Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  The pettiness and stupidity were exasperating, sometimes damaging. And it’s going to be a long winter before I can enjoy having had my shoes nailed to the clubhouse floor. New levels of noncommunication were reached. Still, there were rewards. There were enough laughs in the bullpen and in the back of the bus to make me eager for a new season. I met a lot of people I’ll feel warmly toward for the rest of my life. Observing and recording my experiences for this book taught me a great deal not only about others but about myself. (I’m not sure I liked everything I learned, but learning is often a painful experience.)

  I lucked out with five great roommates: Gary Bell, Bob Lasko, Mike Marshall, Steve Hovley and Norm Miller. I went the whole season without an injury. I traveled the country in both leagues. And I saw the look in my son Mike’s face when I came back from a road trip and he turned his big eyes up at me and said shyly, “Hey Dad, you’re Jim Bouton, aren’t you?”

  I enjoyed living in the Great Northwest for most of a season and I’m sad that Seattle didn’t keep its franchise. A city that seems to care more for its art museums than its ballpark can’t be all bad.

  The team will play in Milwaukee next season and it will be a new team in every respect. Even before the franchise could be shifted, Marvin Milkes, operating on the theory that when you make a mistake you make a change, made a lot of changes. Joe Schultz was fired and signed on as a coach in Kansas City, moving in considerably below Lou Piniella in the team’s pecking order. Piniella, groomed for oblivion in the first weeks of spring training with Seattle, became Rookie of the Year in Kansas City, hitting .282. Sal Maglie, Ron Plaza, Eddie O’Brien and Frank Crosetti were also fired. As this is written only Crosetti has hooked on—with Minnesota.

  Fred Talbot, Diego Segui, Ray Oyler, George Brunet, Don Mincher and Ron Clark were all traded to Oakland for some warm bodies. Dooley Womack was released, Merritt Ranew was sent to the minors and Mike Marshall, sold to Houston, will be back with me this spring. Gary Bell, released by the White Sox, was signed by Hawaii. Hope he can handle mai tais.

  Houston traded Curt Blefary to the Yankees for Joe Pepitone, and we will have all spring to practice Joe’s pick-off sign. Wade Blasingame was sent to the minors. Ted Williams of the MFL was Manager of the Year and the Fat Kid won Most Valuable Player.

  I did not win Comeback of the Year, but I went to a local sports banquet the other night and took a bow from the audience. As I watched the trophies being handed out, my mind wandered and I saw myself being called up to the dais and accepting the Fireman of the Year award for 1970.

  And then I thought of Jim O’Toole and I felt both strange and sad. When I took the cab to the airport in Cincinnati I got into a conversation with the driver and he said he’d played ball that summer against Jim O’Toole. He said O’Toole was pitching for the Ross Eversoles in the Kentucky Industrial League. He said O’Toole is all washed up. He doesn’t have his fastball anymore but his control seems better than when he was with Cincinnati. I had to laugh at that. O’Toole won’t be trying to sneak one over the corner on Willie Mays in the Kentucky Industrial League.

  Jim O’Toole and I started out even in the spring. He wound up with the Ross Eversoles and I with a new lease on life. And as I daydreamed of being Fireman of the Year in 1970 I wondered what the dreams of Jim O’Toole are like these days. Then I thought, would I do that? When it’s over for me, would I be hanging on with the Ross Eversoles? I went down deep and the answer I came up with was yes.

  Yes, I would. You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

  TELL YOUR STATISTICS TO SHUT UP

  Ten Years Later…

  BALL FIVE

  THE BOYS OF BALL FOUR

  A lot has happened in ten years. The Seattle Pilots have become the Milwaukee Brewers and Sicks Stadium is now a parking lot. Only one member of the Pilots, Marty Pattin (Kansas City), is still playing in the major leagues. From the Houston Astros, only Tom Griffin (Giants), Bob Watson (Yankees), and Joe Morgan (free agent) are still active.

  The wisdom and foresight of the Seattle Pilot management has been reconfirmed several times. That hot-tempered rookie who was sent to the minors because Joe Schultz didn’t like him became “sweet” Lou Piniella. And Mike Marshall, who would “never make it” with his screwball, made it as a Cy Young award winner and one of the game’s greatest pitchers.

