Athletes - Jim Bouton

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	Athletes - 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 Pilots. 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

The Pilots became a major league expansion team in 1969, and Bouton's diary, Ball Four (edited by Shecter), described the events of that season. Throughout, Bouton struggles to pitch with the knuckleball effectively, and records his experiences with an expansion team that would never gain a foothold in Seattle and would relocate the following year. Bouton commented upon unsympathetic coaches (particularly manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie), being sent to the minors for a stint, and 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 many 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, with Dick Young particularly vociferous, calling Bouton and Shecter "social lepers". 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.

Retirement

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, 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.

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