My Sunday Feeling

"They have bedsheets banners in Atlanta too.  They say REBEL. Sometimes the bedsheets is a Confederate flag.  I wonder how the Negro players feel about them.  The worse part is these things are hung by kids. Why the hell couldn't they let that stuff die with their grandfathers? These are not rebels who want something new.  These are rebels who want to bring back the old." 

                                                                                 Ball Four



I like baseball.  I always have.  Played it. Coached it.  Watch it pretty much every night.  So it occurred to me to re-read "Ball Four" which was journeyman pitcher Jim Bouton's epic expose about life in professional baseball.  It was published in 1969.  That would have made me about 14.  I bought a copy somewhere.  I don't really remember where one would have gone to buy books in Southwest Little Rock back in those days, it not being especially Parisian.  

But I remember sitting in my room reading about guys I idolized on the TV and cereal boxes being depicted as drunks and womanizers.  Or both.  I had never heard of "greenies" before then.  And we are not exactly talking about the Tulane Green Wave.  Although I had never heard of them either back in those days.

And I remember thinking to myself "If Mother knew what I was reading she would kill me."  As far as my parents knew, Ball Four was just another sports book, no more incendiary or sinful than any of the sports novels by Tex Maule that I used to read.  

But "Ball Four," written by Bouton with assistance from sportswriter Leonard Shecter, pulled back the veil on what went on in the locker room and in the team hotels.  And Bouton named names.  The biggest name being Mickey Mantle, who we now know in retrospect was a raging alcoholic who drank champagne for breakfast in his post-playing days.  Huntington's Disease ran in his family and killed his father.  As the Mick famously said about his drinking "If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself."  Mantle doesn't appear frequently in "Ball Four.' But the fact that he appeared at all was remarkable.  

But what struck the young me as much as the stories about all the drinking and crazy sex was the timeless banality of the game itself.  I was a pitcher and I was wild as a buck.  I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody came out to the mound to advise me to "throw strikes." Like I wasn't trying to already.  My young heart leapt with joy as Bouton recounted getting that same useless advice as was offered to me.  Only he was getting it from the likes of Sal "the Barber" Maglie.  

Jim Bouton confirmed something that I had begun to suspect about baseball in those tender years.  Nobody knows anything.  Which is a radical idea to put in a young person's head.  But this radical notion became a bedrock principle that has served me in good stead in many other areas of human endeavor, including the practice of law, throughout my life even unto this late date.   

I ordered the updated version from a local bookstore.  When I showed up to buy it, I saw the young black kid behind the counter looking through it.  The cover of this edition carries a quote by David Halberstam, saying that "Ball Four" was "A book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book." The cover also points out that it was selected as one of the "Books of the Century" by the New York Public Library.

The young man rang me up.

"I never heard of this book before," he said. "But it seems to have won a bunch of awards.  What makes it so important?"

I looked at his earnest, intelligent face.  I'm guessing he's not a day over 22.

"Well," I said. "You got to understand that things were a lot different back when "Ball Four" was written.  The NFL had not yet become the premier sport in the country.  Baseball players were idolized and mythologized still to a large degree.  There was no such thing as investigative journalism in sports back then.  The sportswriters were all chummy with the players and turned a blind eye to all the carousing that was going on.  I don't think Bouton thought he was doing journalism, but things were never the same after 'Ball Four.'"

"The writers covered for the players?"

God love him.

"Sure.  And the managers and ownership too."

He laughed and shook his head.

"That sure couldn't happen now."

"Well not to the extent that it happened in those days, no."

  I was about to turn to walk out.

"I may read it," the kid said.  It sounds real interesting. My friends and I never played baseball.  So I don't know much about it."

"Don't worry about it,"I said. "Nobody knows anything."

"What?"

"Nothing.  Enjoy the book, Son."   

Nobody knows anything.  

Bless you Mister Bouton. And thank you for that gift.