Jim Bouton

James Alan Bouton (born March 8, 1939 in Newark, New Jersey) was a Major League Baseball player and author of the controversial baseball book Ball Four, which was a combination diary of his 1969 season and memoir of his years with the New York Yankees.

Youth

While attending high school, Bouton was nicknamed "Warm-Up Bouton" because he never got to play in a school game, serving much of his time as a benchwarmer. As a high school pitcher he didn't throw particularly hard, and got batters out by mixing conventional stuff, with the knuckleball that he'd experimented with since childhood. Unlike many Major League pitchers, Bouton could not hit at all, even as a high schooler. His career batting average in the majors was a dismal .101.

Professional Career

Bouton started his major league career in 1962 with the Yankees, where his tenacity earned him the nickname "Bulldog." In the subsequent two seasons the hard-throwing right-hander, known for his cap flying off at the completion of his delivery to the plate, won 21 and 18 games and appeared in the 1963 All Star Game. He was 2-1 with a 1.48 ERA in World Series play, including a tossing a six-hit shutout against the St Louis Cardinals in 1964.

However, in 1965, an arm injury slowed his fastball and ended his status as a pitching phenomenon. Relegated mostly to bullpen duty, Bouton began to throw the knuckleball again, in an effort to lengthen his career. By 1968, Bouton was a reliever for the minor league Seattle Angels. In October 1968, he joined a committee of American sportsmen who traveled to the 1968 Summer Olympics, in Mexico City, to protest the involvement of apartheid South Africa.

At around the same time, sportswriter Leonard Shecter, who had befriended Bouton during his time with the Yankees, approached him with the idea of writing a season-long diary for publication. Bouton, who had taken some notes in 1968 season after having a similar idea, readily agreed.

Ball Four

It is hard today to understand just how astonishing and subversive a book Ball Four was when it was first published. Bouton and Shecter would seem to have had little chance of writing a memorable book. Bouton had been a top-shelf pitcher only a few years before -- but was one no longer. In 1969 the Seattle Pilots became a major league team, dreadful even by the standards of expansion teams, and would leave Seattle for Milwaukee the following season. Bouton had a mediocre pitching year in 1969 even by his more modest recent standards. Arguing with the coaches (usually about his role with the team and his desire to throw between outings), his outspoken views on politics (and everything else) meant that many considered him a malcontent and a subversive in the clubhouse. Early in the season he was sent to Seattle's minor-league affiliate in Vancouver, BC and was later traded during the season to the Houston Astros.

But Bouton and Shecter found a way to write a non-fiction baseball book that was weirdly and powerfully compelling, despite the marginal athletic gifts of its author and the poor performance of his teams. They did this by writing with almost complete honesty about the way a professional baseball team actually interacts -- not only the heroic game-winning home runs, but also the petty jealousies, the obscene jokes, the drunken tomcatting of the players, the womanizing and the routine drug use. Bouton and Shecter wrote about Bouton's anxiety about his pitching role on the team, in a way that was not only fresh but funny and oddly touching.

Bouton and Shecter also named names. Instead of referring obliquely to unsympathetic coaches, the authors described in detail unsatisfactory exchanges with Pilots manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie. Ball Four revealed publicly for the first time the degree of womanizing prevalent in the major leagues (including "beaver shooting," the spying on women from rooftops or from under the stands). Bouton also disclosed how rampant amphetamine or "greenies" were among players. Also revealed was the heavy drinking of Yankee legend Mickey Mantle, which had been almost entirely kept out of the press.

Before Ball Four, the vast majority of books "written" by baseball players had been ghostwritten accounts which airbrushed out unflattering details. Not this book. The only previous book similar in tone to Bouton's was Jim Brosnan's The Long Season, penned by another marginal relief pitcher who spent a lot of time sitting around. But Ball Four was bolder, brassier and funnier than The Long Season, and became far more controversial. If the new freedom that Bouton and Shecter flaunted made some readers uneasy, it also made almost all previous baseball memoirs seem oddly sanitized.

Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called Ball Four "detrimental to baseball." Many of Bouton's teammates never forgave him for publicly airing what he had learned in private about their flaws and foibles. The book made Bouton unpopular with many baseball players, coaches and team officials on other teams too, who felt he had betrayed the long-standing rule: `What you see here, what you say here, what you do here, let it stay here.' Many traditional sportswriters also denounced Bouton, with Dick Young leading the way, calling Bouton and Shecter "social lepers/"

Bouton seemed rather pleased by the commotion his book had kicked up, and the following year described the fallout from Ball Four and his ensuing battles with Commissioner Kuhn and others in another diary, entitled I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally.

And many of the athletes who seemed most offended by Bouton's candor in 1969, including Mickey Mantle, went on to write memoirs of their own which were, in some respects, just as candid as Jim Bouton had been.

Retirement

Bouton retired midway through the 1970 season after the Astros sent him down to the minor leagues. He immediately became a local sports anchor for New York station WABC-TV, as part of Eyewitness News; he later had the same job for WCBS-TV. He appeared as an actor in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and had the lead role in the 1976 CBS television series Ball Four, which was loosely adapted from the book and was cancelled after only a few episodes. By this time the book had a cult audience of fans who saw it as an honest and comic portrayal of the ups and downs of baseball life. Bouton went on the college lecture circuit, delivering humorous talks revolving around baseball, broadcasting, and his experiences with the book.

Bouton's ex-wife, Bobbie, teamed up with the former wife of pitcher Mike Marshall to write a tell-all book called "Home Games."

The Return

The urge to play baseball would not leave him. He launched his comeback bid with the Class A Portland Mavericks in 1975, compiling a 5-1 record. He skipped the 1976 season to work on the television series, but returned to the diamond in 1977 when Bill Veeck signed him to a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox. Bouton was winless for a White Sox farm club; a stint in the Mexican League and a return to Portland followed.

Bouton's quest to return to the majors might have ended there; but in 1978 the anti-establishment Ted Turner signed him to a contract with the Atlanta Braves. After a successful season with the Savannah Braves (AA), he was called up to join the Atlanta rotation in September, and compiled a 1-3 record in five starts. His winding return to the majors was chronicled in a book by sportswriter Terry Pluto, entitled "The Greatest Summer." Bouton also detailed his comeback in a third book, titled Ball Five as well as adding a Ball Six, updating the stories of the players in Ball Four, for the 20th anniversary edition. These were collected (in 2000) with the original as Ball Four: The Final Pitch, along with a new coda that detailed his reconciliation with the Yankees following the death of his daughter in a road traffic accident.

After his baseball career ended a second time, Bouton was one of the inventors of "Big League Chew," a shredded bubblegum designed to resemble chewing tobacco and sold in a tobacco-like pouch. He has also co-authored Strike Zone (a baseball novel) and edited an anthology about managers, entitled I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad. His most recent book is Foul Ball (published 2003) a non-fiction account of his (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to save Wahconah Park, a historic minor league baseball stadium in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Writings

Ball Four has been through numerous significantly revised editions, the most recent being Ball Four: The Final Pitch, Bulldog Publishing. (April 2001), ISBN 097091170X.
I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally
I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad -- edited and annotated by Bouton, compiled by Neil Offen.
Foul Ball, Bulldog Publishing. (June 2003), ISBN 0970911718.
Strike Zone, Signet Books. (March 1995), ISBN 0451183347.

Quotes

"You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."

"This winter (1977) I'm working out every day, throwing against a wall. I'm 11-0 against the wall."

External links

Jim Bouton's official homepage

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