Ball Seven

At an old-fashioned baseball game the other evening I met Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, which I read age ten or eleven in the car on a family trip to New Jersey. Ball Four was the first adult book I read cover to cover.

Sitting behind the plate with friends, we took in the baggy wool uniforms, tiny gloves, the umpire in a black suit and bowler hat, the marching Suffragettes, players referring to the ump as ‘sir’ and the seven balls instead of four that constitute a walk—all evocations of the game circa the 1880s, brought to us by Bouton, the brainchild and founder of the league.

My hero walked by. I leaned back, looked at him and said, This is great.

For the next couple minutes we talked, his hands on my shoulders. He told us about making the wood fence in centerfield, hand-painted by a local artist. He was wearing a period suit and looked like a barman in a gold town. I said I was surprised they were throwing as hard as they were, on account of the small, not-much-padded catcher’s mitts. I asked him if he’d shown any of the pitchers in the league how to throw a knuckleball, the pitch he grappled with in Ball Four.

He said no. It left me years ago. And it didn’t leave a forwarding address.

Then he was off, maybe to get a sarsaparilla at concessions.

The Mass Mutuals won with five in the ninth, final score 5-2. Both starting pitchers finished the game. The slugger with the long sideburns might be a dentist in real life. The constable and the drunk reconciled.