Summer Reading Ball Four

I know that those who subscribe to the belief, "baseball is life, the rest is just details," have a few different bibles. Some declare that they live by the baseball encyclopedia, others by the numerous accounts of Bill James and his statistical genius. Some others would even say that Moneyball was their favorite baseball book of all time. But one thing all can agree on, is that no other book gives better insight into the way the game is truly played then Ball Four, written by Jim Bouton. I of course, am not even finished with it yet.

My lack of completion of this memoir is not however due to boredom with the content of the book, but simply due to the lack of a good bookmark, so I have to keep starting further and further back, unsure of where I left off previously.

The form in which the book is comprised is quite unique, for, each day is of the diary is filled with anything from a funny anecdote to baseball insights to the author's worries about his health and ability. It was due to the honesty with which the author wrote however, that an enormous outcry by the sporting community took place with its publication. Children's heroes, such as Mickey Mantle, were brought down off their pedestal of being a perfect person and shown to be just as alcoholic and dirty as the rest of the country. Though, of course, they were still high up on the pedestal of baseball greatness. Yet, many were offended by the book's "inappropriate" displays, but many were also drawn to the sport because of it. Due to its portrayal of baseball heroes as human, it makes greatness more accessible for the common man.

My personal favorite series of anecdotes Bouton shares is those toward the beginning pertaining to his contract negotiations while with the New York Yankees, who he and his father had suckered into offering him a contract in the first place. The nerve Bouton displays and the response of the Yankees general manager, Ralph Houk, is like an exchange pulled from a movie script, and I could not stop laughing.

I'm not a huge reader, so other than the required summer reading, Ball Four and Robinson Crusoe are the only books I read this past summer.

Mr. Coon, freshman year I did bi weekly assignments called journals which were also 500 word responses to a certain question posed about readings we did. Above is a kind of sample of that, written in that informal style simply out of habit for this type of assignment. I was wondering what I could do to improve on these blogs or if this is acceptable.

A Beller