Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, October 13, 2019, 12:19 p.m.

Let me begin with two reasons why this book review should be better.

I like to write a review when the book is fresh in my mind. I like to finish the last page and start a review. The hectic nature of my life these days makes that hard sometimes. There’s just no telling when there’s going to be a fatal crash near Cold Point or a body found in the woods back this side of Tip Top.

It’s not often I read any book a second time. There are just too many good ones out there for me to revisit one I already loved. The only ones I can think of are The Last Picture Show, Summer of ’42, The Winter of Our Discontent, and, now, Ball Four, which I’m guessing I read when I was about 15.

I remember that Dick Young, my least favorite sportswriter, said it violated “the sanctity of the clubhouse.” That was enough for me to check it out at the public library.

When the author, Jim Bouton, died, I decided I wanted to read it again and revisit the madcap antics of the Seattle Pilots, Joe Schultz, Mike Marshall, Tommy Davis and, most of all, Bouton, trying to make it as a knuckleballer after the youthful heat died in his arm.

Another reason was, reading Bouton’s obituary, I read that Ball Four had been the only sports book listed as one of the 100 best books of the 20^th century.

I didn’t remember it as that good, and, to be truthful, I still don’t see it that way. It’s a long series of irreverent observations, strung together by a sportswriter named Leonard Schecter, but it stands out for its unremitting honesty and perspective.

In my mind, Ball Four is not one of the top 100 books, but it is damned good. I supposed I should have been shocked way back in the 1970s, but I wasn’t. I didn’t expect men who were great athletes to have great character. It’s good when they do, but I don’t see many men or women who do anything to have great character. It’s also good when they do. I wanted insight into what great athletes were like. Ball Four fills that purpose to near perfection.

Hunter S. Thompson made me want to be a writer. Frank Deford made me want to write about sports. Bouton gave me insight I needed, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.

The Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros of 1969 were good guys, but they had their faults, and they were often outrageous ones. They were products of their time, but so were the folks who ran the grocery stores then and run the meat markets at Food Lion now.

The rich folks have taken over everything.

The Kindle edition I read also included a lengthy postscript of the author’s further reflections 10, 20 and 30 years after the original edition. The editor, Schecter, died in 1974, so I suspect the postscript demonstrates how much Bouton evolved from more athlete than writer to more writer than athlete.

No one ever gave up sports more grudgingly.

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Lightning in a Bottle is now available in an audio version, narrated by Jay Harper.