Profile of Jim Bouton on Famous Like Me

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.

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.

Bouton started his major league career in 1962 with the Yankees, and in the subsequent two seasons the hard-throwing right-hander won 21 and 18 games and appeared in the 1963 All Star Game. He was known for his cap flying off at the completion of his delivery to the plate. However, in 1965, an arm injury slowed his fastball and ended his status as a pitching phenomenon. Relegated mostly to bullpen duty, Bouton began experimenting with the knuckleball in an effort to lengthen his career. In 1969, after 2 years as a relief pitcher, Bouton was sold to an expansion team, the Seattle Pilots.

Ball Four (edited by sportswriter Leonard Shecter) described the events of his 1969 season, including struggles with the knuckleball and with unsympathetic coaches, experiences with an expansion team (that would never gain a foothold in Seattle and would relocate the following year), being sent to the minors for a stint, being traded late in the season to the Houston Astros, and the disruptions to his personal life that all these moves entailed. In contrast to the usual baseball books of the time – ghostwritten accounts of a championship season by star athletes – Bouton's tale was of a marginal player who was literally hanging on to his career by his fingertips. (The only previous book similar in tone to Bouton's was Jim Brosnan's The Long Season, perhaps not coincidentally penned by another marginal relief pitcher who spent a lot of time sitting around.)

Ball Four broke numerous taboos because of its explicit depiction of life in baseball. While it contained numerous amusing and unflattering stories, it also revealed for the first time the drinking habits of Mickey Mantle and his Yankee teammates, which had been kept out of the press. Bouton also described the drug use and womanizing rampant among major-league baseball players. Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called the book "detrimental to baseball." The book made him unpopular with many other baseball players and coaches, who felt he had betrayed their trust and breached the long-standing rule that what happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse. Many old school sportswriters also denounced him. Bouton described the fallout from Ball Four and his ensuing battles with Kuhn and others the following year in another diary, entitled I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally.

Bouton retired midway through the 1970 season after the Astros sent him to the minor leagues due to ineffective pitching. He immediately became a local sports anchor for New York station WABC-TV; 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.

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. Bouton 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 unsuccesful) 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."

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