eBook Review: Ball Four

Jim Bouton, Ball Four

• Product Details

  • File Size: 2187 KB
  • Print Length: 508 pages
  • Publisher: RosettaBooks (March 20, 2012)
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B00CME4ROM
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Enabled
  • Lending: Enabled 
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars (295 customer reviews)
  • Price: $1.99 (Sale price. Now $9.99.)

1. Short review:   (Amazon rating: 4 out of 5 stars -- I like it.)

2. Long review:
2.1. What I liked: The continuations. Jim Bouton added Ball Five, Ball Six, and Ball Seven to the end of the book. These sections update the story to 10 years after Ball Four, 20 years after, and 30 years after. They are much happier than the main book.
Roller-coaster or walk-in-the-park? A sometimes amusing and always interesting walk in the park.
Good value for the money I paid. I recommend you wait for a sale.

2.2. What I did not like: The depressing account of Bouton's time with the Seattle Pilots.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: Sports fans. Baseball fans.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  No.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book? No. I believe Jim Bouton can write and write well, but I have only a passing interest in baseball.

2.6. The plot in a nutshell:
     Jim Bouton kept a diary during the 1969 season and published it under the title Ball Four. Bouton took a lot of heat for telling the truth about baseball: the low pay, the childish pranks, the clubhouse politics, the prolific use of profanity, and the rampant drug use.
     The book started with Bouton negotiating his salary with the New York Yankees. Next he went to spring training in Arizona with the Seattle Pilots. I do not recall if the Pilots got him in the expansion draft or traded for him.
     Bouton was a knuckleball pitcher. He had his good days and his bad days. Throughout the book, Bouton worked on developing his rhythm to throw the knuckleball.
     Soon after the season began, the Pilots sent Bouton down to their AAA club, the Vancouver (BC) Mounties. A month later they called him back up to Seattle. In August, Seattle traded him to the Houston Astros, who were in a pennant race when Bouton joined them. The Astros faded in September and fell out of the playoff picture.
     When Bouton was with the Pilots, he seemed sad and depressed. When Bouton was with the Astros, he seemed much happier.
     Ball Five related Bouton's story for the years 1970-1979. He retired in 1970 when the Astros sent him down to the minors, but came back to baseball in the minors in 1975. He traveled around minor league baseball as a journeyman pitcher and finally made it to the majors again with the Atlanta Braves.
     Ball Six related Bouton's story for the years 1980-1989. He divorced Bobbie. He continued to play baseball with semi-pro and amateur leagues. He invented things and marketed his inventions. He met and married Paula Kurman.
     Ball Seven started with the death of Bouton's daughter, Laurie, in a car accident. That happened in 1997, and the grief was still with Bouton when he wrote Ball Seven in 1999. He got his first invitation to a Yankees Old-Timers game in 1998 through the campaign of his son Michael.
     Even with Laurie's death and the grief Bouton felt taken into account, Ball Five, Ball Six, and Ball Seven are much happier reads than Ball Four.

2.7. Other:
Quotes from Ball Four:

Publishers like sports books because, while they rarely make a lot of money, they never lose money. 

There's a difference between optimism and wishful thinking. 

The world doesn't want to hear about labor pains. It only wants to see the baby. 

[W]hat these kids need is not a half-hour of conversation with some big-name guy who's just passing through. What they need is day-to-day-attention . . . .

A young girl asked one of the guys in the bullpen if he was married. "Yeah," he said, "but I'm not a fanatic about it."

[Y]ou are what people think you are. 

[I]n order for rules to exist, deviant members must be punished by the group. 

[T]he real experience of baseball was the bus rides and the country ballparks and the chili at 3 A.M. with a bunch of guys chasing a dream. And it was true enough. 

Think of a ballplayer as a fifteen-year-old in a twenty-five-year-old body. 

Being a professional athlete allows you to postpone your adulthood. 

[P]eople need to do what they love or find a way to love what they do. 

[P]eople don't want to hear the truth. They prefer their steadfast beliefs, acquired over time and developed into a mantra. 

     Bouton gave much of the credit for Ball Four to his editor, Leonard Shecter. It is evident that Bouton considered Shecter a friend and that Bouton loved Shecter dearly. Shecter edited Ball Four. He could not have edited Ball Five, because he died 5 years before it was written. Paula Kurman edited Ball Six and Ball Seven. I prefer Ball Six and Ball Seven to Ball Four and think Kurman's editing better than Shecter's, but that may be because she had happier material to work with or that may be because Bouton had more experience writing when he wrote those sections.

YMMV.

2.8. Links: Jim Bouton

2.9. Buy the book:  Ball Four

eBook Review: The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 206 KB
• Publisher: Public Domain Books (September 14, 2004)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000JMKWZC
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
• Price: $0.00
  

1. Short review:

2. Long review:
2.1. What I liked: Author's Note to "Those Extraordinary Twins".
Roller-coaster or walk-in-the-park? Neither.
The book is free. At that, it is overpriced. This book wasted my time.

