Baseball Week 2: Walking Away With It

Once pitcher Jim Bouton was a rising star drinking with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford after Yankees games. Fast forward the beginning of BALL FOUR, which Bouton dictated during the 1969 season in the year he turned 30. Now a relief pitcher with the Seattle Pilots, Bouton just wants to master his knuckleball, get along with his teammates and most importantly, not get sent down to the minors. His manager delivers not-at-all motivational speeches that end with "and go get a Budweiser"; his coaches throw out arbitrary rules and expect their charges to jump to it; and that's before they've even left Arizona and gone on the road for the long haul.

I was only half-joking yesterday that this is an adventure in one man's mortality. For all the camaraderie of the bullpen and the cogent discussions of how the salary and negotiation processes hurts players, franchises and the game, this is really a book about growing old and not knowing the direction in which one's life should go. Bouton knows he can't be the same pitcher he was at 22 because his fastball takes too much out of his arm, and mastering the knuckleball is his only hope to keep him literally in the game. At the same time, he's seen as a veteran, and his new managers expect him to arrive at the mound ready to save the day. When he can't perform under pressure, his frustration begins with himself. After the Pilots, a team whose fate you should search for since I won't spoil it here, Bouton knows he's due for a re-examination of his career as a player and whether he wouldn't be suited running a business or choosing to coach instead. (He even shares this thought with one of his many road roommates, before the roommate is sent down to the minors.)

How much of this narrative thread is Bouton and how much his ghostwriter/editors' work, I don't know, but I was expecting much more of a scandal sheet than a work of dugout philosophy. (Then again, a review I read mentioned that Bouton's season overlapped with Woodstock and the moon landing -- which is funny, because neither of them are mentioned here. Casualty of edits? They squeezed in a mention of "Midnight Cowboy" though.) I didn't expect this book to resonate with me on such a deep level; I suspect the author would be a little horrified that it did.

I had never heard of Bouton before I picked up BALL FOUR, but a fair amount of ink is spilled in forewords and updates about how controversial the book was for its time (1970). I don't fault the commissioner at the time (the awesomely named Bowie Kuhn) or Bouton's former teammates for being upset with him. That said, the revelations of this book are pretty tame stuff in the age of Brett Favre's Crocs -- some pitchers take speed before games, players talk about their one-night stands on the team bus, harmonious-looking teams can often be anything but friendly when no one's watching. That said, if Bouton were playing and writing this year, it would be an anonymous blog instead of a notebook, and would cause a similar stir. Just because professional athletes can talk to their fans directly doesn't mean most are remotely honest about it. I'd like to think Bouton was honest; I take him at his word.

Tomorrow: all over but the brawlin' with THE BASEBALL CODES.