Inspired by the recent thread on our board, I reread Jim Bouton's BALL FOUR. I'd read it as a kid, long ago, and forgot every last detail. I sometimes even wonder whatever happened to that kid.
Anyway, the book is fast and funny and I recommend it.
What was especially great was coming to that last page and sitting back with awe when he knocked it out of the park with the very last line:
"You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."
Yep, that's about it.
I knew that isolated quote, of course, but it's more impactful when it takes you 300 pages to get there.
Jim, I just noticed that you had posted a previous note about Jim's passing and I wanted to add a personal story. I was a 13 year old growing up in the Bronx in 1963 and on one Sunday night at our church Jim Bouton, Tom Tresh, and Joe Pepitone were scheduled to come to our auditorium to watch a film of the 1962 Worlds Series and then sign autographs. The only one to show up was Jim Bouton and his wife. He made some excuse that Tom and Joe were not feeling well. He stayed for about three hours and after the film signed about 250 baseball cards and answered about 100 questions about how it felt to play in the Worlds Series with the Yankees. He left after going around the complete auditorium. It was a pretty big deal to a 13 year old.
