia with a skill and audacity that produced some of the most valuable intelligence of the early war years. He was caught in early 1862 and hanged in Richmond in April of that year — the first American executed as a spy since the Revolution.

Webster’s cover story was that of a Southern sympathizer, and he played it so convincingly that he was welcomed into Confederate social and political circles in Baltimore and Richmond. He was betrayed by two other Pinkerton agents who had been captured and, under pressure, identified him. Confederate authorities arrested him in March 1862 at his hotel in Richmond, where he was bedridden with acute rheumatism — so ill that he had to be carried to his trial and to the scaffold.

He was tried within days of his arrest and condemned to death. His execution on April 29, 1862, was attended by a large crowd and badly botched — the rope was improperly set and Webster had to be hanged twice. He died, by contemporary accounts, with composure. He was forty-five years old.

Pinkerton was devastated by Webster’s death and never quite forgave himself for the exposure that had led to his capture. Webster received little official recognition — the intelligence he provided had no formal government sponsor, and his death occurred at a moment when the Union’s attention was focused elsewhere. 

His name is not widely known. It deserves to be.

Charlie Comiskey’s Real Legacy: The Owner Who Built the Fix

The Black Sox scandal of 1919 is almost always told as a story about eight corrupt players who threw the World Series. It is more accurately told as a story about what happens when an owner treats his employees as assets to be exploited rather than professionals to be compensated.

Comiskey had been a first baseman of genuine distinction in the 1880s. He became a manager, then an owner, and built the White Sox into one of the dominant teams of the American League’s early decades. He also paid his players among the lowest salaries in the American League while making himself rich from their labor. He charged players for cleaning their own uniforms. He promised bonuses and failed to deliver them. Eddie Cicotte had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won thirty games; Comiskey benched him when he reached twenty-nine to avoid paying it.

The players’ discontent was real and documented. When Sport Sullivan, the Boston gambler, approached first baseman Chick Gandil with the proposition to throw the Series, he was pushing on a door that Comiskey had already opened. The promised payment — $100,000 — was nearly what the entire team was paid in salary for the season.

None of this excuses what the eight men did. They betrayed their teammates, their fans, and the integrity of a sport that thousands of people cared about. Commissioner Landis was right to act decisively. But the story that gets told — eight bad men corrupted by greed — omits the context that explains how they got there.

Comiskey died in 1931, his reputation intact, his plaque eventually in Cooperstown. The eight players — including Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose involvement remains disputed — remained banned. History, in this case, distributed its judgments unevenly. The man who created the conditions for the fix ended up in the Hall of Fame. The men who carried it out were permanently erased from the game.

Book Spotlight: The Unbroken Oath

When Virginia seceded in April 1861, Colonel Robert E. Lee chose his state over his oath to the Constitution. On the same day, another Virginian made a different choice. Winfield Scott, the 74-year-old commanding general, remained loyal to the oath he had taken fifty years earlier.

The Unbroken Oath: The Heroes History Forgot: Southern Officers Who Kept Their Oath to the Constitution tells the stories of Southern officers who chose duty over family, Constitution over state. George H. Thomas, a Virginian from a slave-owning family, kept his oath and was disowned by his relatives—they turned his portrait to the wall and never spoke to him again. David Farragut of Tennessee abandoned his Norfolk home and later led the Union fleet to victory at Mobile Bay. John Gibbon, raised in North Carolina, commanded Union troops at Gettysburg while three of his brothers fought for the Confederacy.

These men came from the South's most prominent families. They attended West Point. They owned slaves or came from slave-owning backgrounds. By every measure of culture and kinship, they should have joined the Confederacy. Instead, they kept their oaths—and helped save the United States.

The Lost Cause mythology required these men to be forgotten. If George Thomas—a Virginian who saved the Union army at Chickamauga and destroyed a Confederate army at Nashville—remained loyal to his oath, then secession wasn't the inevitable choice of honor. If 100,000 white Southerners fought in Union blue, then the South was never unified.

The Unbroken Oath reclaims these remarkable stories and honors the Southern officers who chose principle over convenience, even when it cost them everything.

Part of "The Civil War You Never Knew" series, available on Kindle Unlimited and in paperback.

What role does God want you to play? Grace for All, August 14, 2026

Note: This is a devotion for the Grace for All podcast that aired last week. Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, TN. It can be heard on the podcast plat 

Exodus 7: 1-5 (NIV)

1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.

2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country.

3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt,

4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites.

5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”

In this passage, we hear God speaking to Moses telling him what is about to happen with the Pharaoh of Egypt who is oppressing the children of Israel. In the words of Rabbi Andrew Mandel of Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, God seems to be a Hollywood director and casting agent, and He is giving the role of God to Moses.

