L'avis des consommateurs
|
|
|
Évaluation du client type
Partagez votre opinion avec les autres clients
|
|
|
Le commentaire favorable le plus utile
Le commentaire critique le plus utile
Damn near perfect
Jim Bouton's Ball Four has rightly been called the best sports book of all times by publications that actually matter, but I figure I'll throw my two cents in, too. In a day before an ol' ballplayer could hire a ghost and slap together some fond memories or pathetic pleas for forgiveness (hiya, Pete Rose), Bouton, making a comeback as a knuckleballer with the expansion...
Publié le Mars 24 2004 par jeremiah d conway
|
› Voir plus de commentaires 5 étoiles, 4 étoiles |
 |
The Cutting Edge Now Blunted
Perhaps Jim Bouton himself says it best: "The books that have come after mine make BALL FOUR, as an expose, read like THE BOBBSEY TWINS GO TO THE SEASHORE." This is because--dare I say it?--BALL FOUR is now pretty tame stuff. Oh, no doubt, it's entertaining...and Bouton IS a good writer (or Schecter a great editor). And let's never forget that WITHOUT it,...
Publié le Juil 5 1999 par Bill Fleck
|
› Voir plus de commentaires 3 étoiles, 2 étoiles, 1 étoiles |
|
|
Nice Insight in Pro Baseball, Avril 24 2004
My teacher for my History of Sports class recommended this book and I bought it. He told us that is was a very controversial book at the time because it spoke of things that were better left unspoken. That is the best recommendation you can get! It is a very funny book, sometimes Bouton describes things that could be in a movie about baseball, a National Lampoon version that is. There is drinking gambling and looking at girls from all angles. But didn't we all expect them to this anyway? He was ostracized by baseball but it is really harmless fun, the new sections in this edition also talk about what happened after the first edition came out. Get it
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Damn near perfect, Mars 24 2004
Jim Bouton's Ball Four has rightly been called the best sports book of all times by publications that actually matter, but I figure I'll throw my two cents in, too. In a day before an ol' ballplayer could hire a ghost and slap together some fond memories or pathetic pleas for forgiveness (hiya, Pete Rose), Bouton, making a comeback as a knuckleballer with the expansion Seattle Pilots, toted a tape recorder with him for an entire year in order to write this day-by-day account of life in the bigs.
The humor is at once anecdotal and observational, and, most importantly, consistent. The Seattle Pilots were rather like the Cleveland Indians in the film Major League - a haphazard collection of rookies and cast-offs trying to make it. Of course, Major League had to have the whole underdog thing going on.
The issues that face baseball today - drugs, salaries, lack of interest by hometown fans, the Yankees being the source of all evil - are all present in Ball Four. The only part of the book that hasn't aged perfectly is the scale of the salaries - Bouton and his teammates hold out for an increase of a few thousand dollars, instead of the millions today's players make.
In summation, there is no baseball book you should read before this one, and there are precious few books you should read, period, before this one. Ball Four is in every right an American masterpiece.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
"BALL FOUR" by Jim Bouton (1970), Fév 23 2004
"BALL FOUR" by Jim Bouton (1970)The truth about athlete as role models occurred with the bombshell publication of Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" in 1970. The result was a diary of the 1969 season, in which the former star pitcher talked about drinking, drugs, sex and RACE, all subjects the liberal "clubhouse lawyer" had an axe to grind on. "Ball Four" had more edge than a Doors concert, breaking new ground long before Watergate, the Internet and Monica Lewinsky. The old protocols had protected J.F.K.'s sex life, but Bouton, who probably idolized Daniel Ellsberg, felt the clubhouse adage "What you do here, what you say here, what you see here, let it stay here," did not apply.
Bouton pissed off Commissioner Bowie Kuhn with his expose of players' common habit of popping amphetamines. He pissed off a lot of wives by revealing a peculiar member of the female species known as "Baseball Annies," attractive young women who enjoy sleeping with ballplayers. He pissed off his old Yankee teammates by putting the myth to Mickey Mantle's legend, paying homage to The Mick's Olympian abilities, but talking about Mantle's equally prodigious drinking habit.
Bouton describes "beaver hunting," a popular player pastime in which they drilled holes in the dugout in order to look up the dresses of girls in the front row. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "box seat," doesn't it?
Bouton comes from the "white man is to blame for all the black man's problems" ideology, and he put the lie to baseball's claim of being color blind, with enlightening racial statistics that revealed that many of the game's stars were black, but few journeymen were.
Many of his conservative teammates felt he was a bit of a Communist. It has been said that Stalin would have had a job in baseball if he brought the high heat, which Bouton could do, but the Yankees dropped him like a bad habit as soon as he hurt his arm.
