The tell-all book that changed baseball

Jim Boughton, a one-time starting pitcher for the New York Yankees during the mid-1960s, obtained national notoriety after the publication of Ball Four in 1970. When David Letterman asked Boughton to describe the book in 1982, here's what he said. Well, it was a diary of a major league baseball season in 1969, a diary of an expansion team, the Seattle Pilots. But I guess it was considered controversial because it was the first sports book to tell what it was really like in the locker rooms and the dugouts, what the players actually said on the bus. And it used the language of the locker room and told some things that hadn't been told before in a sports book. Critics called the book garbage, insisting that anyone could have written it so long as they were disposed to break the player's code of silence. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn said it was detrimental to the game, and some of Boughton's teammates would never forgive his acknowledged violation of an unofficial rule. Here's what he said to David Letterman. It is a sign in every clubhouse. It says what you say here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here. It's the same sign they have in the CIA. So you have an iconoclast, a rule breaker, and more than a few players, including the game's stars, disliked what he had done. Hank Aaron, characterized Boughton's writings as those of someone peeping inside the clubhouse, eavesdropping on players, and then revealing what had occurred. For their part, American boys devoured Ball 4. They wanted to know what it was really like in the big leagues. After all, who doesn't want to know what public figures say and do in private? But why do people still take an interest in this piece of Let's talk about Ball 4, the book that changed baseball. Between 1963 and 1964, Jim Boughton won 39 games for the New York Yankees, and in the 1964 World Series, he beat the Cardinals twice. He threw hard and had an excellent changeup. But then an arm injury altered his career trajectory. Without a dominating fastball, he was moved to the bullpen, where he had to rely on the difficult to throw knuckleball, a skill pitch demonstrated here by R.A. Dickey. The problem for Boughton was that teams and managers don't always trust the unreliable knuckleball, and so the Yankees sold Boughton to the Seattle Pilots in 1968. He went from the Big Apple to an expansion team out west. On the suggestion of New York sports writer Leonard Schechter, Boughton decided to keep a diary about the 1969 season, and teammates knew he was up to something because he made notes in it all season long. A decade earlier, Jim Brosnan kept a diary about the ups and downs of the 1959 season, and his book addressed sensitive topics such as race and marital infidelity. But it did not garner great media attention. Ball 4 talked about one of the game's most beloved players. Boughton revealed that Yankee star Mickey Mantle did not always sign autographs for admiring children, and in one funny anecdote, Boughton told a story about Mantle coming off the bench in extra innings to hit a winning home run despite a terrible hangover. Speaking to NPR's Terry Gross in 1986, he told of what it was like to finally reach the big leagues. Well, did you have illusions when you were growing up of baseball players being perfect human beings? Sure. And very pure. I thought they were all American kids. I really did. I thought you didn't drink, you didn't smoke, and you didn't stay out late at night, and that's how you got to the big leagues. And that's pretty much how I lived my life when I was a kid. And I finally got to the big leagues. My first night with the New York Yankees, we were on a road trip in Washington D.C. I'll never forget this. We're staying at the Shoreham Hotel, and at three o'clock in the morning, there's a knock on my door, and it's Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Cleet Boyer, Ralph Terry. Half the team are there. They want to take me up on the roof of the Shoreham Hotel to get drunk and look in windows. And I realized I wasn't in shape to be a major league ball player. This is look in windows to see women undressed. Whatever. But it was crazy. I mean, I said, gee, is this what it's like to be in the big leagues? But I mean, I wasn't turned off by it. I wasn't disgusted by it. I just said, this is this is crazy. This is wacky. This is funny. Well, Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn did not think it was funny. He asked Boughton to sign a statement saying that what he had written was untrue, and Boughton refused. Never one to be intimidated by authority figures, he had already spoken up about a range of issues, such as the Vietnam War, which he opposed, and racial injustice, which he acknowledged as a problem in the United States. I didn't write it because I wanted to do something bad for baseball, said Boughton. I didn't write it because I wanted to do something good for baseball. I just wanted to write it because I wanted to tell what it was really like. Well, such candor upset the baseball establishment and did not endear him to players. After all, who likes it when a friend or co-worker reveals what is said or done in private spaces? Famously, Pete Rose stood on top of the dugout during a game and shouted at him, F you Shakespeare. Parents worried about the book's potentially negative influence on their children. Kids should know about Mickey Mantle getting drunk at 3 a.m. Institutions don't like anything that might tarnish their brand, so Major League Baseball felt threatened by the unflattering depiction of its teams and players. Journalists didn't like the book and owners felt threatened because they didn't want anyone talking about the low salaries they paid players. Let's listen to Boughton speak with Ken Paulson in 2003 about the reaction of journalists to his book. Partly jealous because I had access that they didn't have. I was in the bullpen. I was in the dugouts, etc. I was on the buses, so they might have been a little jealous of that. And I think they had decided what should and shouldn't be said about baseball. They had established the boundaries, and when I crossed those boundaries, they were almost angrier at me than the players were. And of course the baseball owners were upset, but not because locker room stories and, you know, behind-the-scenes secrets, but the owners were upset with Ball Four because it was the book to tell people how