Moses, we know from reading through Exodus, has protested to God that he does not want this role. He has a stutter, and he argues with God that this prevents him from being an effective leader. But God counters with the offer to Moses of Aaron, the brother who can, when necessary, speak on behalf of Moses. It is an offer that Moses cannot refuse.

I think this ancient story asks us today, “What role is God offering to us?” Does God simply want us to go about our business, keeping ourselves to ourselves, as they say? Our does God have something in mind – today – for us to do?

Our world is broken, divided, and in pain. So are the people around us. So are we on many occasions. We are prone to ask, “Where is God in all of this?” and then wait for God to show up. In this passage, God is asking Moses to play the role of God. Could he be asking us to do the same thing? Could he be asking us to say the kind word, to offfer a loving smile, to give assistance to someone in need, or to present the gift of our time and attention to a person or situation that is right in front of us?

It is not difficult to find those needs and people where we can be a loving and grace-filled God. We can play that role, as Moses did, if we respond to God’s casting call.

What role is God casting you for today?

Our prayer: Dear Lord, help us to hear your voice that calls us to be your voice, your hands, and your feet in the service of those around us. May we respond to that voice with joy and thanksgiving. Amen.

This devotion was written and read by Jim Stovall.

Listen to this episode

Josh Gibson: The Home Run King Nobody Counted

In the summer of 1937, Josh Gibson hit a home run at Yankee Stadium that landed in the upper deck in left field — a distance that no one in the history of the ballpark, before or since, had reached. There were perhaps 6,000 people in the stands. The game was a Negro League contest. The achievement was not reported in the New York papers.

Gibson was born in 1911 in Buena Vista, Georgia. He was discovered at seventeen, catching for a semipro team, when the Pittsburgh Crawfords needed an emergency catcher during a game and pulled him from the stands. He was, by every account, an immediate and obvious natural talent.

His career statistics are both extraordinary and unreliable. Negro League record-keeping was inconsistent, and the records that do exist have been compiled by researchers working from newspaper box scores and surviving documents. What the research supports is a career home run total that probably exceeded Babe Ruth’s 714, a batting average that appears to have been above .350 for most of his career, and a reputation among contemporaries as the greatest hitter any of them had ever seen.

The weakening of the public school system

 As a believer in and a supporter of a strong public school system, I have found the loss of confidence in our public schools in general over the last 40 or so years to be a most disturbing aspect of American life today. Our public school system seemed to serve us very well since its inception in the early 19th century. Why it has fallen into some disfavor is a matter of concern to all of us whether or not we have children in the system.

Dana Goldstein, a reporter for the New York Times who covers education, has written extensively about this phenomenon and has recently posited these reasons a voucher system has become so popular and why parents are looking for more choice:

What’s driving this change? The pandemic prompted many families to reconsider how their children learn. Republican lawmakers embraced private-school choice as part of a broader push for parental rights. (They also see the issue as a way to appeal to young parents — often Black and Latino — who are critical of how public schools serve their children.) And teachers are reporting intense burnout, with some leaving public schools to open small businesses that can accept these vouchers.

Goldstein’s reporting is worth reading.

Despite these problems, I still believe that the nation is better off with a strong public school system that has the confidence of every part of society. Such a system will never be perfect or even perfectly acceptable, but it is certainly a goal worth pursuing.

Illustration: An abandoned schoolhouse

August’s Free Book: There Must Come a Change

NOTE: This is the book I am offering free to the more than 4,500 people on my newsletter list. If you want to join these folks, go to JPROF.com and sign up. 

Before Jackie Robinson, there were the Pythians.

In the summer of 1869, a team of young Black men took the field against white opponents in Philadelphia—the first recorded interracial baseball game in American history. They called themselves the Pythians, and their captain was Octavius Valentine Catto: scholar, athlete, Civil War veteran, and the most dangerous Black man in Philadelphia.

Catto and his teammates weren't just playing baseball. They were waging a campaign for equality, using athletic excellence to challenge the assumptions of a nation struggling to define itself after the Civil War. When organized baseball formally banned Black players in 1867, the Pythians applied anyway. When they were rejected, they kept playing—and kept winning.

There Must Come a Change tells the full story of this remarkable team: their undefeated 1868 season, their historic games against white opponents, and the tragic Election Day in 1871 when Catto was assassinated on the streets of Philadelphia while defending the right of Black men to vote.

Drawing on primary sources from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and contemporary newspaper accounts, Jim Stovall brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history—one that connects the baseball diamond to the ballot box, and the struggles of Reconstruction to the long fight for civil rights that continues today.

This is the story of the men who challenged baseball's color line eight decades before Jackie Robinson—and paid the price for their courage.