  The lot of all players has improved dramatically under the leadership of Marvin Miller. Since winning their free agency, many players have become millionaires, and they all have agents, more security, and some control over their destinies.

  On the personal side, my editor and best friend, Lenny Shecter, passed away. Former teammates Elston Howard and Don Wilson have died. And I’m divorced.

  I still keep in touch with some of the guys, like Gary “Ding Dong” Bell. I call him on the phone once in awhile and he sends me letters addressed to “Ass Eyes.” One year Gary sent me a note saying that since Ball Four nobody in baseball would give him a coaching job. He figures they didn’t want a coach whose only advice would be to “smoke ’em inside.”

  Instead, Gary became a restaurateur near his home in Phoenix, Arizona. Actually he was a short order cook at his own fast food joint called the Chinese Paisan (I’m not kidding). It catered to people who wanted a choice between Italian and Chinese food. I invested a few thousand dollars and the place promptly went bankrupt. Gary said it failed because the customers could never make up their minds. I told him he should have read some of those real-estate books.

  A few years after he left baseball Gary got divorced from Nan. Theirs had been a true baseball marriage. Once the road trips ended it couldn’t withstand all that togetherness. Gary is remarried now and very happy working in a sporting goods store. I wonder if he says, “ding dong” every time he sells someone a protective cup.

  I still exchange Christmas cards with Steve Hovley. After the Brewers let him go, old “tennis-ball head” was picked up by Kansas City where he had good years in 1972 and ’73. In ’74 he was sold to Baltimore, missed six weeks with an injury and was released. Now living in Ojai, California, Hovley says he has no interest in baseball whatsoever. “It wouldn’t be a part of my life at all,” he explains, “except that people keep bringing it up.”

  Hovley says he doesn’t understand why he was portrayed in Ball Four as an intellectual and somehow different from other players. He insists he was just one of the boys. After he left baseball, Hovley chose to work as a janitor at his daughter’s grade school and then became a plumber, just like any other former major-leaguer who went to Stanford and read Dostoyevsky in the clubhouse.

  I speak to Mike Marshall once in awhile. He tells me about his latest battles with the establishment. Marshall is always interesting to watch, whether he’s suing the Michigan State Athletic Department (and winning), or filing a grievance against baseball for unfair labor practices. Marshall was the Minnesota Twins player representative before he was released last year with two years remaining on his contract. Why would the Twins release a guy they still had to pay for two more years, who had won or saved 31 games for them as recently as 1978? And why hasn’t any other team signed this 39-year-old physical fitness expert who could probably pitch for another five years?

  Well, because baseball hasn’t changed that much. Everybody but the Baseball Commissioner suspects the owners want to keep Marshall, a militant leader, out of the Players Association. His release keeps him off the very important joint study committee working on the question of free agent compensation. Also, Marshall has been heard to say that when Marvin Miller retires, he would like a shot at Marvin’s job. If there’s anyone the owners fear more than Marvin, it’s Mike.

  It’s interesting that Mike went from a clubhouse weirdo to a clubhouse leader in the time it took to become a great pitcher. There’s another thing that hasn’t changed about baseball: You’re still just as smart as your earned run average.


  Another roommate of mine, Norm Miller, is alive and well in Houston, Texas. I had lunch with Norm a few years ago when I came into town during my comeback with the Atlanta Braves in 1978. Norm recalled those hectic days we spent together right after Ball Four came out. “Howard Cosell came banging on the door at seven in the morning screaming, ‘Let me in, let me in!’ You were on the phone doing one of your hundred interviews,” he reminded me. “I was buck naked as Cosell shoved his way in the door, grabbed the phone out of your hand and said into it, ‘This interview is terminated!’ I couldn’t believe this guy.” Norm said it was exciting being my secretary for a couple of weeks.

  Today, when he’s not pitching batting practice for the Houston Astros, Norm is an executive with Monterey House restaurants. It’s better than being a Jewish pirate or sitting all alone in a laundry bag.

