Rosettabooks Sports Classics
1 primary work • 2 total works
Book 1
The beloved baseball classic now available in paperback, with a new prologue by Jim Bouton. When Ball Four was first published in 1970, it hit the sports world like a lightning bolt. Commissioners, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and social leper. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer's Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still being read by people who don't ordinarily follow baseball. For the updated edition of this historic book, Bouton has written a new prologue, detailing his perspective on how baseball has changed since the last edition was released.
In his first diary since Ball Four, Jim Bouton recounts his amazing adventure trying to save an historic ballpark in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Host to organized baseball since 1892, 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 Bouton and his partners 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. It was a dream come true for the vast majority of the people of Pittsfield.
But Bouton's plan was opposed by an elite group of power brokers who wanted to build a new $18.5 million baseball stadium---a stadium that the people had voted against three different times!
In what one reviewer called that same humane, sarcastic voice, Bouton unmasks a mayor who brags that the fix is in, a newspaper that lies to its readers, and a city government that operates out of a bar.
And that's just Part l.
Part ll is the even more amazing story of what happened after this book as self published---a story in itself---in hardcover. Invited back to Pittsfield by newly elected city officials, Bouton and his partners raise $1.2 million, help uncover a document that dates Pittsfield's baseball origins to 1791, and stage a vintage baseball game that is broadcast live on national television.
Who could have guessed what would happen next? And that this time it would involve the Massachusetts Attorney General.
Enter Bouton and his partners 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. It was a dream come true for the vast majority of the people of Pittsfield.
But Bouton's plan was opposed by an elite group of power brokers who wanted to build a new $18.5 million baseball stadium---a stadium that the people had voted against three different times!
In what one reviewer called that same humane, sarcastic voice, Bouton unmasks a mayor who brags that the fix is in, a newspaper that lies to its readers, and a city government that operates out of a bar.
And that's just Part l.
Part ll is the even more amazing story of what happened after this book as self published---a story in itself---in hardcover. Invited back to Pittsfield by newly elected city officials, Bouton and his partners raise $1.2 million, help uncover a document that dates Pittsfield's baseball origins to 1791, and stage a vintage baseball game that is broadcast live on national television.
Who could have guessed what would happen next? And that this time it would involve the Massachusetts Attorney General.