HOME GAMES: Two Baseball Wives Speak Out

by Bobbie & Nancy Marshall Bouton ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 1983

Jim Bouton's ex-wife, and Mike Marshall's ""almost used-to-be"" wife, friends from the time their husbands were both with the Seattle Pilots in 1969 (see, as they say, Ball Four), have now concocted a book--out of letters they might have written one another, and some they did write--on the crumminess of being a baseball wife. Lawrence Ritter (The Glory of Their Times), an old friend, has provided an introductory summary of hero-athlete psychology (""Home begins to stand for complaining and confinement,"" etc.). New York Times sportswriter George Vecsey, another (cited) old friend, has already devoted a column to the book and its implications--the women's sacrifices, the men's infidelity and dependency. But this sleazy quasi-correspondence is no feminist Ball Four; by comparison with Danielle Gagnon Torrez's bittersweet memoirs of a baseball wife, High Inside (below), it's a graceless, score-settling business; as inside poop, it's stale, tame, and slight. The women do, of course, have grievances. Homebody Bobble Bouton and live-wire Nancy Marshall were both married to baseball mavericks. Reliever Marshall got traded a lot as a ""troublemaker""; Nancy was constantly picking up with her small tots and moving to another cramped apartment. Bouton's comeback-attempt meant, for Bobble, carting three growing kids around. Both men were obdurate, inflexible; both made scenes in public. But it was only after ""years of relative stability"" and lots of ""terrific"" times (first-class travel, celebrity shindigs) that the bottom fell out for Bobbie Bouton--with Jim's announcement that he'd met someone else. She went through a messy divorce; her two boys denounced her; her teenage daughter acted up. Good-time, ""big-mouth"" Nancy Marshall and workaholic, tight-lipped Mike seem to have been mismatched from the start; also, she was aware of his chronic infidelity for years (and responded in kind). So, one way or another, the complaints are tiresome, the husband-stabbing is distasteful, the feminist haranguing is just that.

Pub Date: May 23, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION