Photo Credit: mosses from an old manse

Last month, former Major League pitcher Jim Bouton was gracious enough to take 30 minutes of his time to speak with me in a phone interview for an article about the transformation and evolution of the media that was published today on the LA-based Neon Tommy web site.

During his playing days, Bouton was a stud youngster pitching with the New York Yankees before losing his fastball due to an arm injury. In his second season, he went 21-7 with a 2.53 ERA while throwing 12 complete games, including six shutouts. He was selected to the All-Star Game and threw seven innings in the World Series allowing only one run. The next season, he won 18 games and was the winning pitcher for two of the Yankees' three World Series victories against the St. Louis Cardinals.

After parting ways with the Yankees, he played with the expansion Seattle Pilots, the Houston Astros, and then returned seven years after his last game with Houston to pitch with the Atlanta Braves at age 38.

During the 1969 season with the Pilots, Bouton kept notes and wrote Ball Four. The book, about his season, the teams' travels, and life in the clubhouse, hotels, and on the road, was highly controversial and was not accepted by many baseball people, including commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who attempted to discredit it and tried to get Bouton to sign a statement saying the book was completely fictional, which Bouton declined.

The behind-the-scenes book about Major League life was critically acclaimed and is considered one of the most important sports books ever written.

"Sportswriters were upset with Ball Four because they felt that I outflanked them. I had access that they didn't have. They were sort of looking bad because they had been portraying ballplayers basically as boy scouts and now here was a guy, who obviously had better access, that was showing that they weren't boy scouts. They were angry at me for drawing new boundary lines.

But that's sportswriters, other writers, cultured writers and serious/major writers on national subjects, people like David Halberstam for example, saw Ball Four as a good book - an important book that for the first time showed baseball from behind the scenes. That hadn't been done before. There were some writers that thought it was great, but it was basically the sportswriters, mostly baseball writers, that were upset with Ball Four. But most of those guys are gone now.

What you have now are younger writers that have replaced them. Of course, when they read Ball Four they were 12, and they liked it. And as they've grown older, they've sort of looked back at it as a benchmark of sorts. In many cases, it got some of these guys interested in becoming sportswriters. They read Ball Four and said that looks like a fun industry, a fun business, I'd like to write about that. What angered the older sportswriters in 1970, became an inspiration to the younger sportswriters that came of age in the 80s and 90s."

I asked Bouton not only about the the transformation and evolution of media since his playing days, but also some general baseball questions. Questions and his reponses are below:

Photo Credit: insidesocal.com

What's the single biggest difference in media coverage now as compared to your playing days?

"The media coverage now in sports is more distant than it was in my days. There's so much media now, so many television cameras, so many reporters. There's no intimacy any more. If a reporter wants to spend time with a professional athlete, get to know him and learn something about his life, he can't do that. He has to show up at a press conference where the guy sits behind a long table, answers questions, and then gets up and walks out behind a curtain. There's no intimacy. ... There are more cameras, more reporters, less information."

"There was some human interest stories. Now all the human interest stories are filtered through public relation department. You don't know whether a guy really cares about children or whether his public relations agent is telling you that he really cares about children. A lot of that stuff is manufactured. You don't know what's real and what's not real. This is not to disparage those public figures or athletes, who are genuinely interested in those subjects, but it's hard to tell the genuine from the fake."

Having had an arm issue in your career, what do you think of today's emphasis on pitch counts?

"I think it's smart. If we had had that in my day, I might have pitched more...I might have had some more 20-win seasons than I did. I pitched 249 innings in 1963, 271 in 1964, and in 1965, my arm was completely dead. That's why I had to resurrect the knuckleball. I just couldn't throw hard any more. There was no elasticity in my muscles. There was no life there, and it was because I pitched so many innings.

"Every four days. Having to go eight, nine innings all the time. I had 23 complete games in two years. Now there aren't 23 complete games on a whole pitching staff. I can see now looking back that it took too much out of me. I'm not 6-foot-4, 220 pounds. It took everything I had to throw as hard as I did, and it took its toll so I think the pitch counts are smart."

With many different variations for throwing a knuckleball, how did you throw yours -- how many fingers did you use to grip your knuckleball?

