by Jim Bouton
We had a great manager named Bobby Dews. Bobby also happened to be 39 years old and going through a few changes of his own. He used to be a wild man. The players told stories about the time he got ejected from a game and took third base with him on the way out. Which made a lot more sense than the time he kicked dirt on home plate and broke his toe. When I played for Dews at Savannah he had calmed down a lot. I asked him why. “I finally got to the point where I felt confident and didn’t have to bluff anybody anymore,” he said. “Then I got to know some umpires and found out that a couple of them were actually human.” At the end of that summer Bobby got called up to the major leagues. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
It was a helluva ballclub, too. What the Savannah Braves lacked in ability we made up in spirit. One night we lost a game in Knoxville, Tennessee, 17–1, got on a bus and drove all night to Montgomery, Alabama, and kicked their ass 10–2. The memories of those bus rides will be with me forever. We’d play poker by flashlight on the back of the bus ’till three o’clock in the morning and then stagger into a truck stop four hours later for breakfast.
It was a wonderful summer but it was not without a great deal of pain. My wife and I decided to separate.
This was a major and frightening step into the unknown for both of us. Aside from the hurt of ending a 15-year relationship, there were all those questions. What would it do to the kids? Would they think they were from a broken home, or would this be called a rearranged family network? What would our family and friends think? We hardly talked about our problems to each other much less discussed them with others. And we had this public image of togetherness, reinforced by Ball Four, which increased the pressure to keep up a facade. And finally, was this the right decision for the two of us? Should we stay and try to work it out and maybe settle for some compromise, or would a clean break heal quicker? Whether we had guessed right or wrong, only the future would tell.
My life was changing and I felt somehow older, without feeling old. Whatever was happening inside my head produced terrific results on the mound. I pitched a one-hitter, a two-hitter, and a thirteen-inning shutout, pitching in a-hundred-degree heat after all-night bus rides and with two days’ rest. In three months I had won twelve games and pitched the league’s least experienced team to a division championship. In September the Atlanta Braves called me up to the major leagues. I had made it to Emerald City.
THE BIG LEAGUES
When I walked into Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, I was floating as if in a dream. How large it was compared to the tiny stadiums I’d been playing in for two years. When I got into my uniform with my old No. 56 on it and went out to the field, I could feel my heart pounding under my shirt. And what a feeling it was standing on the mound listening to the national anthem, waiting to pitch my first game. I felt like I was standing on top of Mount Everest. I thought to myself how lucky I was to experience this twice in the same lifetime.
My first pitch to Dodger second baseman Davey Lopes was a called strike and the crowd cheered. Four pitches later, with a full count, Lopes struck out swinging on a dancing knuckler and the crowd roared. I felt like Rocky. After I got the next two hitters on easy outs, I ran to the dugout and threw my arms up in a victory salute. In the fourth inning the Dodgers broke up my perfect game, my no hitter, and my ballgame by scoring five runs. But the day was more important than the game and it had been extraordinary fun. I laughed a lot—until I read the newspapers the next day.
“He showed me nothing,” said Lopes. “Nothing.” “It was a circus,” said Reggie Smith. “It was like batting against Bozo the Clown,” said Rick Monday. “The Commissioner should investigate this,” said Cincinnati manager Sparky Anderson. “We’re in a pennant race. Bouton should have to pitch against the Giants and Reds, too.”
Incredible! Sparky was losing a pennant, so I understood about him but why were the Dodgers so angry? My phone was ringing off the hook from reporters wanting to know what I thought. I didn’t know what to say except that I felt sorry for the Dodgers who were obviously suffering from sun stroke.
In his next game, Bozo the Clown beat the San Francisco Giants, 4–1. The pennant-contending San Francisco Giants. It would have been 4–0, but I threw a double play ball into centerfield. After the game, reporters asked me if I won because it was windy. I said that was it. The wind blew hot dog wrappers around the field and the batters couldn’t see the ball. I had won my first major-league game since July 11, 1970. I couldn’t wait for the reviews.
“Next time I’m going to bring up my little boy to bat against him,” said Bill Madlock, who was hitless in two at bats. “It was the most humiliating experience of my life,” said Darrell Evans, who had a pop fly double in three at bats. “He was terrible,” said Mike Ivie, who was hitless in three at bats. I almost forgot who won the game.
Johnny Sain told me later I had revolutionized the sport by inventing a new way to judge baseball ability. Results in a game didn’t count anymore. You just ask the opposition what they think.
Maybe the hitters were confused by how I got them out. Players today don’t mind being outmuscled, but they hate being outsmarted. It’s a macho thing. When Atlanta relief pitcher Gene Garber ended Pete Rose’s hitting streak in 1979 by getting him out with a change-up, Rose got mad. He said Garber should have “challenged” him with a fastball. I used to challenge the hitters when I was young. Now I couldn’t, of course, but more significantly, I didn’t have to. That summer I felt more in control on a pitcher’s mound than I ever have in my life. All the stuff I needed was inside my head.
