Jim Brosnan was, by his own admission, an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153average professional baseball player\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, who pitched for nine seasons in the Big Leagues between 1954 and 1963.\u00c2\u00a0 If that short biography doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t generate much excitement, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth noting that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153average\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sportsmen are often best placed to pass on their experiences to others. The stars of the game can find it all so easy that describing what they do is a frustrating exercise, just as the best players rarely seem to make the best managers or coaches.\u00c2\u00a0 Brosnan was well aware of his limitations as a ballplayer and the matter-of-fact way in which he looked at his job makes him an endearing narrator.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no self-aggrandisement or tales of heroics, just a humorous diary account of the frustrations and occasional moments of success that an average player experiences over the course of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153long season\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n
Brosnan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1959 season begins in less than promising fashion as his hopes for a much improved contract from the Cardinals, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a reward, a pat-on-the-back that would pay all the old bills\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, failed to come true.\u00c2\u00a0 The $16,000 offer was a decent salary at the time, but far short of the deals similar types of players receive today in an era of arbitration and free agency.\u00c2\u00a0 While the sums may have changed, the logistics of being a ballplayer in 1959 were largely the same as today.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the annual move to a Spring Training camp, long trips away from your family and the uncertainty and disruption caused by being traded during the season.\u00c2\u00a0 Brosnan and his wife deal with these events with customary sardonic humour, accepting them as part and parcel of earning a living as a ballplayer.<\/p>\n
Brosnan is always self-deprecating about his own performances, such as a one start just before he is traded by the Cardinals that lasts just seven batters.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you like that for a start?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, ponders Brosnan, whilst noting the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153miserable fan\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who informed everyone that his pitching display was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just like batting practice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 Being a reliever gives you ample time to mess around with your fellow pitchers in the sanctity of the bullpen and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly a part of the baseball-playing life that Brosnan enjoyed.\u00c2\u00a0 When they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t creating bullpen rockets with chewing gum wrappers and matches, they were engaging in intellectual debate.\u00c2\u00a0 Or something of the sort: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bullpen conversations cover the gambit of male bull sessions. Sex, religion, politics, sex. Full circle. Occasionally, the game \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or business \u00e2\u20ac\u201c of baseball intrudes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, generally in the form of arguing over how to pitch to specific hitters.\u00c2\u00a0 Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one typical exchange about pitching to Hank Aaron.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Knock him down, first pitch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, said Pete.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Curve him away\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, said Willard.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jam him good, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll swing at the ball a foot inside, sometimes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, said Brooks.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Change up on him once every trip\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, I suggested.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Boys, I think Pena just struck him out on a spitter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, said Deal.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Good pitch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, we agreed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The same sort of conversations\u00c2\u00a0are no doubt still as prevalent in Major League bullpens today.\u00c2\u00a0 They could certainly be found in Ball Four ten years later, although this is one of the few areas of direct similarities between the two books.\u00c2\u00a0 Brosnan does reveal how clubs deliberately altered their fields to suit their teams and gain a real \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchome field advantage\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and he even spills the beans on the deals opposing pitchers might strike to help each other with a good pitch to hit (a deal that is only\u00c2\u00a0followed through on\u00c2\u00a0if it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect the outcome of the game. In the example given, the deal is overtaken and Brosnan gets struck out on curve balls \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it should be illegal to throw them to pitchers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).\u00c2\u00a0 However, this is about as far as he goes in the ‘controversial revelations’ stakes.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ball Four was deliberately written as a warts-and-all account of the Majors.\u00c2\u00a0 Bouton set about revealing the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoff-the-field\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 antics enjoyed by many married\/attached ballplayers with devilish glee, whilst revelling in making the likes of his Seattle Pilots manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie (who crops up in the Long Season as well) look silly.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, this approach is exactly why Ball Four is such a belly-achingly funny read, but there is a slightly vindictive streak about it that makes the resulting hostility towards Bouton from within the game more understandable.<\/p>\n
Brosnan notes in his preface to the 1974 edition of the Long Season that its publication did cause some \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hostile criticism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which seems strange in retrospect and even Brosnan admits to being \u00e2\u20ac\u0153puzzled\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by the reaction.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stray into the private lives of other players or offer any character assassinations.\u00c2\u00a0 Brosnan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aim was simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to write an entertaining book with as much humour as I could bring to my frustrating experiences as a Big League pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 He succeeded in doing so and, although it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the laugh-out-loud moments that Ball Four offers, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a spirited and fun insight into the life of a 1959 Major Leaguer.<\/p>\n
Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Long Season\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest addition to our ever-growing collection of book reviews takes a look at the precursor to Jim Bouton’s ‘Ball Four’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-6038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-books","tag-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6038"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6545,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6038\/revisions\/6545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}