Jim Bouton, Author of Tell-All Baseball Memoir ‘Ball Four,’ Dies at 80

Still, not only was “Ball Four” an instant and enduring best seller; it also earned widespread recognition as a seminal text of sports literature. In 2002, Sports Illustrated placed it at No. 3 on its list of the top 100 sports books of all time. Perhaps more notable, in 1995, as the New York Public Library celebrated its centennial, it included “Ball Four” as the only sports book among 159 titles in its exhibit “Books of the Century.”

James Alan Bouton was born in Newark on March 8, 1939, to George and Trudy (Vischer) Bouton. His father was a business executive who was selling pressure cookers at the time. The family lived in the New Jersey suburbs Rochelle Park and Ridgewood until Jim was in his teens and his father took a job in Chicago.

Jim played American Legion ball — he threw a knuckleball from time to time even then — and graduated from Bloom High School in Chicago Heights, Ill. He spent a year at Western Michigan University before he was signed by the Yankees in December 1958. He made it to the big leagues in 1962.

It was “Ball Four” that established Bouton’s public reputation as a flouter of baseball decorum, but he was an odd duck within the game from the beginning.

His career had a strange arc. As a Yankee in the early 1960s, he enjoyed brief stardom as a hard-throwing right-hander, with a fastball and curveball that he delivered straight overhand, a violent motion that caused him frequently to lose his hat, an idiosyncrasy that became a trademark.

Even as a young player, he had a pugnacious wit and a willingness to speak his liberal mind, most notably to reporters, whom other Yankees made a habit of disdaining. His talking freely on subjects like the war in Vietnam, student protests on campus and the civil rights movement raised the hackles of teammates and team executives alike.

“After two or three years of playing with guys like Mantle and Maris,” Bouton recalled in “I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally,” “I was no longer awed. I started to look at those guys as people and I didn’t like what I saw. They were fine as baseball heroes. As men they were not quite so successful. At the same time I guess I started to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Instead of being a funny rookie, I was a veteran wiseguy. I reached the point where I would argue to support my opinion, and that didn’t go down too well either.”

Source: The New York Times

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