Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition by Jim Bouton

 

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. ~ Jim Bouton

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it was scandalous; scandalous and revolutionary. The author, an aging knuckleball pitcher with the Seattle Pilots and a baseball insider, broke the rule of “what you see here stays here”. Bouton asserts…

I broke that rule, which makes me a deviant, sociologically speaking.

If Mickey Mantle had written Ball Four he would have gotten away with it. A relief pitcher on the Seattle Pilots has no business being a deviant.

It angered owners, umpires, sportswriters, coaches, and especially players. Bouton alleges that Pete Rose would scream at him from the opposing dugout…

F*&% you, Shakespeare!

He portrayed owners as cheap and disingenuous and coaches as detached and occasionally absurd.

Today Joe Schultz [manager of the Seattle Pilots] said, “Well, boys, it’s a round ball and a round bat and you got to hit it square.”

 

Any injury is beyond a manager’s control and he doesn’t like anything he can’t control. So if you’re out too long with an injury he gets angry at you. The logic is almost perfect.

And his teammates? I got the impression Bouton liked most of them. There were quirky, human, and mostly harmless, if not all of them Rhodes Scholars. There is some talk of off-field antics — mostly drinking and womanizing, and widespread amphetamine use, but for whatever foibles he revealed in his colleagues, Bouton spends at least as much time lampooning himself.

 

Like when he got called back up to the Major leagues, after a brief stint with the minor league Vancouver Mounties. 

I was back with the Seattle Pilots. Not only that, but I had an hour-and-a-half to get my ass to the clubhouse and into uniform. Not only that, right after the game we’re going on a road trip, first stop Minneapolis. Not only that, my suitcase has gone on ahead to Vancouver. Not only that, my hang-up suit bag is up there too and doesn’t even have my name on it. Not only that, I’m inordinately happy.

Or the time a fan asked…

“Hey Jim, how do you pitch to Frank Robinson?” I told him the truth. “Reluctantly,” I said

Even Bouton’s wife was not off-limits.

My wife actually believes that it’s possible, through concentration, to transfer strength from one person to another. She believes that during the game she transferred her strength to me and I pitched well. She is, of course, a nut.

I think the worst thing he did was to scuff a few hero images. In Bouton’s words…

I think we are all better off looking across at someone, rather than up.

Ironically, although Bouton’s tell-all baseball expose was the first, it wasn’t the last and some of the things he revealed about the Baseball heroes that angered them, like Mickey Mantle’s fondness for beer — GASP! — the players would later admit themselves in their own memoirs. Mick actually had a pretty decent post-baseball career selling Miller Lite. And Ball Four can hardly be considered “tell-all”. Pretty tame by today’s standards.

 

But he was pariah, and his baseball career would only last one more season, 1970. Not counting a short-lived, largely unsuccessful comeback with the Atlanta Braves in 1978.

 

Bouton’s career began in 1962 with the New York Yankees, culminating in a World Series championship. His rookie campaign was followed by two fantastic seasons in 63 and 64 (21 and 18 wins respectively), and the Yanks losing in the World Series both years. His performance tapered off after this, and led to his eventual trade to the expansion Seattle Pilots. Most of Ball Four covers that 1969 season with the Pilots, and late season trade to the Houston Astros. He played one more season with the Astros. In his initial seasons with the Yankees, Bouton had the normal arsenal: fastball, curve, change-up, etc. But by 68 he had lost the fastball, and was almost exclusively a knuckleballer. A knuckleball is not thrown hard, but it has little or no spin and moves erratically, making it difficult to hit.

 

The 1969 season of the Seattle Pilots, was their one-and-only season. The franchise then moved and became the Milwaukee Brewers. Seattle did not get another MLB franchise until 1977 when the Seattle Mariners debuted.

 

The 50th Anniversary Edition includes several updates: 10 years later, 20 years later, and 30 years later. There was no 40-year update. The updates are mostly about Bouton’s life after baseball, and the fallout he still dealt with over the book. He was never invited to Yankees Old-Timer Days, until 1998, when a letter from Bouton’s son Michael, on Father’s Day, to the New York Times admonished the Yankees to let bygones be bygones. The Yanks acquiesced and Bouton called it the best Father’s Day present ever. A perfect ending.

 

Read Michael's letter to the NY Times HERE. 

 

Jim Bouton died in 2019, the 50th anniversary of his year with the Seattle Pilots. At the time of his death, Ball Four was one of the best-selling sports books ever.

 

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