"Ball Four" made Bouton rich and famous, holds up well today, and is a gem of humor, irony and inside baseball.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hilarious look at baseball, Déc 22 2003
Even aside from its baseball aspects, Ball Four probably deserves recognition as the funniest string of anecdotes ever put on paper. There really isn't much that can be said about this book that isn't positive; hilarious, a quick-moving style of writing, interesting stories, and a great picture of what life in a clubhouse is really like. Bouton's limited observations on politics and individuality on a team are interesting, even if they're dated by now. The only drawback to this book is that it won't impact a reader today as it would someone who read it at its publication. For someone like me who has grown up with public salary negotiations and open discussion of the private lives of athletes, there's no shock value or revelation to be had. Nevertheless, even if it's no longer groundbreaking, it's still more than a worthwhile read for anyone.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Knuckle(ball)head Who Started It!!!, Déc 9 2003
Ball Four, Jim Bouton's fine diary about life with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros in the year 1969 (the same year man landed on the Moon), has been hailed as a groundbreaking, revolutionary book about baseball, sports, and life in general. Most people are correct when they say it was the first truely successful "tell-all" book, pointing out the human fallacies of such superstars as Mickey Mantle, Elston Howard, and Alvin Dark, as well as the dubious effectiveness of executives in general and managers in particular. Most critics are also correct when they say that this book violated the sanctity of the locker-room by showing a professional sports team as a profane, prank-filled, rather juvenile bunch of guys rather than as cardboard heroes. Still, many people who write about Ball Four miss it's most significant contribution, one voiced by Bouton himself: He told the American public how much (and, more importantly), how little professional athletes really made at the time. According to Jim, most people read the headlines and knew that Mickey Mantle made $100,000 a year or so in the mid-1960's. But they didn't realize that Yankee rookies (the team Bouton started his career with) only made $7000 a year, and that Jim himself only made a salary in the low 20's even after three years of experience, twenty wins a season, and two World Series wins as a pitcher! In other words, most people felt that if Mantle made 100K, then Elston Howard, Tom Tresh, Jim Bouton, and other Yankees of the day must have made about 40-60K each season. The fact that Bouton broke the most sacred code of all and TOLD HOW MUCH MONEY PLAYERS EARNED (or not, as the case may be) made him a pariah to the baseball establishment and forced his exclusion from Yankee's Old Timer games for the next quarter century. Still, you may ask, why would I want to read this 30-year old book? The funny stories, the rude and crude language, the camaraderie among a group which binds them together despite significant differences? Yes, and something much more fundamental. Jim Bouton is the champion of the outsider, the knucklehead, the rebel in all of us who feels, right or wrong, that no matter how good he gets, he will never truly fit in. His daily diary entries prove that all of us, even professional athletes, suffer from what actor Roy Schieder called "flop sweat," i.e., fear of failure. This quality, along with all the wild, zany, and utimately touching stories, makes Ball Four such an excellent read after all these years. Pick up Ball Four today. You'll find that no matter how much you sometimes feel a misfit, you'll always have a champion in Jim!
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Now I Understand..., Jui 23 2003
Par Un client
I have been reading up on Mickey Mantle since seeing the movie 61*, about the Mantle/Maris race to beat Babe Ruth's single season home run record. I checked this book out of the library to see why there was so much hostility towards Jim Bouton, and why he was never invited to NY Yankee Old Timer's Days after writing this book. He always thought it was Mickey Mantle who was keeping him from attending. After Mantle died in 1995, he still didn't get invited - so that shoots that one down. Bouton learned a lesson. People actually LIKED Mickey Mantle and felt offended by what Bouton said about him in "Ball Four."He starts out talking about how nice Mickey was to him, different things he did that were touching, kind. But then he proceeds to tell us how he had mixed feelings for Mickey because he saw Mickey shut a bus window on a group of kids wanting autographs. And he refused to sign balls in the clubhouse one time. Jim Bouton was never Mickey Mantle, and its too bad he never knew what it was to be hounded day and night and never have a minute of privacy. So Mantle shut a bus window on some kids once. Knowing what I do about the fame Mantle created and endured during his ball playing days, I can't understand why Bouton even found that important enough to write about. Oh, that's right. Money. He made alot of money writing this book to trash his fellow baseball players. Otherwise, would any of us remember Jim Bouton for anything else?
