Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

  Ball Four

  The Final Pitch

  Jim Bouton

  Copyright

  Ball Four

  Copyright © 1970, 1981, 1990, 2000 by Jim Bouton

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Electronic edition published 2012 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

  ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795323232

  For more information about Jim Bouton and Foul Ball, visit www.JimBouton.com.

  DEDICATION

  For Laurie

  Contents

  Preface

  Editor’s Foreword

  Introduction

  Ball Four

  Part 1 They Made Me What I Am Today

  Part 2 “My Arm Isn’t Sore, It’s Just a Little Stiff”

  Part 3 And Then I Died

  Part 4 I Always Wanted to See Hawaii

  Part 5 The Yanks Are Coming, The Yanks Are Coming

  Part 6 Shut Up

  Part 7 Honey, Meet Me in Houston

  Statistics

  Ball Five—Ten Years Later

  Ball Six—Twenty Years Later

  Ball Seven—Thirty Years Later

  The Pirates Live! In Cyberspace!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  Suggested Search Terms

  Rogue’s Gallery

  Personal Photos

  PREFACE

  WRITTEN IN 1980; UPDATED IN 1990 AND 2000.

  There was a time, not too long ago, when school kids read Ball Four at night under the covers with a flashlight because their parents wouldn’t allow it in the house. It was not your typical sports book about the importance of clean living and inspired coaching. I was called a Judas and a Benedict Arnold for having written it. The book was attacked in the media because among other things, it “used four-letter words and destroyed heroes.” It was even banned in a few libraries because it was said to be “bad for the youth of America.”

  The kids, however, saw it differently. I know because they tell me about it now whenever I lecture on college campuses. [These days I do motivational speaking to corporations and the “kids” are often gray or bald or paunchy.] They come up and say it was nice to learn that ballplayers were human beings, but what they got from the book was moral support for a point of view. They claim that Ball Four gave them strength to be the underdog and made them feel less lonely as an outsider in their own lives. Or it helped them to stand up for themselves and see life with a sense of humor. Then they invariably share a funny story about a coach, a teacher, or a boss who reminds them of someone in the book.

  In some fraternities and dorms they play Ball Four Trivia, or Who Said That? quoting characters from the book. And there is always someone who claims to hold the campus record for reading it 10, 12, or 14 times. Then they produce dog-eared copies for me to sign. I love it.

  Sometimes when people compliment me about my book I wonder who they’re talking about. A librarian compared Ball Four to the classic The Catcher in the Rye because she said I was an idealist like Holden Caulfield who “viewed the world through jaundice colored glasses.” Teachers have personally thanked me for writing the only book their nonreading students would read. And one mother said she wanted to build me a shrine for writing the only book her son ever finished.

  The strangest part is that apparently there is something about the book which makes people feel I’m their friend. I’m always amazed when I walk through an airport, for example, and someone I’ve never met passes by and says simply, “Hey, Ball Four.” Or strangers will stop me on the street and ask how my kids are doing.

  Maybe they identify with me because we share the same perspective. One of my roommates, Steve Hovley, said I was the first fan to make it to the major leagues. Ball Four has the kinds of stories an observant next-door neighbor might come home and tell if he ever spent some time with a major-league team. Whatever the reasons, it still overwhelms me to think that I wrote something which people remember.

  I certainly didn’t plan it this way. I don’t believe I could have produced this response if I had set out to do it. In fact, twenty years ago when I submitted the final manuscript I was not optimistic. My editor, Lenny Shecter, and I had spent so many months rewriting and polishing that after awhile it all seemed like cardboard to us. What’s more, the World Publishing Company wasn’t too excited either. They doubted there was any market for a diary by a marginal relief pitcher on an expansion team called the Seattle Pilots.

  With a first printing of only 5,000 copies I was certain that Ball Four was headed the way of all sports books. And then a funny thing happened. Some advance excerpts appeared in Look magazine and the baseball establishment went crazy. The team owners became furious and wanted to ban the book. The Commissioner, Bowie “Ayatollah” Kuhn, called me in for a reprimand and announced that I had done the game “a grave disservice.” Sportswriters called me names like “traitor” and “turncoat.” My favorite was “social leper.” Dick Young of the Daily News thought that one up.

  The ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, picked up the cue. The San Diego Padres burned the book and left the charred remains for me to find in the visitors clubhouse. While I was on the mound trying to pitch, players on the opposing teams hollered obscenities at me. I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, “Fuck you, Shakespeare.”

  All that hollering and screaming sure sold books. Ball Four went up to [500,000 in hardcover, 5 million in paperback], and got translated into Japanese. It’s the largest selling sports book ever. I was so grateful I dedicated my second book, I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally, to my detractors. I don’t think they appreciated the gesture.

  One way I can tell is that I never get invited back to Old-Timers’ Days. Understand, everybody gets invited back for Old-Timers’ Day no matter what kind of rotten person he was when he was playing. Muggers, drug addicts, rapists, child molesters, all are forgiven for Old-Timers’ Day. Except a certain author.

