To this day I’ve never read Jim Bouton‘s “Ball Four.” I meant to a long time ago but I never did. With Bouton having just passed I’m thinking maybe I will. [Update: I just bought a Kindle version for ten bills.] To me Bouton was always Terry Lennox and vice versa. That’s how I saw it, channelled it. In The Long Goodbye, Marlowe shooting his old pal Terry was a striking, decisive ending. It wasn’t really believable — Elliot Gould‘s Marlowe wasn’t the type to plug anyone in cold blood, much less an ex-friend — but it more or less “worked” in movie terms.