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
True Major League Baseball world revealed !!!!!!, Nov. 4 2002
Jim Bouton is not a name that comes up when discussing the all time greats of baseball. However, when discussing the all time greatest baseball novels, his name should come up every time. Ball Four is a fantastic day-in-the-life recounting of a single player's (Bouton's) Major League season - more specifically, the season being 1969, and his playing days that year split between the upstart franchise Seattle Pilots, and the beleagured, relatively new Houston Astros. What sets the novel apart is it's absolutely brutal, truthful (but very taboo) telling of the player's and coach's personalities and lifestyles. Not a single vulgarity or shocking sequence is missed in Bouton's daily log he kept which eventually became this famous non-fiction piece. It also created more enemies in the game than he could've imagined. He only played one and a half more seasons after it's publication, and is a testament to a very intelligent, and brave athlete who wrote with a beautifully relaxing, very funny, and down-to-earth tone. A great read for true baseball fans.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Baseball Memoir, Oct. 18 2002
What can I say about this book? I used to read it every summer. I read it by date (June 9, I read June 9 entry) tracked the stats etc. I first read this book in eighth grade. It didn't shatter the myth of Mickey Mantle, other ballplayers or the state of the sacred game, in general. I was a METS FAN anyway. What it did do is make light that ballplayers aren't unconditional heroes. They are human beings and rather tame compared to some of today's criminals. (I mean athletes). First time through I laughed at loud and each successive time I fondly remembered scenes painted so vividly by Bouton. For me it was like re-watching a favorite movie such as Say Anything, The Graduate or When Harry Met Sally. Ballplayers are traveling for months at a time and the same issues written here are also found in "reality shows". Ball Four was ahead of its time for this reason but also for the fact that no one was writting an insider book like this back in 1970. My generation of sports fans can quote from this book, still today.
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Bouton takes sports fans into the locker room and beyond, Jui 10 2002
Who would have thought that when Jim Bouton agreed to keep a diary during the 1969 baseball season, that "Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckle-ball in the Big Leagues" would end up being listed as one of the Books of the Century by the New York Public Library. But there it is, nestled in between Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Stephen King's "Carrie" under the category of Popular Culture & Mass Entertainment. The book is cited as being "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 realms of contemporary public life." But more importantly "Ball Four" totally changed the relationship between baseball players and their fans.Bouton had achieved early success as a hard throwing right-handed pitcher for the New York Yankees. But by 1969 the Yankee dynasty was officially over, Mickey Mantle had retired, and Bouton was trying to return to the majors by throwing the infamous knuckle-ball. Signed by the expansion team Seattle Pilots, in their only season of existence before moving to Milwaukee, Bouton had his ups and downs as a relief pitcher, but was successful enough to be traded to the Houston Astros who were in the middle of a pennant race. However, little of that mattered once Bouton started talking about what happened in the lockeroom. "Ball Four" was considered scandalous because Bouton frankly talked about baseball players having affairs, popping greenies (suddenly in the news again because of the current steroid controversy), and playing wickedly funny practical jokes on each other (Jesus Alou is the greatest victim of all time). The book's impact can be summed up in one particular story, when Bouton relates how Mantle once hit a home run when he still could not see straight because of a hard night of drinking. Once baseball's golden boy was tarnished in this manner, nobody else in the game had a chance. Bouton kicked down the door to the locker room big time. The book was considered irreverent and was denounced by the baseball establishment when it was published in 1970. But the problem was that it was (a) very truthful and (b) even funnier than it was truthful. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn called Bouton in on the carpet, but it turns out the truth is indeed a defense. The legacy of "Ball Four" today is seen not so much in similar books but in baseball films, where movies from "Bull Durham" to "Major Leagues" have captured the wonderful and wacky environment of a baseball locker room. For more about the book's reaction read Bouton's sequel, "I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally."
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Groundbreaking, Entertaining, and Funny Book, Mai 9 2002
"Ball Four" is a diary that covers the year of a baseball player, in this case Jim Bouton, who spent the 1969 season with the expansion Seattle Pilots and then the Houston Astros. Entertaining on many levels, "Ball Four" also serves as a mirror of the times -- in the late 1960s, many established concepts and ideas, in politics, music, mass media, and sports, were being shattered. Baseball, always about five years behind the curve, was always thought of as a game that was played by wholesome, All-American men. They were our heroes. Ball Four, however, sheds new light and revealed, for the first time, that baseball players, even some of the game's superstars, are human.
Bouton tells all, in, by today's standards, a tame fashion. We read about everything -- ballplayers cheating on their wives, playing with hangovers, racial problems between teammates, players taking uppers before a game, etc. Bouton is a very insightful writer and presents the material in a humorous manner, the humor, or barbs, is directed at his teammates, managers, coaches, and, in many instances, at himself.
Baseball was outraged when the book first came out in 1970. Many players and baseball executives considered Bouton a turncoat. But the years have shown that Ball Four was a groundbreaking book, one that set the standard for tell-all books to come. These other books, however, have never reached the level of excellence of Bouton's "Ball Four."
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ce produit
|
|
D'occasion et Neuf à partir de : CDN$ 3.01
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Les clients qui ont vu cet article ont aussi vu
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Accueil Amazon
