Foul Ball
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- ¥1,600
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- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
A rollicking and “compelling” true story of baseball, big money, and small-town politics by the author of the classic Ball Four (Publishers Weekly).
Host to organized baseball since 1892, Pittsfield, Massachusetts’s Wahconah Park was soon to be abandoned by the owner of the Pittsfield Mets, who would move his team to a new stadium in another town—an all too familiar story. Enter former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton and his partner with the best deal ever offered to a community: a locally owned professional baseball team and a privately restored city-owned ballpark at no cost to the taxpayers.
The only people who didn’t like Bouton's plan were the mayor, the mayor's hand-picked Parks Commissioners, a majority of the City Council, the only daily newspaper, the city’s largest bank, its most powerful law firm, and a guy from General Electric. Everyone else—or approximately 98% of the citizens of Pittsfield—loved it. But the “good old boys” hated Bouton’s plan because it would put a stake in the heart of a proposed $18.5 million baseball stadium—a new stadium that the citizens of Pittsfield had voted against three different times. In this riveting account, Bouton unmasks a mayor who brags that “the fix is in,” a newspaper that lies to its readers, and a government that operates out of a bar.
But maybe the most incredible story is what happened after Foul Ball was published—a story in itself. Invited back by a new mayor, Bouton and his partner raise $1.2 million, help discover a document dating Pittsfield’s baseball origins to 1791, and stage a vintage game that’s broadcast live by ESPN-TV.
Who could have guessed what would happen next? And that this time it would involve the Massachusetts Attorney General?
“An irresistible story whose outcome remains in doubt until the very end. Not just a funny book, but a patriotic one.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Bouton proves that a badly run city government can be just as dangerous—and just as hilarious—as a badly run baseball team.”—Keith Olbermann
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This former Yankee pitcher, who wrote the sports tell-all template Ball Four, has a self-conscious voice that almost stifles this compelling story of Pittsfield, Mass., residents resisting a new stadium in order to renovate historic Wahconah Park instead. Bouton fancies himself both "pariah" and U.S. marshal, and writes one public official, "we have always tried to be respectful.... Go take a shower." But he accomplishes his goal of making the oldest minor league ballpark in America a metaphor for business interests run amok whatever the costs politically, environmentally and, yes, financially. When he points to former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani's nearly successful (yet minority-view) efforts to build new stadiums for the Mets and the Yankees despite a multibillion-dollar budget gap, Bouton is persuasive. But when Bouton declares his own motives are to "save an old ballpark, make some money, have fun," he is less so because he seems to delight in all the chicanery. Still, his commitment is beyond question; the book includes not only news accounts and e-mails, but even instant-messaging exchanges. At 354 pages,it's exhausting, but also heartfelt.