It wasn’t my lack of speed which threw them off, as the hitters claimed. All season long these guys clobber batting practice pitchers (usually old coaches) who throw the ball even slower than I do. No, what mostly did them in was their own conviction that they ought to be knocking this old sportscaster out of the box in the first inning. I understood that the duel between pitcher and hitter was a relationship and I was able to use their anger to my advantage. By feeling instead of thinking, my body chose the proper pitch, speed, and location. All I had to do was execute. It’s like bullfighting, where the bull knows the fighter is out there but he can’t quite get ahold of him.
After I beat the Giants, I pitched a few more games. My next start came against my old team, the Houston Astros. Returning to the Astrodome brought back a flood of memories. When I walked out onto the familiar artificial turf I thought I heard Harry Walker calling to me from across the field. And I remembered the night I struck out eleven Pittsburgh Pirates a long, long time ago.
This time I only struck out one but I pitched seven innings. My opponent, J. Rodney Richard, maybe the hardest thrower in baseball, chose the occasion to break the modern league strikeout record for right-handers. The young flamethrower and the old junkballer were each taken out for pinch hitters in the eighth inning with the score tied 2–2. A standoff. I loved the contrast. There was no criticism this time, just silence.
Then Sparky Anderson of the Reds got his wish. I pitched against Cincinnati, and they did beat me, but only 2–1. I allowed just five hits. Reds centerfielder Ken Griffey swung so hard at a third strike he actually fell down on home plate. After the game Anderson said, “We didn’t even hit the ball hard off him and we got two runs we shouldn’t have gotten.” Sparky Anderson is a gentleman.
It’s interesting that the response from the baseball establishment to what I had done was a resounding silence. A two-year odyssey through the minor leagues by a 39-year-old man who finally makes it may be one of the best testimonials baseball has ever had. Yet the Commissioner of the sport never uttered a peep, never even sent the congratulatory telegram. And at the New York Baseball Writers Dinner that winter after my comeback, only one player was not announced as being in attendance. It was yours truly, the deviant.
THE EPILOGUE
During my comeback, I had been telling people that Hoyt Wilhelm threw knuckleballs in the big leagues until he was 48, which meant I had about ten yea
rs left. Actually, I thought I’d play about five years but by the time I got called up, I knew I wouldn’t even stay around that long. In an article I wrote for Sports Illustrated two years ago, I explained my reasons for not going back. (I had thought of saying it was because baseball didn’t deserve me but that sounded a little too arrogant, even for me.) What I said was that being there was not as much fun as getting there. That the real experience of baseball was the bus rides and the country ballparks and the chili at 3 A.M. with a bunch of guys chasing a dream. And it was true enough.
But there was another reason for not going back. And it had to do with why I attempted a comeback in the first place. When I started out with Bill Veeck’s Knoxville White Sox some people said it was a publicity stunt. Publicity for what, they didn’t say. They never explained why I would leave a New York television station five nights a week to get my name in a Knoxville newspaper once a week.
Other people said I was doing it to gather material for another book. Not a bad guess, although it would have to be a helluva book to justify the sacrifice in income. A few people said I just loved baseball and that certainly was true but that was only part of it. The ones who said I was crazy were probably the closest. Johnny Sain hit it right on the nose when he said I wanted to do something nobody had ever done before.
Making it to the major leagues a second time was going to be the ultimate achievement that would finally do it for me. Do what? I wasn’t sure. I only knew that I didn’t feel right about myself and it had something to do with acceptance and recognition. The funny part is that what did it for me happened off the ballfield and it happened long before I ever made it back to the majors.
It began when a magic lady had this strange idea that I was somebody special. This was a view of me I wasn’t used to. In spite of the public recognition I had received, I privately held a different view—one I had always had—which was that I was not quite good enough no matter what I did and anything I had achieved was somehow a lucky accident.
For a long while I didn’t trust Paula’s feelings about me. I kept expecting she would change her mind once she got to know me. I used to say to her, “You don’t really know me.” It was when she persisted in her view of me as special, that the summer took on a new meaning for me. The challenge of making it to the majors became secondary to the challenge of changing the way I thought about myself. This change business was a whole different ballgame.
A negative self-image is hard to shake in a world which confirms that image by reflecting back what we feel about ourselves. What’s more, when you’ve lived with something all your life you can’t see it easily. Comedian Buddy Hackett tells a funny story about how he didn’t know what heartburn was until one day he didn’t have it. He had just joined the army and for the first time in his life he wasn’t eating his mother’s cooking. When he woke up the next morning he was terrified. He ran into the infirmary hollering, “Help me, I’m dying. The fire went out.” Which just goes to show what you can get used to. And it also shows that new feelings, even if they’re an improvement on old ones, can be scary.
On the baseball field I had a chance to try out the “new” me and I discovered a kind of power I’d never had before. What a relief it was to be free of the feeling that I needed to invent a cure for cancer or be the first person to jump off a building and fly. The irony is that losing the feeling that I had to top myself gave me the strength and the freedom to do just that. Making the big leagues a second time seemed almost easy. And instead of it elevating me to some new level, it didn’t seem like that big a deal.
