Today Amazon presents us with Ball Four written by Jim Bouton just for $0.99.
Ball Four: The Final Pitch is the original book plus all the updates, unlike the 20th Anniversary Edition paperback.
When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries.
Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people–often wildly funny people. Many readers said it gave them strength to get through a difficult period in their lives. Serious critics called it an important document.
David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written… a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.”
In 1999 Ball Four was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the “Books of the Century.” And Time magazine chose it as one of the “100 Greatest Non-Fiction” books.
Besides changing the image of athletes, the book played a role in the economic revolution in pro sports. In 1975, Ball Four was accepted as legal evidence against the owners at the arbitration hearing, which lead to free agency in baseball and, by extension, to other sports.
Today Ball Four has taken on another role–as a time capsule of life in the sixties. “It is not just a diary of Bouton’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros,” says sportswriter Jim Caple. “It’s a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a “tell all book” is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California.”
This ebook version of Ball Four includes the first edition, the 1980, 1990 and 2000 updates, and 138 photos.
Also Amazon offers for free downloading a companion application for a healthy lifestyle.
HealthLog is an ideal application to help you keep track of your daily health and exercise data. Whether you’re looking to improve your fitness level or just maintain a healthy lifestyle, HealthLog has tools that can help. The easy-to-use and colorful interface makes it a cinch to track key data points so you can see where improvements can be made and make better decisions concerning your health. With HealthLog, you can conveniently and easily track your weight, exercise level, and health condition right on your Android device.
HealthLog lets you enter as much or as little data as you like, and then track it. Start by entering the basics, such as your height, weight, gender, and a few other parameters. You can even add your last health checkup, and if a year has passed since, HealthLog will notify you. Moving forward, you can enter the type and length of exercises you performed, hours of sleep, amount of alcohol and water intake, mood, and much more. There are dozens of built-in data tracking points to select from.
The app includes graphs to make the most of your tracked data. HealthLog displays graphs in 1-, 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month increments to see fitness levels over time. There are seven different graph categories, including weight, BMI, blood pressure, workout sessions, and a variety of individual exercises.
Make sure HealthLog works for you by adjusting the settings as needed. You can choose which day marks the beginning of the week and adjust touch sensitivity. Keep your data secure by setting up a password and backing it up to your device’s SD card.
A memo feature is also included so you can record notes, observations, and motivations to keep you on track.