difficult it was to make a living in baseball. It changed, I think what I'm most proud of, I think it changed the perception of how people felt about ball players in terms of, you know, making a lot of money that they made a lot of money they didn't, and it showed that baseball players were basically mistreated. In view of Ball Four's commercial success, one could view Boughton's motives for writing it as financial, but I don't think it was ever principally about money. Boughton disliked the false image of wholesome, heroic athletes, and he did not see anyone or anything as beyond criticism. Boughton is both a good writer and an intelligent observer. But beyond any controversy the book generated, Ball Four is valuable because it documented a different era. Major League Baseball's minimum salary in 1967 was just $6,000, a shockingly low figure, and players agreed to their salaries on an annual basis without the benefit of advice from sports agents. Because most players lacked education, they were vulnerable during contract negotiations, and owners deliberately deceived players about who earned what salary. This was also a time before athletic trainers and physical conditioning. Players had jobs during the winter, and most could not focus on fitness during the offseason. Nobody was drinking protein shakes or lifting weights, and coaching staffs did not do much coaching. Here is Boughton speaking to Peter Sagal, host of NPR's news quiz Wait Wait Don't Tell Me in 2012. One of the things in your book is you suggest that the coaches and managers have no effect. Is that true? Well, at that time it was. Today I don't know what impact the manager has and what impact the coaches have because I'm really not close enough to the game. But back then the manager was usually some former player who everybody liked, and then he chose a coaching staff made up of basically his drinking buddies. I mean, so that was very unscientific. Right. Very unscientific back then. That was way before, you know, sabermetrics and all that stuff. And you have guys coming in and telling you to do one thing one day, and the next day they'd come in and they'd say, do something else. And you'd be like, I have no what? Yeah. Well, they would say like, hey, what do you do with that baseball? I was going to take it out and say throw it. No, put it back in the bag. The baseballs don't come out until later. You know, that kind of stuff. Well, that's an important bit of guidance for you. This exchange is a reminder of how different things are today. Pitchers and hitters carefully analyze each other's mechanics in video rooms. The average major league salary is over $4 million. And front offices analyze every movement on the field using advanced technology. Ball four documented the culture of baseball before pitch counts or free agency or drug testing. Players use dextroamphetamine to stay awake and focused. Ball clubs provided beer after the game, and some players got into the beer cooler before the game was over. Bowden would later say, today they treat the players like thoroughbred horses. We were farm animals. Rereading parts of the book, I'm reminded of three things. First, it's funny. Bowden zeroes in on what is absurd or humorous about different situations. The quotes and descriptions of coaches and teammates are amusing, and Bowden laughs at himself as much as anyone else. That attitude and storytelling ability is one reason why he got invited to appear on so many talk shows. He's interesting. Second, it captures the ups and downs of a fringe ballplayer fighting to stay in the show. Bowden actually got demoted to the minor league Vancouver Mounties for two weeks at the beginning of the season. What that meant for his wife Bobby was a host of headaches. Paying the first and last month rent for a house in Vancouver, enrolling their children in new schools, and a much more fundamental question. Will Jim make it back to the majors or have a job in three months? Uncertainty makes the narrative gripping, and that's even before a midseason trade to the Houston Astros, a city some 2,000 miles away from Seattle. Third, Ball 4 humanizes professional athletes. We see how these big strong guys can be immature or afraid, how they get along as a team, deal with wins and losses, and travel together. It's a slice of life, and the rich human portrait means we better understand the challenges faced by players, coaches, and even umpires. There's a widespread recognition of Ball 4's cultural and literary significance. The New York Public Library selected Ball 4 as one of the best books of the 20th century, quite an accolade for a professional athlete to be on the same list as James Joyce and Franz Kafka. Other memoirs have revealed what goes on in the locker room, but very few of those are as perceptive or readable as Ball 4. Slugger Jose Canseco released a tell-all book about steroid usage in baseball titled Juiced. It certainly had an impact on the game, but it's not going to be revised and updated multiple times. In contrast, the personal papers of Jim Bouton are now preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Jim Bouton, who died in 2019, lived an interesting life with many different chapters. He represented the state of New Jersey as a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1972. He pursued an acting career in film and television, although not a successful one. He attempted a baseball comeback in his late 30s that involved several years of struggling in the minor leagues before a brief return to the majors with the Atlanta Braves in 1978. He co-invented Big League Chew, a gum much coveted by kids like myself in the 1980s, and he authored four more books, including one novel. As an older man, Bouton stayed active. He took an interest in the politics of historical preservation, played vintage baseball, and reconciled with teammate Mickey Mantle. Books can introduce a process of change or accelerate it, and Ball 4 was one of those books. Jim Bouton's diary of the 1969 season has had a lasting impact. It drew attention to poorly paid ballplayers and helped move the sport towards salary arbitration. Perhaps more significantly, Ball 4 convinced many journalists and readers to dispense with their previous idealization of athletes and take a more realistic and a more honest attitude towards their enjoyment of the sport. Here are some of the sources I consulted for this video. Let me know what you think in the comments, and thanks for watching.