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Ball Four QUOTES

Ball Four QUOTES

1 " I think I should be allowed to be only fair, or even mediocre, for a while. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

2 " The author says his young son, adopted from South Korea, occasionally burps and says thank you but otherwise is doing all right. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

3 " The pitching coach was bugged by the author's technique because he had never seen anyone do it before, and besides, it wasn't the coach's idea. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

4 " Front offices are more interested in players that are far than players that are near. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

5 " The older they get, the better they get when they were younger "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

6 " High school games would just as big a deal to me as any major league game. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

7 " The day he is out of baseball will be the day he starts to think about what comes next. By then, it may be too late. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

8 " The author relates that Mickey Mantle did not expect to play one day and showed up extremely hung over. He was nevertheless called on to pitch and smashed a towering home run to an enthusiastic ovation. He related to his teammates, "Those people don't know how tough that was. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

9 " It never hurts to apologize, especially if you don't mean it. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

10 " I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, “Fuck you, Shakespeare. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

11 " Sometimes the bedsheet is a Confederate flag. I wonder how the Negro players feel about them. The worst part is that 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. Doug "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

12 " Pete Rose gets banned for life for gambling while the drug addicts are allowed back after a year; and then they get extra chances after that. Baseball is saying, in effect, that gambling is worse than drugs. How do kids make sense out of that? "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

13 " Baseball player’s description of Cincinnati: “Horseshit park, horseshit clubhouse, horseshit hotel, lots of movies, nice place to eat after the game, tough town to get laid in.” We had to wait for an hour-and-a-half at the airport because there were no taxis and our bus didn’t arrive on time. It was three in the morning, but that’s no excuse. And do you know that all you can hear at the Cincinnati airport at three in the morning are crickets? Goddam crickets? While we were standing there Larry Dierker said, “This city isn’t a completely lost cause. Look, they’ve got one of those computer IQ games.” So we walked over, dropped a couple of quarters in and discovered the machine was broken. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

14 " I think we are all better off looking across at someone, rather than up. Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, “There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

15 " I’m not sure I’m going to like Don Mincher. I keep hearing that big southern accent of his. It’s prejudice, I know, but every time I hear a southern accent I think: stupid. A picture of George Wallace pops into my mind. It’s like Lenny Bruce saying he could never associate a nuclear scientist with a southern accent. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

16 " And I don’t like the Mantle who refused to sign baseballs in the clubhouse before the games. Everybody else had to sign, but Little Pete forged Mantle’s signature. So there are thousands of baseballs around the country that have been signed not by Mickey Mantle, but by Pete Previte. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

17 " We agreed we’re both troubled by the stiff-minded emphasis on the flag that grips much of the country these days. A flag, after all, is still only a cloth symbol. You don’t show patriotism by showing blank-eyed love for a bit of cloth. And you can be deeply patriotic without covering your car with flag decals. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

18 " Has anybody noticed that we haven’t won a game since we ate that chicken á la king? "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

19 " Religion is like baseball,” said Steve. “Great game, bad owners. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four

20 " Don’t ever think $7,000 isn’t a lot of money in baseball. I’ve had huge arguments over a lot less. "

― Jim Bouton , Ball Four