Interview with Ball Four Author, Jim Bouton
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All on the Field speaks with Jim Bouton, former Yankee knuckleballer and author of the best-selling book, Ball Four. Bouton weighs in on the legacy of his book, HGH and steroids, and the future of the knuckle ball.
Q: Jim, you're famous for writing Ball Four, but you're also the inventor of Big League Chew and the author of another book, Foul Ball. What are you up to these days?
I'm the commissioner of the Vintage Baseball Federation and we staged our first annual Northeast Regional Playoffs and Vintage Baseball World Series this summer in Westfield, Mass.
So this is an old-timers league then?
Yeah, it's baseball played [with] 19th century rules, uniforms, and equipment. It's a step back in time. We create a 19th century atmosphere with costumed actors and kids selling cracker jacks with newsboy caps and suspenders.
Ball Four is one of the best selling sports books of all time, but you didn't always get favorable reactions for having written it. What has the legacy of the book become, and how are you treated by the baseball establishment today?
Ball Four was originally given bad -- harsh reviews by Major League Baseball and a few players, and mostly sports writers that were upset that I had written about things that had never been written about before in sports. And so they were sort of angry that a baseball player of all people would cross the boundary line.
But once the book came out and people realized it wasn't a bad book about baseball -- it was a good book about baseball -- it was funny, made the players more human, more likable, and turned a lot of people onto baseball. It didn't turn anybody off.
But that was years ago, when it first came out in 1970. Since then, it's been recognized as a very good book about baseball. It was selected a few years ago by the New York Public Library as one of the most important books of the century.
I've updated it three times: 1980, 1990, and 2000. (The latest edition, Ball Four: The Final Pitch, can be found at Bouton's website).
Read the rest of the interview here.
