Ball Four...

I read that back when it came out.
I was about 9 years old and swiped it from my Dad's bedside table.

He'd have been furious if he knew. As I recall, there were some rather racy stories in there, at least racy for the time...for a 9 year old girl to be reading.

Sounds like fun.
Count me in!!

(maybe I'll see if Dad still has the same copy!!)

bubblemint

Yay! Goober's in, too!!!

Sweet! I'm in.

Best. idea. EVER.

SBG has one thing to say. F*** you, Sal Maglie.

My signed and unread copy is coming off the shelf! (and getting read)

Ilk

Aw, crap. Batgirl's giving out homework.

Is this an online book club, or will there be meetings in person in Minneapolis? I'm stuck here in New York, and would hate to miss out...

Brian

Great choice!

Can we start callinig Gardy "Skip"? . . . managers like to be called Skip.

Oooooooooh. How exciting. I've got quite a lot of baseball books, so if you want future reading ideas (esp. fiction), please let me know.

I think I've got that one lying around. If not I'll pick it up today.

I'm in! AWESOME idea! I loved that book!

>>Aw, crap. Batgirl's giving out homework.<<

hahahahaaa...mmmmmmmmarkiep cracks me up.

Anyway, I'm in too! At least, I'll try to tear myself away from America: The Book for a while.

Does BatGirl rock or what?

For future reference, Ms. BallWonk recently ran out of unread books and picked Mark Harris' "Bang the Drum Slowly" at random from my side of the bookshelves. Much to both our surprises, she enjoyed the novel muchly. Just by way of suggestions for future Book Club of the Ballpark reads. Plus "Bang the Drum Slowly" has lots of subtle Minnesota references.

Dearest Bat-Girl,

Thank you, but I see enough ball fours during the regular season. I'm sending my copy to Johan Santana.

Regards,

Shoeless Joe

Great book, I look forward to the discussion next month. Might I suggest "The Glory of Their Times" for the next selection?

I'm in - but I'm not a very good discussion-ist but I'll give it a go ;-)

Thanks Bat-girl!

Much Love
Wonder Woman

I'm in! FWIW, the more recent editions have somewhat lengthy updates.

OT: Someone referenced Gardy and of whom do I think? Billy Gardner. Woe (old) is me. Yes, proximity affects instant recall. MLB cable/internet/satellite package or no, it stinks not being in Minneapolis when it comes to the Twins.

Dear Mr. Brian,

Please forgive my lack of clarity; I've rectified the error in the entry. Discussion will be online.

Love,
Batgirl

I've read Ball Four three times, if anyone wants a "Cliff's Notes" version. Shoot me an email. Seriously, read it. It's probably the best baseball book written. Catcher in the Rye meets Bull Durham.

;)

Batgirl,

May I suggest Veeck (As In Wreck) and The Great American Novel as the subject of future discussion?

TribeScribe

BallWonk: I love Bang the Drum Slowly. It's one of my favorite baseball books. You should know that the BTDS is the 2nd in a 4-book series, starting with The Southpaw, which is also excellent. There is a drop-off after the second, unfortunately.

Thanks Batgirl! I think this is a great idea. I just bought a copy and I can't wait to get started. :-)

Sorry to butt in again, but I just thought of The Perfect Book for this. Sport, by Mick Cochrane, is a lovely book about a kid growing up in St Paul. Needless to say, he is a die-hard Twins fan.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312269943/qid=/sr=/ref=cm_lm_asin/102-5198749-2964909?v=glance

I think we should read the comics that the team readin Major League. hmmm hey maybe it could be Book/Movie Club ? Bang the drum slowly was a great movie.

I think the Lou Gehrig movie would a great one to discuss. :)

Batgirl.... you're the bestest !

One more suggestion: Neal Karlen's "Slouching Toward Fargo: A Two Year Saga of Sinners and St. Paul Saints at the Bottom of the Bush Leagues with Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Dakota Sadie and Me"

Gene Braebender said, in Bounton's book, that the hardest thing about being a major leaguer is convincing your wife that she has to have an antibiotic shot for your infection, or something like that. Al

I, too, read this book back in the day. I'm looking forward to reading it again. Great idea!

Heh. Less than 24 hours after a book was announced and already we have several people suggesting other books.

Yay for Batgirl, the Oprah of baseball!

I'm excited. I just requested the book from our library (sorry Amazon, but I've got 2 kids in college). I haven't read it before, but I can't wait!

