Jim Bouton

The diary of a major league baseball player during one season reveals the game's venal and foolish aspects

Ball Four

Ball Four Plus Five

Eliot Asinof

A story of game-fixing during National League playoffs. In his 38-year career as a baseball umpire Ernie Kolacka never once favored a team, but now he must, to repay a debt to a Korean War buddy in trouble with gamblers.

Strike Zone

I'm Glad You Didn't Take it Personally

The diary of a major-league baseball player during one season reveals the game's venal and foolish aspects

My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues

A rollicking and “compelling” true story of baseball, big money, and small-town politics by the author of the classic Ball Four (Publishers Weekly). Host to organized baseball since 1892, Pittsfield, Massachusetts’s 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 former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton and his partner 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. The only people who didn’t like Bouton's plan were the mayor, the mayor's hand-picked Parks Commissioners, a majority of the City Council, the only daily newspaper, the city’s largest bank, its most powerful law firm, and a guy from General Electric. Everyone else—or approximately 98% of the citizens of Pittsfield—loved it. But the “good old boys” hated Bouton’s plan because it would put a stake in the heart of a proposed $18.5 million baseball stadium—a new stadium that the citizens of Pittsfield had voted against three different times. In this riveting account, Bouton unmasks a mayor who brags that “the fix is in,” a newspaper that lies to its readers, and a government that operates out of a bar. But maybe the most incredible story is what happened after Foul Ball was published—a story in itself. Invited back by a new mayor, Bouton and his partner raise $1.2 million, help discover a document dating Pittsfield’s baseball origins to 1791, and stage a vintage game that’s broadcast live by ESPN-TV. Who could have guessed what would happen next? And that this time it would involve the Massachusetts Attorney General? “An irresistible story whose outcome remains in doubt until the very end. Not just a funny book, but a patriotic one.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Bouton proves that a badly run city government can be just as dangerous—and just as hilarious—as a badly run baseball team.”—Keith Olbermann

Foul Ball

Offers a baseball tale about Sam Ward, an aging minor league pitcher, who gets a chance to pitch in the majors, and Ernie Kolacka, an umpire who has agreed to fix the game

Leonard Shecter

A famous expose of baseball behind the scenes has been expanded to include Bouton's comeback to the big leagues, the breakup of his marriage, and his current career as a writer and television personality

Jim Bouton

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