Paula had called it way back in her second letter to me, which I hadn’t understood at the time. She had said that one day I would finally come to know myself as worthy and strong and it would no longer be necessary to prove it, or to pick up burdens unnecessarily just to convince myself I could carry them.
Having found what I was looking for, I was able to stop running. It was no longer necessary to play baseball, nor was it even possible. I needed to stay around and build a new life for myself and the kids. I’d been a part-time father for too long and I wanted to organize a new family.
And some family it is. There are seven of us now. Besides Paula and me there are her two kids: Lee (20) and Hollis (18), plus my three: Michael (now 17), David (16), and Laurie, (15), who stays half the time with her mother. We all live in a small Tudor house we call “Teen City.” Or “the Zoo.” When the stereos are all going at the same time (which is too often) it feels like we’re living inside the speakers at a rock concert. And when everybody’s home the front of the house looks like a used car lot. That’s a good feeling.
Things haven’t always felt that good. Like the day I told Michael, David, and Laurie that their mother and I were actually going to split. I took them to a local park and we sat on the grass. Then I told them I loved them very much and that I wanted all three of them to live with me all of the time. I said I was sure their mother wanted the same thing and so they had some choices to make. They could live with either one of us full time, part time, two days a week, every other week, go back and forth, whatever. And they could always change their minds whenever they wanted to. I told them they were old enough to make their own decisions and I felt certain that no judge would tell them where they had to live. It would always be up to them. And that’s the way it’s been.
What’s really nice is how well the kids from both families have blended together, contributing their own special talents and interests.
Lee, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, is the new adult in the family reporting back from the outside world. He’s the one the others look up to, partly because he’s six foot two. Lee has decided to study law because of his cool logic and natural aptitude and as he says, “because it seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
Hollis, a high school senior, is perceptive and sensitive like her mother and a natural born comedienne. She does expert imitations of everything from her French teacher to a dead cockroach and performs impromptu skits which Laurie enters into with great gusto. Hollis is also thinking of law but for slightly different reasons. She wants to “wheel and deal and make big bucks.”
Michael, whom you last saw at age six, is now shaving and taking driving lessons from Dad. Talk about time warp. These days Mike is into filmmaking and politics. He cares passionately about things and shows up at no-nuke rallies and worked hard for John Anderson. Mike is also very good with young children and could make a terrific teacher some day. A high school senior like Hollis, he too is sending out college applications. Except he’s a little nervous about it. To cover all contingencies, he’s applied to every college east of the Mississippi.
David (a.k.a. Kyong Jo), now sixteen and a junior, leads the family in nicknames. Besides “the mean Korean,” which Hollis tagged him with after watching him play hockey, there is “Kato” because he creeps up on silent feet and “Pookie” because he’s so cute. David is not sure what he wants to do yet, or even who he is. Looking among some old papers recently, we found the name and address of his mother in Korea. He’s debating about whether he wants to write to her and try to find his roots. He hasn’t seen her since he was four and there may be some pain involved. On the other hand, it’s a pain not knowing certain things. As David says, “the trouble with being adopted is that you don’t know whether you’re going to be short, or bald, or gray, or what.”
Laurie, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” is still unsinkable. And it’s a good thing because it’s tough being the only one living in two houses. One of the benefits, of course, is having two sets of friends and going to twice as many parties. Laurie has a number of interests but her main goal is to become famous. She’s at that stage now where she will suddenly appear in a doorway wearing earrings and high heels while carrying a stuffed animal. She can’t seem to make up her mind, but just in case adulthood wins out, she’s practicing walking and sitting glamorously. Recently Laurie walked into a beauty parlor where Paula was taking her for a h
aircut and the hairdresser, who didn’t know the connection, took one look at her and said, “This has got to be Jim Bouton’s kid.” In spite of the fact that Laurie looks exactly like me, she’s very pretty and getting beautiful. Until she becomes famous she’s working as a candy striper at a nearby hospital and is one of the world’s great babysitters.
Meanwhile, the “Professor and the Jock,” as we are sometimes referred to around the house, are working separately and together on a variety of things. In addition to writing and lecturing, we both do industrial consulting which, as a friend of ours said recently, is better than working for a living.
Paula also gives seminars and is the behavioral director for a chain of weight control clinics. She’s presently working on a dietless weight control book which explains how existing weight control programs maintain the system which keeps people fat. I told her that after the book comes out, the people in the weight control business probably won’t talk to her anymore.
One of my favorite things to do these days is to videotape corporate conventions. I tape everything from the business meeting and the president’s speech to the golf tournament and the cocktail party. Then I edit a ten-minute cassette that they can use as an image builder, a performance incentive, or a recruiting tool. Ever since my years as a TV reporter I’ve enjoyed the challenge of putting a story together creatively. The great thing is that these guys never refuse to be interviewed. And if you play something backwards, they love it.
You may also see me promoting something called Big League Chew. It’s shredded bubblegum in a tobacco style pouch, designed for ballplayers and other kids. My partner, Rob Nelson, and I dreamed it up out in the Portland Maverick bullpen while we were sitting around one day drowning bugs in tobacco juice.
