My heart sank when I learned that former big league pitcher turned author and broadcaster Jim Bouton had passed away at the age of 80. I knew Bouton was suffering from a rare form of dementia brought on by a stroke and that his time would eventually come. I just didn't think that time would be today. We never do. (Although perhaps he knew - or at least his wife Paula did. It was only two days ago the Library of Congress announced they had acquired his papers).
Bouton is, of course, best remembered for authoring the 1970 book Ball Four which was a diary of the 1969 season which he spent split between the expansion Seattle Pilots and the Houston Astros. Once a budding star with the New York Yankees with two World Series rings and an All-Star Game selection, Bouton was struggling to stay afloat in the major leagues with a knuckleball.
When the book came out, many were shocked to learn that baseball players drank booze, took drugs, had extramarital affairs and weren't always very nice people - including Mickey Mantle. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn demanded Bouton recant what he had written. He wouldn't and the book became a best seller. Ball Four gave Bouton a second career as an author as well as a sports broadcaster on the original Eyewitness News team here in New York. He would later appear in the Robert Altman movie The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould and co-invented the shredded bubblegum Big League Chew.
But Bouton became the black sheep of baseball because because he told the truth. For years, Bouton was persona non grata by the Yankees as he was never invited back to Yankee Stadium for Old Timer's Day. It took a New York Times op-ed by Bouton's eldest son Michael on Father's Day in 1998 urging the Yankees to invite him back to help his father cope with the death of his daughter Laurie in an automobile accident the year before to finally be brought back into the fold.
I first read Ball Four in January 1986 while in the eighth grade in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Ball Four did for me what The Communist Manifesto did for George Bernard Shaw - it turned my life upside down. I was an outsider at school and was lucky if I ever heard a kind word. For the first time in my life I understood not only my place in the social structure, but how I could navigate it. I learned how to speak up, choose my battles and ultimately decided I wanted to write myself.
On January 20, 1986, I began writing a diary which I kept for the better part of a decade. Most of it has gone into ash heap of obscurity, but I learned how to organize my thoughts and observations in a manner that would engaging, if not amusing to those who might come upon it. Although I've never written a best-seller, I did manage to write articles for The American Spectator and National Review Online and get paid for it however modestly.
I had the opportunity to tell Bouton what he and Ball Four meant to me back in July 2003 at the Boston Public Library. Bouton was in town to promote his book Foul Ball. Also written in a diary format, Foul Ball documented Bouton's involvement in trying save Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a minor league ballpark complete with wooden grandstands. This year, Wahconah Park celebrates its 100th anniversary. However, most people who attended that night wanted to talk about Ball Four (myself included).
I don't remember much of what he said back to me other than he liked the George Bernard Shaw comparison. I do remember that his wife was using a cane having recently injured her hip. Bouton had written about ballroom dancing in Foul Ball and asked if they had incorporated the cane into their act on the dance floor. They laughed and said they had.
I used to read Ball Four once a year. Now it's about twice a decade. Just the other day, I saw a copy of Ball Four in Westsider Books on Broadway between 80th and 81st. I very nearly bought it. I didn't because I still have an autographed copy of Ball Four which Bouton inscribed with, "Smoke' em inside," which I have yet to unpack nearly a year after my move from Boston. It looks like I have some unpacking to do.
Bouton closed Ball Four with this sentence, "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."
To paraphrase Bouton, "I've spent a good piece of my life gripping Ball Four and in the end it turns out it will always have a grip on me."
R.I.P.
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