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).

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

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.