Ball Four: Correcting a slight error

In the recent entry on the Jim Bouton interview, I wrote about the book’s inclusion in a list of the New York Public Library’s Books of the Century.

I mistakenly referred to it as a list of the top 100 books. In fact, the total is closer to 175.

Bouton’s contribution to literature is included int he section on “Pop Culture and Mass Entertainment,” along with such notable titles as Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Gone with the Wind, Peyton Place, The Cat in the Hat, Stranger in a Strange Land, Catch-22, In Cold Blood, Carrie, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, among others.

The entry from the 1996 edition of The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century reads:

Jim Bouton’s diaristic insider’s account of the 1969 baseball season, during which he was a marginal relief pitcher for the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros, remains one of the all-time best-selling sports books. Considered frank and irreverent, even scandalous, in 1970, it immediately drew the censure of the baseball establishment.

Ball Four was the first ripple of a tidal wave of “tell-all” books that have become commonplace not only in sports, but also in politics, entertainment, and other realm of contemporary public life.

Of great interest today, in the light of the 1994-95 baseball strike, are the references to the bitterness and rancor that characterize owner-player relations, and to the early efforts of Marvin Miller to organize a players’ union.

Tagged as: Ball Four, Jim Bouton