The beloved baseball classic now available in paperback, with a new foreword from Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman. When Ball Four was first published in 1970, it hit the sports world like a lightning bolt. Commissioners, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and "social leper." Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Following his death, Bouton's landmark book has remained popular, and his legacy lives on through its many readers, including those who don't ordinarily follow baseball. For the updated edition of this historic book, Bouton wrote a new epilogue detailing his perspective on how baseball has changed since the last edition was released.

Robert Altman directs this radical adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel. Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) smells a rat when his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton), whom he has just driven to Tijuana, is accused of murder. Convinced of Lennox's innocence, Marlowe follows a convoluted trail which leads him to his friend's mistress, Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), her alcoholic husband (Sterling Hayden) and hood Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), to whom Lennox owed a substantial sum of money. Watch out for an early, unbilled appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of Augustine's heavies.

The beloved baseball classic now available in paperback, with an updated epilogue by Jim Bouton When Ball Four was first published in 1970, it ignited a firestorm of controversy. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a "social leper" for having violated the "sanctity of the clubhouse." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn attempted to force Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book wasn't true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn't read the book, denounced it. The San Diego Padres burned a copy in the clubhouse. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four, and serious critics called it an important document. Fans liked discovering that the athletes they worshiped were real people. Historians understood the value of the book's depth and honesty. Besides changing the public image of athletes, the book played a role in the economic revolution in professional sports. In 1975, Ball Four was accepted as legal evidence against the owners at the arbitration hearing that led to free agency in baseball, and by extension, in 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 three decades. To call it simply a 'tell-all book' is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California."