Upheld: The Supreme Court and Birthright Citizenship,

Upheld: The Supreme Court and Birthright Citizenship, a full book about the controversy, was published in June just after the Supreme Court announced its decision. 

It is on Amazon now, in ebook and paperback, and is included in Kindle Unlimited. If you followed this case and wanted more than the news coverage could give you, this is the book I wrote for you. 

Here's the Amazon blurb:

She is known only as Barbara. A Honduran asylum seeker living in New Hampshire, she gave birth to a daughter in October 2025 — a daughter born on American soil, a daughter the president's executive order said was not an American citizen. On April 1, 2026, her case reached the Supreme Court of the United States. A sitting president attended the arguments, the first in the official record to do so. On June 30, 2026, the Court ruled.

Upheld is the complete story of Trump v. Barbara — the most consequential citizenship case in more than a century. It begins where the story actually begins: with the wreckage of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment in the aftermath of the Civil War, and the landmark 1898 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that established birthright citizenship as settled constitutional law for the next 128 years. It traces the thirty-year political journey that carried the idea of ending birthright citizenship from the margins of American politics to a presidential executive order signed on the first day of a second term. It explains the originalist debate — the genuine, serious scholarly disagreement about what the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment understood themselves to be doing — and what was actually at stake for the more than 250,000 children born on American soil every year to parents without citizenship or permanent residency.

It closes with the ruling itself: a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, a notable separate opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh that leaves a constitutional question unresolved, and the words with which the Chief Justice closed his opinion — "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights... We keep that promise today."

Written and published within hours of the Supreme Court's decision, this is the book that could only exist after the ruling came down. The news covered the decision. This book covers everything that led there — and what it means.

The Backstory series. Because the event is just the ending.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3HNF4FD

Friends of Liberty podcast: all 36 episodes still available

 The complete Friends of Liberty podcast series remains available here at friendsofliberty.substack.com. This Revolutionary War series contains 36 episodes, all with stories about the war for independence that you have probably never heard. 

We dig deep and find the spies, the enslaved Americans, and the unsung heroes and heroines that historians have left behind. Thousands of people pledged their lives, liberties, and fortunes (people such as Agrippa Hull, pictured at right) to help this nation free itself from a king and an arrogant Parliament who thought they could tax and act with impunity. 

This podcast gives you just a few of their stories. Take some time during this 250th year celebration to find out more about these folks — people who should not be forgotten.

Published: Erasmus: Seven Things You Should Know

Erasmus of Rotterdam was supposed to be a monk. Instead, he became one of the most famous writers in Europe, rewrote the New Testament, made a bestseller out of a joke, and ended up trusted by neither side of the biggest religious split in a thousand years.

I'm no expert on Erasmus. But I went looking for what was most interesting, most surprising, and most useful to know about him — and came back with seven things I'm glad I know now.

Curious, a little lost, and taking notes.

Now on Amazon in ebook or paperback.

The futility of suppression: the case of Baruch Spinoza

One of the enduring lessons that those in authority — or those who assume to have authority — never learn is the futility of trying to suppress ideas, even ideas that seem to be evil, harmful, or simply out-of-step with the tenor of the times.

One great example of this futility is the life of an obscure intellect who made his living during his all-too-short life as a lens grinder.

Baruch Spinoza was born on November 24, 1632, in Amsterdam, and was destined to become one of history’s most influential philosophers. He did so despite the fierce opposition of people who were once his family and friends but who ended up shunning him.

Of Portuguese-Jewish descent, Spinoza’s life and works are a testament to intellectual bravery and the relentless pursuit of truth. Despite living only 44 years, his ideas have had a lasting impact on philosophy, particularly through his magnum opus, Ethics. Spinoza’s radical philosophy, especially his concept of pantheism, drew severe opposition from religious and civil authorities, who made significant efforts to suppress his works.

And yet, Spinoza’s ideas have transcended time, influencing countless thinkers and contributing to the foundation of modern philosophy.

Spinoza grew up in the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam, a group of exiled Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition. His early education was grounded in Jewish religious studies, but he soon expanded his horizons. Fascinated by the scientific and philosophical developments of his time, Spinoza began studying Latin and immersed himself in the works of René Descartes and other contemporary thinkers. This intellectual curiosity led to a break with traditional religious teachings, which culminated in his excommunication from the Jewish community in 1656. The cherem, or excommunication decree, described him as an “evil influence” and a “corrupter,” effectively severing his ties with his family and community.

Central to Spinoza’s philosophy is the concept of pantheism, the belief that God and the universe are identical. In his seminal work, Ethics, Spinoza argued that there is only one substance, which he called “God” or “Nature” (Deus sive Natura). According to Spinoza, everything in the universe, including human beings, is a part of this single substance. This view contrasts sharply with the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of God as a distinct, transcendent being who created and governs the universe.