FOUL BALL

In his first diary since Ball Four, Jim Bouton recounts his amazing
adventure trying to save Wahconah Park, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Host to
organized baseball since 1892, 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 Bouton and his partners 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. It was a dream come true for the vast majority of the people of Pittsfield.

But Bouton’s plan was opposed by a handful of power brokers who wanted to
build a new $18.5 million stadium---a stadium that the people had voted
against three different times!

In what one reviewer called “that same humane, sarcastic voice,” Bouton
unmasks a mayor who brags that “the fix is in,” a newspaper that lies to its
readers, and a city government that operates out of a bar.

And that’s just Part l.

Part ll is the even more amazing story of what happened after this book
was self published---a story in itself---in hardcover. Invited back to
Pittsfield by newly elected city officials, Bouton and his partners raise $1.2
million, help uncover a document that dates Pittsfield’s baseball origins to 1791, and stage a vintage baseball game that is broadcast live on national TV by ESPN Classic.

Who could have guessed what would happen next? And that this time it
would involve the Massachusetts Attorney General.