"I used three fingers on my knuckleball because I learned it when I was 10 or 11, My hand wasn't big enough to throw a knuckleball with two fingers. I did know then that you needed to throw with your fingertips and not your knuckles. When I threw my pitch, I didn't push it like most knuckleballers did. I actually threw it. When the ball came out of my hand, it was squirting out of my fingers like a watermelon seed. I was able to throw it much harder because of that. On the other hand, it made it harder to get the perfect release because it was a thrown ball rather than a pushed ball."

"There are guys that can throw the knuckleball and throw it hard. Mickey Mantle had a great knuckleball. He would practically cripple guys on the sideline throwing knuckleballs. He could throw it."

"The question is can you throw it every pitch to a batter with men on base in a close game, not whether you can goof around with it on the sideline. With a knuckleball, you can't afford to throw one bad one. Most of the guys who have great knuckleballs will throw you eight or ten but three of them aren't doing anything. Those three are doubles, triples, and home runs. That's the trouble with a bad knuckleball, it isn't a single -- it's never a single."

Who was the best hitter you ever faced?

"I faced all of the great ones from my era -- Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva."

But who's the one guy you wouldn't want to face?

"I loved facing the big hitters. The better the hitter, the more famous he was, the more fun it was. I always did well against those guys. I enjoyed it. It was a challenge. Some how my juices got flowing, and I would always would make my best pitches against those guys.

"Guys that beat me were guys like Dick McAuliffe from the Tigers [ed. note: a 16-year veteran middle infielder that was a career .247 hitter with Detroit and Boston]. He would go 3-for-4 against me. I'd pitch a six-hitter against Detroit, he'd have four hits with a homer, a double. For some reason guys like him, contact hitters, waited on the ball and were happy to slap it to the opposite field. It was the pain-in-the-ass guys, those guys, the utility guys that beat me. In the World Series, the 2-3-4-5 hitters for the Cardinals were like 0-for-20 [ed. note: actually 5-for-32 but only because of three hits by Lou Brock in Game 6], but I got hit by [Mike] Shannon and [Tim] McCarver -- the guys down in the lineup." [Shannon and McCarver went 5-for-13 with two walks]

Who was the best receiving catcher you ever threw to?

"That's pretty close. I had some really good catchers. I had Yogi [Berra] at the end of his career, but he wasn't a very good catcher at that stage. He was really old -- in his late thirties, maybe even 40-years old in 1963 [ed. note: 1963 was Berra's final season with the Yankees at age 38 when he was serving as a backup to Elston Howard]. He didn't want to call curveballs with men on base because it was slower than the fastball, and he didn't want guys stealing on him to make him look bad, so he'd keep calling for the fastball. Elston Howard was a great defensive catcher.

"Johnny Edwards was a tremendous catcher. He was probably the most athletic of all the catchers. He caught me when I pitched for the Houston Astros. The best knuckleball I ever had was against the Pittsburgh Pirates. I struck out 11 guys, and had no problem with [Willie] Stargell and [Roberto] Clemente and those guys out. Johnny Edwards was catching me. He'd never caught a knuckleball before, and he'd only caught me one time before. We end up getting beat because I struck out somebody on a knuckleball. It went down in the dirt and got past him and they ended up scoring a run. [ed. note: August 29, 1969. Bouton pitched a 10-inning complete game but lost the game when two unearned runs scored after Matty Alou reached base on a passed ball].

"But, boy, he was quick back there. Big, strong, quick guy...smart guy Johnny Edwards was. I think he was probably the best catcher I've ever pitched to."

What do you wish in today's game of baseball was more like the game during your playing days?

"I wish the players today were more respectful of the game, were more humble. Not so into themselves. When Mickey Mantle hit a home run, he put his head down and ran around the bases as fast as he could so as to not show up the pitcher, went in the dugout, and sat down. Now, a guy hits a home run, oh my goodness, his hands go up in the air, he's going around the bases, he just found a cure for cancer you'd think. He takes his time. He's pointing to the sky. He's kissing jewelry. Gets to the guys in the dugout, he takes a big bow. Then he goes in to sit down. Then he has to come out for a curtain call...and this is all in the second inning!

"I don't know who these guys think they are. They're just baseball players, and home runs have been hit before. I don't like the over-inflated thoughts of themselves that you have with today's athletes. There's just no humility what-so-ever; no self-awareness; no modesty. There's just no respect for the game or the opposing team. If they did that in my day, the next time up, he'd be on his ass. Believe me, he wouldn't be doing that any more. (Bouton chuckles.)

Shotgun Spratling

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (2)

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Add Comment