2.2. What I did not like: Before I start, go get yourself a drink and a snack. This is gonna take a while.

Structure: 21 chapters + Conclusion + 'Author's Note to "Those Extraordinary Twins"'

Characters:
1. David 'Pudd'nhead' Wilson;
2. York Leicester Driscoll, aka Judge Driscoll;
3. Percy Northumberland Driscoll, his brother;
4. Thomas a Becket Driscoll, aka Tom, Percy's son and Judge Driscoll's nephew;
5. Luigi and Angelo Capello, Italian twins and, for all practical purposes, one character;
6. Roxana (no last name [nln]), aka Roxy, one-sixteenth black and, therefore, negro;
7. Valet de Chambre (nln), aka Chambers, Roxy's son and even less black; and
8. "Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F.F.V. [First Families of Virginia] of formidable caliber--however, with him we have no concern."
(Twain introduces the last named character thus in the first chapter but never refers to him again. He violated his own Rule 14: Eschew surplusage. I include him to illustrate how badly this tale was told.)

Plot:

Tom and Chambers were born on the same day, 01 February 1830. Tom's mother died within the week. Roxy raised both boys.

Roxy switched the boys and raised the Driscoll heir as her son. In truth, once switched, we heard no more of Tom-as-Chambers until the Conclusion. And that bit is disappointing:

The real heir [Tom-as-Chambers] suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write, and his speech was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh--all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them more glaring and the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter into the solacing refuge of the "nigger gallery"--that was closed to him for good and all. But we cannot follow his curious fate further--that would be a long story.

Bloody shame. That is a story I want to read. But back to the sogenannte plot.

Percy died and left Chambers-as-Tom to the care of his brother, Judge Driscoll. Roxy revealed to Chambers-as-Tom that he was Chambers. Chambers-as-Tom gambled away his money time and again. He sold Roxy 'down the river' even though she was freed by Percy. Roxy escaped from her master and returned.

All the above takes eighteen long, tedious chapters just to set up the action in the last three.

Chambers-as-Tom killed Judge Driscoll to inherit his money. The Italian twins were arrested and brought to trial for the murder. Wilson defended them successfully, implicated Chambers-as-Tom, and revealed the boys were switched in the sixth month of their lives.

As tedious as the set up was, the climax was worse. The court proceedings were ridiculous. When the gallery erupted in shouts, the sheriff called for order, vice the judge. Nothing was properly introduced in evidence. The defense attorney, Wilson, called himself as a witness. Wilson passed fingerprinted cards to the jury and asked them to examine the cards. The prosecutor never objected. The jury delivered no verdict.

It was apparent to me that Twain had never witnessed a trial. With his courtroom scenes, Twain violated his own Rule 8 [governing literary art]: They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader. . . .

I gave this eBook 3 stars on Twitter, but I regret that. I now give it 2 stars; one for the 'Author's Note to "Those Extraordinary Twins"' -- which is worth the two minutes it takes to read -- and one for the name of Mark Twain.

Oh, yeah, the formatting sucks: no breaks between chapters; not even an extra line feed.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: Masochists.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read? No.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book? Were this the only exposure I had to Mark Twain, I would never read his work again.

2.6. Other: The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks. I find it unbelievable that other reviews gave it 4 and 5 stars.

2.7. Links: None.

2.8. Buy the book: No, don't.

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Buy the book at Amazon Kindle Books.

eBook Review: Admiral Farragut

Alfred Thayer Mahan, Admiral Farragut

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 435 KB
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN:  B004TQH05Y
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
• Average Customer Review: no reviews
• Price: $0.00 

1. Short review: 

2. Long review:
2.1. What I liked: The only contemporary biography of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut.
Roller-coaster or walk-in-the-park? This should be an historical roller coaster, but Mahan's turgid style turns the bio into a tedious walk-in-the-park.
The book is free. At that, it is worth the download. Were it 99 cents, it would be overpriced.

2.2. What I did not like:  Mahan's style. Whenever Mahan had an idea, legions of words issued forth from his pen and trampled it to death.

2.3. Who I think is the audience:  Die-hard naval history buffs. 

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  Yeah. It'll put 'em right to sleep.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book?  I suppose I have to read The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 'cause I am a die-hard naval history buff, but after reading Admiral Farragut, I ain't looking forward to it. It will be a chore, not a pleasure.

2.6. Other:  Mahan presents a wealth of historical information that I have not seen anywhere else:  1) Farragut's service as a young midshipman aboard the USS Essex in the War of 1812; 2) Farragut's decision to move his residence from Virginia to New York on the eve of the Civil War (both Farragut and his wife were southerners); 3) the fact that Farragut ignored his orders and bypassed rather than reduce or capture two forts on the Mississippi delta to take New Orleans (after New Orleans was taken, the forts fell from lack of supplies); Farragut's cooperation with David Porter on the Mississippi; and 4) the details of Farragut running his ships into the harbor at Mobile.

Congress created the ranks of rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral specifically to reward Farragut for his wartime accomplishments.

Mahan's style reflects that of the 18th century more than that of the 19th century.

2.7. Links:  David Farragut (If you are a die-hard naval history buff, go ahead and download the book below and read it; else, click the link above and read the Wiki.)

2.8. Buy the book:  Admiral Farragut

____________________

Buy the book at Amazon Kindle Books.