Gaining and using knowledge, by the book

The audio version of today's post:

Linked to this blog post is another blog post, by my longtime friend and former sports department colleague Laura Kostelnik Biskupic, discussing the topic of book banning, which I’d hoped was an issue we’d laid to rest decades ago, but has been brought out for another disappointing examination over the past couple years.

I highly recommend Laura’s post today, and her blog in general. The blog is named “Another slice”, and can be found at anotherslice.life.

Several times a week, you'll find an unstoppably positive look at life in Appleton and Wisconsin and Los Angeles and everywhere else, through the eyes of a new grandmother, a four-time mom, a Foster parent, a wife, a public relations professional and former teacher, a writer, a daughter, a citizen of the world.

Laura posts several times each week — more prolific than I’ll ever be — so if you ever find yourself in need of a pick-me-up, subscribe to it at anotherslice.life.

"Ball Four" by Jim Bouton

As mentioned, Laura’s post today speaks to the ban-the-book movement that has hit several Wisconsin communities.

Please let me say this about that: Books make a difference. They bring knowledge and perspective and context and ideas. Some will challenge your perspective, and others will confirm what you were already thinking.

And they can push you in directions you might not have thought possible.

A book — “Ball Four” by Jim Bouton — changed my life when I was 13 or so. It exposed Major League Baseball players and coaches for what they actually are: Deeply flawed people, like the rest of us.

“Ball Four” was Bouton’s diary of the 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots. He was a relief pitcher at that point in his Major League Baseball career, after earlier success with the New York Yankees.

“Ball Four” tells it as it was, so much so that my dad — and the baseball establishment — objected to it in a big way.

I’d already read the paperback version by the time The Old Man got to it. He read a few pages, maybe a chapter or so, and when Bouton told of the language and personal habits of his teammates and others, in sometimes vulgar words, that was enough.

"What kind of shit is this?" he yelled. "This ain't fit to read."

He threw the book in the wood-burning stove that heated our log cabin. Actual book-burning.

I couldn’t wait to buy another copy. Which I did, and hid it in my bedroom until I moved out of the house and went to college, truth-telling subversive that I was at that point.

In the Laona Public Library, which was part of my high school, I later found Bouton’s follow-up book, “I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally,” which was equally vulgar and eye-opening and provocative.

In reading those books in my early teens, I found freedom. I found a calling. I found a reason to keep writing, which I’d dabbled in. I heard the meaning of that old saying, “The truth shall set you free”, in a honest, intentional way.

Learning how other people lived and made mistakes and said disappointing things and misbehaved didn’t make me a bad person. But it absolutely opened my eyes to the realities of life, and that helped forge a career path that I might not have had.

To this day, 50-some years later, I’m not sure why people are afraid of knowledge. You don’t improve your life with less knowledge.

I’m even less sure why people think they can keep knowledge from people — even our youngest people — who are determined to learn about the world around them.