Jim Bouton

Around 1968, sportswriter Leonard Shecter, who had befriended Bouton during his time with the Yankees, approached him with the idea of writing a season-long diary. Bouton agreed; he had taken some notes during the 1968 season with a similar goal.

The diary that became Ball Four chronicled Bouton's experiences the next year with the Pilots. The diary also followed Bouton during his two-week stint with the triple-A Vancouver Mounties in April, and after his trade to the Houston Astros in late August. Ball Four was not the first baseball diary (Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Brosnan had written two such books), but it became more widely known and discussed than its predecessors.

The book was a frank, insider's look at professional sports teams, covering the off-the-field side of baseball life, including petty jealousies, obscene jokes, drunken tomcatting of the players, and routine drug use, including by Bouton himself.[1] Upon its publication, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called Ball Four "detrimental to baseball", and tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying that the book was completely fictional. Bouton, however, refused to deny any of Ball Four's revelations. Some teammates never forgave him for disclosing information given to him in confidence, and naming names. The book made Bouton unpopular with many players, coaches, and officials on other teams as well; he was informally blacklisted from baseball.

Bouton's writings about Mickey Mantle's lifestyle were most notorious, though they comprise few pages of Ball Four and much of the material was complimentary. For example, when Bouton got his first win as a Yankee, he describes Mantle laying a "red carpet" of towels leading directly to his locker in his honor.

The controversy enabled Bouton to write a sequel, I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally, in which he discussed both the controversies and reactions to Ball Four and the end of his original pitching career and his transition to becoming a New York sportscaster.

Bouton retired midway through the 1970 season, shortly after the Astros sent him down to the minor leagues. After a handful of unsatisfactory appearances, Bouton left baseball to become a local sports anchor for New York station WABC-TV, as part of Eyewitness News; he later held the same job for WCBS-TV. Bouton also became an actor, playing the part of Terry Lennox in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973), plus the lead role of Jim Barton in the 1976 CBS television series Ball Four, which was loosely adapted from the book and was canceled after five episodes. Decades later, Bouton would also have a brief one-line cameo as a pitching coach in the James L. Brooks film How Do You Know.

By the mid-1970s, a cult audience saw the book Ball Four as a candid and comic portrayal of the ups and downs of baseball life. Bouton went on the college lecture circuit, delivering humorous talks on his experiences. He authored a sequel, I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally, and later updated the original book with a new extended postscript that provided a ten-year update, dubbed Ball Five.

Jim Bouton speaking at the Seattle Pilots' Anniversary Celebration in August 2009

Bouton launched his comeback bid with the Portland Mavericks of the Class A Northwest League in 1975, compiling a 5–1 record.[4] He skipped the 1976 season to work on the TV series, but he returned to the diamond in 1977 when Bill Veeck signed him to a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox. Bouton was winless for a White Sox farm club; a stint in the Mexican League and a return to Portland followed.

In 1978, Ted Turner signed Bouton to a contract with the Atlanta Braves. After a successful season with the Savannah Braves of the Class AA Southern League, he was called up to join Atlanta's rotation in September, and compiled a 1–3 record in five starts. His winding return to the majors was chronicled in a book by sportswriter Terry Pluto, The Greatest Summer. Bouton also detailed his comeback in a 10th anniversary re-release of his first book, titled Ball Four Plus Ball Five, as well as adding a Ball Six, updating the stories of the players in Ball Four, for the 20th anniversary edition. All were included (in 2000) as Ball Four: The Final Pitch, along with a new coda that detailed the death of his daughter and his reconciliation with the Yankees.

After his return to the majors, Bouton continued to pitch at the semi-pro level for a Bergen County, New Jersey team called the Emerson-Westwood Merchants, among other teams in the Metropolitan Baseball League in northern New Jersey, while living in Teaneck, New Jersey.[5]

Once his baseball career ended a second time, Bouton became one of the inventors of "Big League Chew", a shredded bubblegum designed to resemble chewing tobacco and sold in a tobacco-like pouch. He also co-authored Strike Zone (a baseball novel) and edited an anthology about managers, entitled I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad. His most recent book is Foul Ball (published 2003), a non-fiction account of his unsuccessful attempt to save Wahconah Park, a historic minor league baseball stadium in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Although Bouton had never been officially declared persona non grata by the Yankees or any other team as a result of Ball Four's revelations, he was excluded from most baseball-related functions, including Old-Timers' Games. It was rumored that Mickey Mantle himself had told the Yankees that he would never attend an Old-Timers' Game to which Bouton was invited. Later, Mantle denied this charge during an answering-machine message to Bouton after Mantle's son Billy had died of cancer in 1994 – Mantle was acknowledging a condolence card Bouton had sent.[6]

In June 1998, Bouton's oldest son Michael wrote an open letter to the Yankees which was published in The New York Times, in which Michael described the agony of his father following the August 1997 death of Michael's sister Laurie at age 31. By juxtaposing the story of Yogi Berra's self-imposed exile with that of his father's de facto banishment, Michael created a scenario where not only were the Yankees placed under public pressure to invite his father back, but the article paved the road to reconciliation between Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Berra.

In July 1998, Bouton, sporting his familiar number 56, received a standing ovation when he took the mound at Yankee Stadium.

Bouton was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2001.[7]