Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics) by Jim Bouton Read Free Book Online Page A

On this day we were playing a doubleheader and my wife, Bobbie, was up in the stands with the kids—I have three now, Michael, five, Kyong Jo, four, and Laurie, three. I got knocked out early and decided to dress and watch the rest of the game in the stands with my family. After the game I’d get back into uniform for the second game.
    Crosetti, who was coaching at third, spotted me in the stands and told The Colonel that I was in my street clothes and looked like I was about to go home. So The Colonel, who loved to get this kind of information, told Big Pete to go up into the stands and get me. At first I thought Big Pete was kidding, but when I found out he wasn’t I was burned up.
    I got into my uniform and, when the game was over and Cro came into the clubhouse, I went over and told him to keep his big nose out of my business, that he was a goddam busybody and should have been watching the game instead of me. So he yelled back at me and I yelled back at him—bright, clever things that little boys yell at each other, and all of a sudden he jumped up and started punching me.
    Now,
there’s
a dilemma. I don’t want to get hit, even by the skinny old Cro. At the same time I don’t want to hit
Frank Crosetti
, for crissakes. So I sort of covered up and started backing off. Besides, I couldn’t help it, I was laughing. At that point my friend Elston Howard, quickly sizing up the great dangers involved, came running over, threw a body block at me and knocked me down. I picked myself up, went over to my locker and sat down. I should have let it go at that. Instead I hollered over to Cro again to keep his nose out of my business and this was when Houk came over and said if I said one more word he’d knock me right off my goddam stool.
    I didn’t say another word. And that was the end of it, except you may be certain it was all recorded in my file, in red ink.
    Hectic day for personal affairs. We moved out of the motel we’d been staying in where it cost us about $135 an hour and into a two-bedroom apartment. Nice place, heated swimming pool and all. Packing, loading, unloading, unpacking—the life of a ballplayer. It’s one of the pains in the neck. On the other hand it’s exciting, in a way, moving around, seeing new places.
    The family loves it in Arizona. We’ve taken a few rides out into the desert and looked at the cactus and the beautiful rock formations, and the kids are excited about the weather getting warm enough so they can use the pool. Kyong Jo, the Korean boy we adopted, is doing great with his English. Every once in a while he’ll burp and say, “Thank you.” But he’s getting the idea.
    Got a big day tomorrow. Ten minutes of batting practice. I think I’ll use the Johnny James (former Yankee pitcher) theory of batting practice. Under this theory you imagine you’re in a game and you move your pitches around on the hitter, dust him off, throw sliders, the works. The hitters hate it. But it helped Johnny James make the team, at least for a while.

MARCH
3
    When I was a kid I loved to go to Giant games in the Polo Grounds. And a little thing that happened there when I was about ten years old popped into my mind today. There was a ball hit into the stands and a whole bunch of kids ran after it. I spotted it first, under a seat, and grabbed for it. Just as I did, a Negro kid also snatched at it. My hand reached it a split second before his, though, and I got a pretty good grip on it. But he grabbed the ball real hard and pulled it right out of my hand. No complaint, he took it fair and square. I thought about it afterward, about what made him able to grab that ball out of my hand. I decided it had to do with the way we were brought up—me in a comfortable suburb, him probably in a ghetto. I decided that while I
wanted
the baseball, he
had to have it
.
    Batting practice today. Arm felt fine after throwing, which is more than I can say for Steve Barber’s. Two seconds after he threw he was in the