Jim Bouton does not look much like a major league baseball pitcher. This former New York Yankee appears too slight for that role, but he certainly shows himself tough enough. Decades after his playing career this 67-year-old entrepreneur appears remarkably trim and often combative.
In 1970 he shook up the baseball world and made himself persona non grata to its bosses by publishing Ball Four, an exposé of how the sport really works. Unveiling the seamy side of the business and the often dubious antics of his fellow players, he made few friends and many enemies.
In town for a law school forum a few weeks ago, Bouton focused mostly on his recent abortive efforts to renovate Wahconah Park, the dilapidated stadium in Pittsfield. Blocked by politicians, he and his business partner have had to give up their dream of renewing baseball in a western Massachusetts city where, according one historical record, the sport was played as early as 1791.
My own interest in Bouton focused less on his real-estate frustrations and more on his experience as a player. Taken by my father to ball games in Boston starting in the 1930s, I am one of the few people still around who remember seeing the Boston Bees play at the Beehive, on Commonwealth Avenue, before they resumed their old name Braves. When the Red Sox traveled out of town, the Bees were at home with their combination of formidable pitching and woefully weak hitting.
Jim Bouton broke into the majors with the Yankees in 1962. In his second season, he pitched brilliantly, winning 21 games and losing only 7 with an earned run average of 2.53. In 1964, he appeared in the World Series against the Cardinals and won two games. Later, however, he developed a sore arm, had to convert to a knuckle ball, and never again compiled much of a record on the field.
In Ball Four, long since famous for its muckraking, Bouton relied on a secret diary he had kept while with the Seattle Pilots, a team that existed for only a single year. However, the book also contains a trove of anecdotes from the years he spent with the Yankees and, later, other teams.
His stories about fellow players ring true. Sometimes, as he now tells it, he would go to the bathroom to write down exactly what he had heard players saying, before the words could slip from his memory.
At the forum he told an anecdote about Mickey Mantle, the Yankee slugger whom Bouton calls “the greatest player I ever saw.” One day the team played in Minneapolis and that night Mickey went out with some of the other guys to a bar. There he drank himself into stupefaction, as was often his custom.
The next day, when the teams faced off again, Mickey was announced as out of the lineup because of a pulled rib cage. Actually, he was in the trainer’s room, out of uniform, thoroughly hung over. However, when the game went into extra innings, the manager needed a pinch hitter, so he sent into the clubhouse to get Mantle.
The latter pulled himself together, strode to the plate, and, on the first pitch smashed a 450 foot home run over the center field fence. But the drama was not over: His teammates wondered if Mickey would be able to find the bases and run toward each one of them.
Asked later how he achieved the home run, Mantle said “It was simple: I hit the middle ball.”
When quizzed now about players’ high salaries, Bouton does not speak delicately. “After 100 years of owners screwing players, for 30 years the players screwed the owners; we have 70 years to go” In Ball Four he details how stingy the moneybags running the Yankees were about paying him a decent wage even after two years of all-star performances.
The management of that same team held a grudge against Bouton for decades. Not until 1998 did they invite him to Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium. That happened only after Bouton’s son had published an op-ed piece telling of his sister’s death and the Yankees’ boycott against his father.
Employment conditions were such that Bouton busied himself playing an adversarial role against his bosses, dampening the fun he got out of the game. His book has brought him much more money and attention than his career as a player ever did. He has proven himself a skilled writer and an engrossing speaker about his experiences.
Like many another classic, Bouton’s book has lost some of its zip. Ironically, it has fallen victim to the author’s success in raising the curtain and revealing what the game on its highest level was really like. Jim Bouton in person, however, still brings a sharp mind and a perceptive spirit to a sports business that continues to need its critics.
Richard Griffin