  Right after the book came out I heard from a few old teammates. Tommy Davis sent me a note which started off with, “Hello, Big Mouth.” Tommy said that he was offered four movie contracts. “After reading your book, everybody thinks I’m some kind of actor.”

  Jim Pagliaroni dropped me a line saying that he loved the book and if they ever made a movie out of Ball Four he wanted to play himself. Pag said he would be perfect for the part of a “deranged, perverted, moral degenerate, iconoclastic, loving husband and father.”

  They never made a movie from Ball Four but it did become a TV situation comedy. It was on the CBS network in the fall of ’76 before it was mercifully cancelled after five weeks. The show was created by me and a couple of friends: television critic Marvin Kitman and sportswriter Vic Ziegel. We wanted “Ball Four,” the TV show, to be like “M.A.S.H.,” only in a locker room. Instead it turned out more like “Gilligan’s Island” in baseball suits. The story was all about a mythical team called the Washington Americans. We were first in the American League and last in the hearts of our countrymen, according to the Nielsen ratings.

  The characters for the sitcom were loosely drawn from people in Ball Four. We had a tightfisted general manager and a pain-in-the-ass coach. We also had a big strong guy named Rhino who couldn’t wear contact lenses “because if he blinked he’d break them.” Rhino was from a small town in Wisconsin where, “we only talk for awhile, then we start to hit.” To make the show as realistic as possible I suggested we get the guy who inspired the character, Gene Brabender. After a few calls we located Bender in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where he was fishing. I felt sorry for the fish.

  So Bender flew into New York and it was good to see him again. I assured him it was a small speaking part and all he had to do was look big. He did a good job, too, but surprisingly, he didn’t look right for the part. It’s funny, but on stage in front of the cameras, Bender looked smaller and somehow vulnerable, not as fearsome as I remembered him in the Seattle Pilot clubhouse.

  The part went instead to former Oakland Raider football player Ben Davidson, who turned out to be the best character in the show. Brabender flew back to Wisconsin where he owns a dairy farm. Unfortunately, Bender was in and out of New York so fast we didn’t have time to talk about anything. I wanted to kid him about the time he nailed my shoes to the floor.

  A few years after the book came out I had lunch with Marvin Milkes, of all people. Not only that, but Marvin invited me—and he paid! This was when I was a sportscaster and he was the general manager for a hockey team called the New Jersey Golden Blades. Marvin told me he liked the book because it helped open a few doors for him. He said wherever he goes, people ask him if he’s the Marvin Milkes in Ball Four.

  Then, believe it or not, Marvin offered to pay me the $50 for that Gatorade I bought years ago. Of course I didn’t accept, but we had a good laugh about it. The last I heard Marvin was working for a soccer team in Los Angeles. I made no connection between Marvin’s recent generosity and the fact that the Golden Blades went bankrupt.

  What about the rest of my teammates, I wondered. What were they doing now? To find out, I hired a researcher to help me track them down. Locating the Seattle Pilots, in particular, was not an easy task. The team had existed for only one year and, it turns out, nobody wants to claim them. The Milwaukee Brewers disdain their Seattle origins and the people in Seattle only care about the new Mariners. The old Pilots are orphans, a team without a city.

  One of the Pilots, John O’Donoghue, was impossible to find. We reached his mother by telephone, and she said he was in another country on business but she didn’t know what country or what business. Sounds like old John might be working for the CIA. Like the team he once played for, he just disappeared without leaving a forwarding address.

  The Pilots left town but Ray Oyler didn’t. Made to feel welcome for the first time in his career by the existence of the Ray Oyler fan club, Oyler bought a home in Seattle. Today he works in town as a salesman, a local hero without a team.

  I got a chuckle out of Steve Barber’s new job. He owns a car care center in Las Vegas. He has a bunch of cars all lined up getting cortisone shots, whirlpool massage, and diathermy treatment.

