A few final (?) words about Ball Four

September 23, 2010

The recent program at the Burbank Library seems to have sparked national attention to Bouton’s classic. Here are a few more items for your consideration:

  • Our friend, Tom Hoffarth penned this nice wrap-up of the event. “It’s not a stretch to think today of Bouton as a J.D. Sallinger of sports literature,” he writes. “In a way that “Catcher in the Rye” captured and examined teen angst in the 1950s, “Ball Four” made the adult world of professional sports far more real to those coming of age in the 1970s.”
  • But wait; there’s more from Hoffarth.
  • Rick Anderson of the Seattle Weekly News, offered this piece. Anderson concludes his article with an interesting notion: If you loved the television version of Ball Four, you ain’t heard nothing yet. “Now 71, Bouton said he hopes to share the book, and the Pilots (who departed for Milwaukee after one season), with Broadway. At his home in Massachusetts, he’s working on an adaptation: Ball Four: The Musical. Said Bouton: ‘The stage. I think that’s where it belongs.’ Yowza! I wonder who will play Bouton on the Great White Way?
  • Another west coast tribute, this one from Kevin Baxter at the Los Angeles Times.
  • A personal recollection on Mynorthwest.com.
  • And dig this crazy “retro” shoutout from Sportscenter:

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Tagged as: Ball Four, Jim Bouton

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