James Alan Bouton was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the New York Yankees (1962-1968), Seattle Pilots (1969), Houston Astros (1969-1970), and Atlanta Braves (1978). Jim, his nickname, had a ten-year career, won two-of-the-three wins the Bronx Bombers had in the 1964 World Series ( Game 3 & Game 6 ), was a 20-game winner the year prior, but is most often remembered for what he did with his typewriter -- authoring Ball Four , the only sports book on the New York Public Library's list of the best books of the entire 20th century !

Ball Four Book: First Edition | Authored by Jim Bouton | World Publishing (1970) | Amazon

Bulldog Publishing, along with Jim Bouton, released an update to the book in 2014, that also included an updated Epilogue. The press release said:

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a "social leper" for having violated the "sanctity of the clubhouse." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn't true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn't read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries.

Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four . Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people--often wildly funny people. Many readers said it gave them strength to get through a difficult period in their lives. Serious critics called it an important document.

David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper's that said of Bouton: "He has written... a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book."

In 1999, Ball Four was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the "Books of the Century." And Time magazine chose it as one of the "100 Greatest Non-Fiction" books.

Besides changing the image of athletes, the book played a role in the economic revolution in pro sports. In 1975, Ball Four was accepted as legal evidence against the owners at the arbitration hearing, which lead to free agency in baseball and, by extension, to other sports.

Today, Ball Four has taken on another role--as a time capsule of life in the 60s. "It is not just a diary of Bouton's 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros," says sportswriter Jim Caple. "It's a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a "tell all book" is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California."

Jim Bouton Rookie Card | 1962 Topps Baseball Card (#592 | Checklist ) | Baseball Almanac Collection
Jim Bouton was a knuckleball pitcher, a relatively rare group of twirlers whose primary pitch was the knuckleball. His 62 career wins, puts Bouton in the Top 20 all time amongst fellow knuckleballers!

Did you know that Jim Bouton was the first big league player out of Bloom Township High School, located in Chicago Heights, Illinois?

Did you know that Jim Bouton was the first - and only Seattle Pilots player to wear #56 in a regular season game? The franchise relocated after just one year, becoming the modern day Milwaukee Brewers , and the number wasn't worn again until 1980. Do you know who used it that year? [ Answer ]

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