Might I suggest pounding the old Budweiser while reading this fine book...

And no, that's not a euphemism for anything.

mmmarkiep - I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who found the humor in that...

only 400 pages and you're giving us over a month to read???...i only wish college profs were that nice...

Henn. Co. library has LOTS of copies... I just put one on hold, so those of us too cheap to buy can borrow! (hclib.org)

Yes, it might be homework but at least its GOOD homework. Kinda like a grown up version of writing about what you want for Christmas except no threat of shooting your eye out!

Count me in. And my vote for month #2 is Money Ball. Yes, it gets into stats, economics and the business side of baseball but you don't need to be a math major to understand it. Besides, this book is much more numbers. It really gets into how the game works (or should work) especially in small markets and the theories it discusses are being used more and more throughout the league either by choice or, perhaps, by necessity. Best of all - its a pretty fast read thanks to very good writing.

Dave

Yeesh, I just started "9 Innings" by Daniel Okrent. I might have to put it aside and hope I get to it some other day. I'll take a crack at "Ball Four" but I'm a slow reader - it'll probably take me the entire month to get through it.

I'll second TribeScribe's suggestion of "Slouching Towards Fargo". It's an enjoyable book that was conceived originally to be a smear piece on Bill Murray for Rolling Stone magazine, but Neal Karlan had a change of heart and abandoned that angle deciding to write a great book on Northern League baseball, and the St Paul Saints in specific. Plus it has pictures.

Worth reading some other time, but probably not as part of a book club since it might be tough to find is "You Gotta Have Wa" on baseball in Japan. It's at least 15 years old by now and outdated, but it gives an interesting account of how baseball is/was perceived over there.

OK, if everyone else is going to suggest books, here are a few of my faves:

Bums by Peter Golenbock
Koufax by Jane Levy
Stolen Season by David Lamb

Koufax is especially good, so is Stolen Season..aw hell, they're all great. Stolen Season will break your heart a little bit, though.

I found _Nine Innings_ to be a tedious bore, Skorch. Be warned!

I'll second the nominations for _The Great American Novel_ and _Moneyball_, and I'll throw _The Teammates_ into the hopper as well.

Maybe YankeeFan will join the book club when we read a DiMaggio bio.

BitchSoxPride,

Ilk

I'm the first person to check it out of my schools library since 1999...

"Slouching towards Fargo" is tremendous. It's funny, revealing, and has a "Ball Four" slant to it. It was also written during the Twins time of sucking and needless to say, the author does'nt throw many bouquet's their way.

I forgot, this summer I got to meet John Stossel and I told him that it must have been fun working with Jim Bouton back in the day. He gave me a weird look and asked why I knew they worked together thirty years ago and I pointed out that it was in the updated versions of the Ball Four book.

(I then accidentally hung up on Bill O'Reilly while John Stossel was on hold to be interviewed for his radio show. Good times.)

OH MAN! I am SO jealous!!

I would MUCH RATHER read whatever the BG book club is reading than whatever my professors assign. :(

Dear Stacy-

I whole-heartedly agree.
I'm certainly glad there will be no paper writing involved.

Sincerely,
Meghan

Apparently, no one has read this book or I'd have gotten a response to earlier post -- the funniest line in the book. Other good baseball books:

Summer of '49 -- David Halberstam
Boys of Summer -- Roger Kahn
Calvin Baseball's Last Dinosaur -- (this is a Twins site, isn't it?) Jon Kerr
Eight Men Out -- Eliot Asinov

Ilk,

I don't get it. (TIC)

YankeeFan

SBG - yes, that was a funny line and made even funnier by Pete Rose who yelled "F*@% you, Shakespeare" to him during a game.

I actually liked the line where one of the players was asked what was the hardest part about playing in the Majors and his answer was something like "explaining to my wife why she has to get a pencillin shot for my kidney infection". I know, tasteless humor, but humor non the less.

Dave

Ilk, YankeeFan will love this book...there is a lot of stuff about Mantle!

Does this mean y'all read what is assigned in college? I don't think I know anyone who actually read the assignments. I know I didn't.

That said, one of the secretaries at work told me she took a class at the U of MN entitled Great Baseball Literature. Maybe I would have read the assignments in that class.

Oh! I get it now. I am incapable of enjoying anything non-Yankee. It's funny 'cause it's true.

I guess that's what I get for taking pot shots at fans of other teams.

