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Jim Bouton

A rollicking and “compelling” true story of baseball, big money, and small-town politics by the author of the classic Ball Four (Publishers Weekly).

Host to organized baseball since 1892, Pittsfield, Massachusetts’s Wahconah Park was soon to be abandoned by the owner of the Pittsfield Mets, who would move his team to a new stadium in another town—an all too familiar story. Enter former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton and his partner with the best deal ever offered to a community: a locally owned professional baseball team and a privately restored city-owned ballpark at no cost to the taxpayers.

The only people who didn’t like Bouton's plan were the mayor, the mayor's hand-picked Parks Commissioners, a majority of the City Council, the only daily newspaper, the city’s largest bank, its most powerful law firm, and a guy from General Electric. Everyone else—or approximately 98% of the citizens of Pittsfield—loved it. But the “good old boys” hated Bouton’s plan because it would put a stake in the heart of a proposed $18.5 million baseball stadium—a new stadium that the citizens of Pittsfield had voted against three different times. In this riveting account, Bouton unmasks a mayor who brags that “the fix is in, ” a newspaper that lies to its readers, and a government that operates out of a bar.

But maybe the most incredible story is what happened after Foul Ball was published—a story in itself. Invited back by a new mayor, Bouton and his partner raise $1.2 million, help discover a document dating Pittsfield’s baseball origins to 1791, and stage a vintage game that’s broadcast live by ESPN-TV.

Who could have guessed what would happen next? And that this time it would involve the Massachusetts Attorney General?

“An irresistible story whose outcome remains in doubt until the very end. Not just a funny book, but a patriotic one. ”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Bouton proves that a badly run city government can be just as dangerous—and just as hilarious—as a badly run baseball team. ”—Keith Olbermann

RosettaBooks

RosettaBooks Sports Classics

Foul Ball

The 50th Anniversary edition of “the book that changed baseball” (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Non-Fiction” books.

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse. ” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries.

Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people—often wildly funny people. David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written … a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book. ”

Today Ball Four has taken on another role—as a time capsule of life in the sixties. “It is not just a diary of Bouton’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros, ” says sportswriter Jim Caple. “It’s a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a ‘tell all book’ is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California. ”

Includes a new foreword by Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman 

“An irreverent, best-selling book that angered baseball’s hierarchy and changed the way journalists and fans viewed the sports world. ” —The Washington Post

Ball Four