Happy Birthday, Jim Bouton

Not the first — that honor went to Jim Brosnan — but perhaps the best of the genre he tackled, Bouton turns 69 today.

“The Bulldog” enjoyed a couple of good years for the New York Yankees, winning 20 games in1963 and 18 more in 1964, the last good year the team had for more than a decade (coincidence?). Then the arm problems set in and he started the downhill slide. He was purchased by the Seattle Pilots after the 1968 season, pitched for them a little while trying to develop a knuckleball, and was traded to the Houston Astros towards the end of the ’69 season. It was during this tumultuous year that he began keeping notes with the idea of writing an “insider’s book” on the game. The result, as any literate baseball fans knows, was Ball Four.

When the book was published, Bouton was looked upon as a pariah by many traditionalists, including old-school baseball writers like Dick Young of The New York Daily News and others who considered him a traitor to the brotherhood of players and the image of baseball. But that just fueled his fire.He followed up Ball Four with I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally, something of a sequel. He also wrote I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad, revisited Ball Four with additional material about his comeback attempt with the Atlanta Braves in 1978 at the age of 39, after an absence of eight years.

There are few players who will match Bouton’s legacy. He may not have enjoyed as brilliant a playing career as some of his major league brethren, but his literary accomplishments more than make up for it.

The Amazon Report:

Other books by Jim Bouton include:

Ball Four

I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally.

Ball Four My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues

I Managed Good, but Boy did they Play Bad

Foul Ball – My Life And Hard Times Trying To Save An Old Ballpark

Strike Zone, a novel, written with Elliot Asinof, author of Eight Men Out

Tagged as: Ball Four, Jim Bouton