Jacob Shymanski

Ball Four by Jim Boughton.

Not a niche book by any means.

Very popular book.

it has somewhat of a cult following.

Because when it came out, it sort of blew up the entire baseball world.

Because you have to understand that back in the 1960s and before, there was this image of baseball players that they were these good old American boys with good values, working hard, embodying teamwork and camaraderie, just being good role models.

And this book...

really did away with all that and just said, no, no, no.

Like, this is what we're really like.

But it wasn't the type of book.

It wasn't the type of memoir that was meant to be skating.

It wasn't attacking.

It wasn't a tell-all.

He was just telling a good story to kind of dovetail on what you were saying, Sarah.

He was just telling a good story for the sake of telling a good story.

And it just so happens that the characters in the story are real and they're also very flawed.

The player Jim Bouton was a relief pitcher and

In the 60s he played for the Yankees than a bunch of other teams but he wrote notes throughout one of his last seasons in baseball and Those notes got turned into this actually pretty lengthy memoir I think the audiobook is like 16 17 hours and he is such a character for a memoir that's told like in real time essentially and

um he has so much personality he's very much a smart ass he thinks he's the smartest person in the room and he kind of like you can tell he kind of thinks other people are kind of dumb he's sort of he respects people in his own way i'll put it that way but he's very funny super observant very irreverent he loves baseball but is very self-aware of the absurdity that these dudes are making tons of money even back in 70 these dudes are making tons of money

Throwing a ball around and for the most part just standing around in a field being born Yeah Ramya, I feel like you would really enjoy the book It's full of hilarious stories and you don't need to love baseball to enjoy it Obviously you would get more out of it if you're a baseball fan But this is really about people and he talks about things like, you know what does it like to get traded from another team like as a player and