  The wildest thing is that they wouldn’t forgive a cousin who made the mistake of being related to me. Jeff Bouton was a good college pitcher who dreamed of making the big leagues someday. But after Ball Four came out a Detroit Tiger scout told him he’d never make it in the pros unless he changed his name! Jeff refused, and a month after he signed he was released. For the rest of his life, he’ll never know if it was his pitching or his name.

  I believe the overreaction to Ball Four boiled down to this: People simply were not used to reading the truth about professional sports.

  The owners, for their part, saw this as economically dangerous. What made them so angry about the book was not the locker room stories but the revelations about how difficult it was to make a living in baseball. The owners knew that public opinion was important in maintaining the controversial reserve clause which teams used to control players and hold down salaries. They lived in fear that this special exemption from the anti-trust laws, originally granted by Congress and reluctantly upheld in the courts, might someday be overturned.

  To guard against this, the Commissioner and the owners (with help from sportswriters), had convinced the public, the Congress, and the courts—and many players!—that the reserve clause was crucial in order to “maintain competitive balance.” (As if there was competitive balance when the Yankees were winning 29 pennants in 43 years.) The owners preach
ed that the reserve clause was necessary to stay in business, and that ballplayers were well paid and fairly treated. (Mickey Mantle’s $100,000 salary was always announced with great fanfare while all the $9,000 and $12,000 salaries were kept secret.) The owners had always insisted that dealings between players and teams be kept strictly confidential. They knew that if the public ever learned the truth, it would make it more difficult to defend the reserve clause against future challenges.

  Which is why the owners hated Ball Four. Here was a book which revealed, in great detail, just how ballplayers’ salaries were “negotiated” with general managers. It showed, for the first time, exactly how owners abused and manipulated players by taking advantage of their one-way contract.

  It turned out the owners had reason to be afraid. It may be no coincidence that after half a century of struggle the players won their free agency shortly after the publication of Ball Four. No one will know what part the book may have played in creating a favorable climate of opinion. I only know that when Marvin Miller asked me to testify in the Messersmith arbitration case which freed the players, I quoted passages from Ball Four.

  The sportswriters, on the other hand, were upset at almost all the other things Ball Four revealed. Chief among these being that ballplayers will, on occasion, take pep pills, get drunk, stay out late, talk dirty, have groupies, and be rude to fans. The irony here, of course, is that if the sportswriters had been telling what went on in baseball there would have been no sensation around my book.

  David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that was less a review of Ball Four than a commentary on the journalism of our times.

  He has written… a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book… a comparable insider’s book about, say, the Congress of the United States, the Ford Motor Company, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be equally welcome….

  As the book is deeply in the American vein, so is the reaction against it. The sportswriters are not judging the accuracy of the book, but Bouton’s right to tell (that is, your right to read), which is, again, as American as apple pie or the White House press corps. A reporter covers an institution, becomes associated with it, protective of it, and, most important, the arbiter of what is right to tell. He knows what’s good for you to hear, what should remain at the press-club bar. When someone goes beyond that, stakes out a new dimension of what is proper and significant, then it is the sportswriters and the Washington bureau chiefs who yell the loudest, because having played the game, having been tamed, when someone outflanks them, they must of necessity attack his intentions, his accuracy. Thus Bouton has become a social leper to many sportswriters and thus Sy Hersh, when he broke the My Lai story, became a ‘peddler’ to some of Washington’s most famous journalists.

  By establishing new boundaries, Ball Four changed sports reporting at least to the extent that, after the book, it was no longer possible to sell the milk and cookies image again. It was not my purpose to do this, but on reflection, it’s probably not a bad idea. I think we are all better off looking across at someone, rather than up. Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, “There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.” Besides, you can get sick on too much milk and cookies. And as far as damaging baseball goes, I haven’t noticed any drop-off in attendance. The most obvious impact of Ball Four has been on sports books, although I’m not sure I want to claim credit for those results. Traditionally, sports books are written like this: Joe Shlabotnik has a good year (wins 20 games, bats .300, etc.). At the end of the season a sportswriter comes over to Joe’s locker and says that money could be made from a book. The sportswriter says don’t worry, he’ll do the writing; all the player has to do is answer some questions into a tape recorder. The star’s picture goes on the cover, the writer cranks it out in a month-and-a-half, and they split 50/50.

  Publishers like sports books because, while they rarely make a lot of money, they never lose money. Quality is not important. Any book with a big-name player on the cover is guaranteed to sell 5,000 copies, enough to recoup the printing costs.

  These books usually talk about how important it is to get a good night’s sleep because the team sure needs to win that big game tomorrow. Since Ball Four things have changed. Now when an athlete and his ghost go in to pitch a book the publisher is likely to say, “How much are you willing to tell? If you’re not going to open up, we’re not interested.”