  Dooley Womack, for whom I was once traded, is a carpet salesman in Columbia, South Carolina. I got a funny letter about Dooley just the other day. It seems that an all-night disc jockey in Syracuse, New York, asked his listeners recently, “Who or what was, or is, a Dooley Womack?” Some of the more interesting responses were: a guided missile, a computer, a famous sunken ship, a mixed drink, a New Wave rock ‘n’ roll band, the first Polish astronaut, an old car like the Edsel, a former Miss America, one of Captain Hook’s pirates, a comic strip character, a type of dance, a CB term, a gospel singer, or one of Howard Hughes’ airplanes. After about 30 minutes somebody called in to say he was a ballplayer. I like to think that Ball Four added to Dooley’s fame.

  THE DEVIANT

  The aftermath of the book hasn’t all been fun. I got a hint that some players might not like it shortly after it came out. Someone calling himself an ex-teammate sent me a newspaper clipping critical of Ball Four. There was a note scrawled across it, which said that my writing would, “gag a maggot.” I can’t be sure, but I think it may have been Fred Talbot. Who else could have come up with the maggot line?

  And there have been a few unpleasant encounters, like the one with my main man, Joe Schultz. A year after the book came out I was a sportscaster from New York covering spring training in Florida. Before a game one day I spotted Joe Schultz, then a Detroit Tiger coach, hitting fungos to some infielders. I hadn’t spoken to Joe in almost two years. Naturally, I had to go over and say hello.

  I half expected him to tell me I was throwing too much out in the bullpen. Instead, he said he didn’t want to talk to me, that he hadn’t read my book, but he’d heard about it. When I tried to tell Joe that he came off as a good guy, Billy Martin, the Tiger manager at the time, who’s a bad guy, came running across the field hollering for me to get the hell out (this was before Martin wrote his tell-all book). Because I’ve grown accustomed to the shape of my nose, I got the hell out. The sad part is that I never had a chance to invite Joe to go out and pound the ol’ Budweiser.

  Billy Martin probably never read the book, either, but like Joe and many others, he believed the book was somehow a bad thing. The most incredible thing to me about the book has been the overwhelming negative reaction by so many players and coaches. What’s more, they’re still angry, even though the books that have come after mine make Ball Four, as an exposé, read like The Bobbsey Twins Go To The Seashore.

  Why so much anger? It couldn’t have been that I said Mickey Mantle hung out in bars. Last time I flipped on the TV there was Mantle, in a bar, bragging about how much beer he used to drink. He can’t even make up his mind which beer he likes best.

  It couldn’t be that I said Whitey Ford used to scuff up the baseballs to make them do tricks on the way to the plate. In his own book, Whitey recently went into even greater detail about how he used to doctor the balls. Maybe these guys are mad because they wanted the stories for their books.


  There had to be some explanation for the intensity and longevity of baseball’s collective anger toward me. And I think I know now what the answer is; a behavioral scientist explained it to me.

  In any human group, family, tribe (or baseball team), there are norms—shared expectations of behavior. Any member who deviates from these norms calls into question the basic values of the group. And groups don’t like to have their basic values questioned. It makes them nervous.

  A famous rule of major-league baseball is posted on every clubhouse wall: “What you say here, what you do here, let it stay here, when you leave here.” I broke that rule, which makes me a deviant, sociologically speaking. Studies have shown that in order for rules to exist, deviant members must be punished by the group. This is usually done according to the following criteria: The more primary a group is felt to be by its members, the more violent the punishment will be. (Many players think of baseball as family.) The less status a deviant member has, the less tolerant the group will be toward him. (If Mickey Mantle had written Ball Four he would have gotten away with it. A relief pitcher on the Seattle Pilots has no business being a deviant.) In addition, the more authoritarian a group’s personality is, the less tolerant it will be toward a deviant. (This explains about the Commissioner and the owners.)

  However, I am happy to report that while the deviant shakes everybody up, he performs valuable functions for the group. For one thing, the deviant relieves tensions by acting as an acceptable outlet for group frustrations (very helpful in baseball where only a few can play at the top, and of those, only half do well at the other half’s expense). Second, the deviant helps the group unite in times of uncertainty and change. If group members can’t agree on important issues (salaries, contracts, free agency, etc.), at least they can be united against the deviant. Third, uniting against the deviant by asserting common ideals gives group members the reassurance of a solid front and strengthens their sense of worthiness (especially important to men making large sums of money playing a game).