"I signed my contract today to play for the Seattle Pilots..."

So begins one of the great baseball books ever written, Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," a diary of a season in the bigs as told by a player. It kicks off with Bouton signing with the lowly Pilots on November 15, 1968, 28 years ago today.

If you've never read this book (and I know that the chances are slim that you are reading this blog but have never read "Ball Four"), you should do so right now. The supposedly scandalous revelations - that management was cheap and ruthless, that Mickey Mantle partied, that players popped pills and cheated on their wives and "shot beaver" (going to absurd lengths to look up women's skirts from the dugout or bullpen) - are toothless now, little more than quaint and frequently ridiculous.

Bouton was and remains today a smug son of a bitch, so proud of himself for being flagrantly different from the rank and file of big leaguers that you just want to punch him. It's easy to see why people hated him, even without the betrayal of his clubhouse tell-all.

Asshole or not, though, his book is a masterpiece, and not because it takes you behind the scenes of major league baseball. That part is undoubtedly fun. But "Ball Four" isn't about baseball so much as it is about a frightened man battling against the facts of time, his diminished powers and the loss of youth. You don't need to care much about baseball to feel that shit in your bones. You just need to be over 30.