  Of course the player and the ghost promise to write things which have never been written before, with the result that each new book promises to go further than the last. There seems to be a contest to see which book can be the most shocking. I’m always startled to see these books advertised as, “More revealing than Ball Four,” or “More outrageous than Ball Four.”

  What’s interesting is that while the content of sports books has changed, the process for writing them remains the same. Where before a jock mouthed platitudes into a tape recorder for a few hours, now he tells raunchy stories into the recorder for a few hours. Sensationalism has become a substitute for banality. We’ve gone from assembly-line gee-whiz books to assembly-line exposés.

  And people tell me I started it all. Sigh.

  In spite of everything, I’m glad I wrote Ball Four and not because of the money or notoriety it has brought me. I’m glad I have it for myself. Here, presented forever in one place, are all those memories from a special time in my life. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I’ll just open the book and read whatever is on that page. I almost always laugh out loud, not because I’m funny, but because the ballplayers are funny. People sometimes ask me if I made up all those stories and I tell them of course not. I can’t write that well. I just quoted other people.

  In 1969 I thought it would be a good idea to write a book and share the fun I’d had in baseball. The notion that it would someday change my life never occurred to me. Before I tell you about that in Ball Five and Ball Six and Ball Seven you should probably read Ball Four. It follows, along with the editor’s foreword and the introduction, exactly as it was thirty years ago, unchanged except for typos and minor factual corrections.

  But these concerns were far outweighed by my longing to immortalize this colorful cast of characters. Particularly the Seattle Pilots players who seem to have been sent to that expansion team for the express purpose of being in Ball Four. It’s as if somebody had said, “This team’s not going to win any games, but if someone writes a book it’ll be a great ball club.”

  What is the attraction of the Seattle Pilots? I think the fact that they existed for only one year has made them special. Unclaimed by town or franchise, the Pilots are like the Flying Dutchmen, doomed to sail aimlessly without a harbor.

  Or, as the decades pass, more like Brigadoon, the enchanted village that comes alive every hundred years. The Pilots played just one magic summer, then disappeared, existing now only in the pages of a book.

  EDITOR’S FOREWORD

  I can’t even say this book was my idea. I’d known Jim Bouton since he first came up with the Yankees, was familiar with his iconoclastic views and his enthusiastic, imaginative way of expressing them, and it occurred to me that a diary of his season—even if he spent it with a minor-league team as he had the season before—might prove of great general interest. As usual, he was ahead of me. “Funny you should mention that,” he said when I first brought it up. “I’ve been keeping notes.”

  Bouton talked into his tape recorder for more than seven months. Our typist, Miss Elisabeth Rehm of Jamaica, N.Y., did herculean work to keep up with the flood. There is nothing inarticulate about Jim Bouton. Before the season ended Miss Rehm had typed the equivalent of 1,500 pages (about 450,000 words) of double-spaced Bouton. From the beginning there was, fortunately, great rapport between us. I quickly found I did not need to spend a lot of time with Bouton pulling truth and anecdotes out of him. They were there, in abundance,
starting with the very first tape from Arizona. We spent no more than five days together all season.

  It may seem odd in an effort of this sort, but there were no disagreements between us. From the first we shared the opinion that the only purpose to adding to the huge volume of printed material that had been produced about baseball, was to illuminate the game as it had never been before. We resolved to reveal baseball as it is viewed by the men who play it, the frustrations and the meanness as well as the joy and the extraordinary fun. The difficulty is that to tell the truth is often, unfortunately, to offend. Bouton never flinched. It was not our purpose to offend, of course, but if in the process of telling the truth we did, so be it.

  We had to make a decision, too, about the use of language. There is earthiness in baseball clubhouse language. To censor it, we felt, would be to put editorial omniscience between the reader and reality. Besides, we were not aiming this book at juveniles. Rate it X. The only thing we left out was repetitiveness.

  The hardest part of editing Bouton’s 1,500 pages was deciding what to leave out. There was so much that was so good, so incisive, so funny, that the choices were most difficult. In the end I managed to take it down to about 650 pages. The final cut, to about 520 manuscript pages, was made by both of us at the very last. We spent eighteen hours a day together for weeks, cutting, editing, correcting, polishing. There were arguments sometimes and frayed nerves, and we came to know each other in that special, complicated way that people who have worked very hard, very closely on a project they consider important come to know each other. I’m not sure how Bouton feels about it, but I believe I came away a better man.

  LEONARD SHECTER

  New York City, January 1970

  INTRODUCTION

  FALL 1968

  I’m 30 years old and I have these dreams.

  I dream my knuckleball is jumping around like a Ping-Pong ball in the wind and I pitch a two-hit shutout against my old team, the New York Yankees, single home the winning run in the ninth inning and, when the game is over, take a big bow on the mound in Yankee Stadium with 60,000 people cheering wildly. After the game reporters crowd around my locker asking me to explain exactly how I did it. I don’t mind telling them.