YankeeFan

Dave, the player you refer to was Gene Braebender, the strongest man on the team, and a guy who had Jackie Jensen's opinion of airplanes. I had already made your point in an earlier post to this site, but I said antibiotic, where you said penicillin, so your's was the more accurate post, but that is due to my extreme age and feebleness of mind. dodderingly, Al

Off topic here.

Did anyone see that the ESPN website is giving the Twins kudos again? Unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber (which I am not) in order to read the whole article. But from what I can tell in the introduction, they say our Twins are doing something right.

Wow. I'm almost going to start believing that the national media might start taking us seriously.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/index

Yours,
k-bro

Dear Batgirl

We all know that your baseball is your sass special. I was wondering though if there was going to be a superbowl pick. Maybe there is an alter-ego named Tee-girl ( for the kicking tee ) Anyway keep up the great job and go Birds !
E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!

E,
St Cloud State also has a "Baseball Statistics" class. I have not yet taken it. We'll see if I can squeeze it in my schedule. I'm definitely going to try to read Ball Four with you all, but I have to keep up with school and work too...

When it comes to making the choice between reading John Kenneth Galbraith (or some other stuffed shirt) vs. Jim Bouton . . . what about searching for old book reviews of assigned reading and then regurgitating that in your essays? (I got to use the word "enigma" doing that once.)

Then you may have more time for the important stuff like Ball Four!

Then again, maybe it only works at St. Cloud State.

To clarify above, I went to St. Cloud State. Go Huskies -- no offense to anyone living or dead intended. Go Huskies!

Sorry Al, you slipped that post in when I wasn't looking. Sorry to plagiarize your work but thanks for naming the player. By each contributing a half a mind we were able to put together a decent post!

Count me in on the book club. Have any of you guys read any of Ron Lucciano's books? He wrote three books that tell stories from his years of umpiring in the majors. He is hysterical! I love those books. I was sorry to hear of his death a few years back.

A baseball statistics class! That is so cool--I would have been all over that. That's a great way to make statistics more appealing, especially since I am of the opinion that everyone should understand the basics of statistics.

I've been reading Batgirl for awhile now, but this is my first post. Thanks everyone for making winter fun! The prospect of winter was cruel and bleak as I left the Dome after the last playoff game against the Yankees, but you all have kept my enthusiasm up right where it was in October.

I think it's great to read biographies of Twins players! After Grant Balfour, who's next?

How about "You're Out and You're Ugly Too" ? Very funny book by a former umpire, I think his name was Durwood Merrill.

Lots of interesting ideas here. But, in the spirit of Batgirl, RD would like to offer a baseball novel by a writer who is sometimes called (by me, anyway) "the Anne Ursu of Canada." Check out The Dead Pull Hitter by Alison Gordon.

Click on my name or copy the link below.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0771034202/103-7654565-7338253?_encoding=UTF8&coliid=&colid=

This whole conversation is starting to remind me of when I was in a book club with a small group of friends a few years back. We'd spend about fifteen minutes discussing the book we'd just read, because most of us hadn't finished it, and then the next hour or more trying to decide on the book for next month. Everyone had lots to say about that!

Could we hold this discussion at the Bulldog over beers? I'm sure it would make for lively conversation. Just a suggestion.

I'm in the middle of reading Ball Four as we speak, and I learned of a quick update - in 1999 (I think) Jim was allowed to come back for Old Timers' Day at Yankee Stadium. His son Mike petitioned or pleaded with the organization to let him come back.

Anyway, I never imagined that the book would be so hilarious. I'm truly amazed, and I hope everyone gets a kick out of it.

Also read Moneyball - definitely highly recommende by yours truly.

Ooh! Ooh! If anyone here on the board has serious aspirations of landing a job in organized (major or minor league) baseball, I recommend giving "Getting In The Game" by Josh Lewin a read. I bought the book to learn about the Baseball Winter Meetings and how to get a job with teams there. Fortuitously, I now have an internship with a minor league baseball team. :)

Anyhoo, just some ideas I thought I'd throw out. Take care of yourself, and each other.

Oh, Fun!! My neighbor is related to Jim Bouton, and recently visited with him in St Paul at a family wedding---I'm looking forward to reading this classic. Bound To Be Read, in St. Paul, has a baseball book club, and I always got my recommendations from the books they were reading...Now, thanks to the well-read and generous Batlings I have a list to take me through several seasons! Looking forward to the discussion, even if I just lurk.