The great Jimmy Cannon called The Long Season “the greatest baseball book ever written.” Red Smith, in the New York Herald Tribune, called it “a cocky book, caustic and candid and, in a way, courageous, for Brosnan calls him like he sees them, doesn’t hesitate to name names, and employs ridicule like a stiletto.” The Long Season, pitcher Jim Brosnan’s look at his 1959 season in the National League, and his 1962 follow-up Pennant Race, were well received outside the game, and remain classics in sports literature. It is so.Īfter decades of first-person sports books mainly written for high school boys, the first honest adult portrayal of the life of a baseball player appeared in 1960. It is difficult to imagine that such a book could be controversial, that its author would be shunned by people within the game for many years, and in fact is still shunned.

The book is universally viewed as well-written, provocative, thought-provoking, and funny. Today’s fans and writers, children or young adults when they first devoured the book, re-read it every two or three years. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Dr. In 1995 the New York Public Library honored Ball Four as one of the greatest books published in the preceding century, alongside such works as Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, F. A best-seller at the time of its publication, the book fundamentally changed sports literature and journalism, and the way we view our sports heroes. Nearly a half-century after its publication, one does not encounter much negative criticism of Ball Four, Jim Bouton’s 1970 journal mainly recounting his previous season pitching in the major leagues.

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