Bouton’s book changed baseball, sports journalism
It is difficult to know where to begin in writing about Jim Bouton, who died on Wednesday at age 80. If he had never written “Ball Four,” Bouton no doubt still would have merited a New York Times obituary as a former Yankees pitcher who won 21 games in 1963 and 18 in 1964 and then two World Series wins that October.
But a sore arm cost Bouton his fastball and caused him to end up pitching as a 30-yearold knuckleballer for the expansion Seattle Pilots at the start of the 1969 season. It was also probably the reason he was willing to team with longtime sportswriter Leonard Shecter on a book chronicling that season.
Before it was over, Bouton had been sent to Class AAA Vancouver, returned to Seattle and then been traded to Houston.
Bouton never stopped taking notes. A year later, “Ball Four,” written in diary form, was published and became arguably the most iconic baseball book ever written. Some will argue for Roger Kahn’s lyrically brilliant “Boys of Summer,” but nothing changed baseball or sports journalism as much as Bouton’s seminal work.
Never before had an athlete written with as much honesty, candor and humor about what life was like inside a locker room. People often compare “Ball Four” to Jim Brosnan’s “The Long Season,” written 10 years earlier, and there certainly is common ground. But “Ball Four” went to places no athlete had previously gone.
Bouton shocked people by writing honestly about good old boy Mickey Mantle — not so much about his home runs but rather his drinking, womanizing and his mean streak. His description of joining Yankees teammates on the roof of a Washington hotel to spy on unsuspecting women would be unacceptable in today’s world, and Bouton’s revelation of it infuriated baseball insiders.
“Ball Four” has sold more than 5 million copies — Bouton updated it often — so plenty of people know those anecdotes and many more by heart.
The book also made Bouton into a baseball pariah. When it came out in 1970, he was reprimanded by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who called the book “detrimental to baseball.” Kuhn asked Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book was fiction. Bouton, naturally, refused.
Many players and longtime baseball writers, some of whom considered themselves part of their teams, agreed with Kuhn.
The irony is that few loved baseball more than Bouton. He made a comeback with the Atlanta Braves in 1978 — eight years after first leaving the game — and pitched in semipro leagues into his 50s.
The final line of “Ball Four” poignantly expresses Bouton’s feeling about the game: “You see,” he wrote, “You spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball and, in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
He also wrote often about sometimes “forgetting to tingle” as he walked across the outfield grass to the bullpen before a game, reminding himself how lucky he was to make a living playing baseball.