Sports Radio Interviews

Jim Bouton’s Classic Tale – ‘Ball Four’

Well, I’ve just added something to my ‘To Read’ list.  ‘Ball Four’ is Jim Bouton’s memoir of most of his Major League Baseball career, with the highlight being his only season on the Seattle Pilots’ roster.  He was basically a reporter dressed in a baseball uni.  This is an extension of many sports fans’ fantasies – full inhibited access to the locker room – a fly on the wall that knew how to use a typewriter.  So, here we are 39 years after Bouton scribbled out all his teammates’ stories and people still call it one of the classic sports writings of all-time (not just baseball).  Bouton joined Dan Needles and Drew Olson on ESPN Milwaukee to discuss the origins of the memoir and he also weighed in on the steroid controversy.

On what made the text special:

“I was really the eyes and ears for everybody; the game itself was what was funny – I captured it, yes, but I had a great team of guys.  First of all, Seattle Pilots were an expansion team, made up of players nobody else wanted, so you had a bunch of guys who were over the hill.  And, fortunately the Pilots instead of trying to draft young players for the future, they draft a bunch of old guys.  So, now, you have all these guys whose best years are behind them and they’re playing together for the first time and so they’re getting to know each other and they’re telling their stories.  So, I’m sitting there, with my little notepad, and popcorn boxes and cocktail napkins, whatever I could get my hands on to write down what the players were talking about… It was like storytelling time – I caught lightning in a bottle really.  It was as if Major League Baseball put a team together and said, well, they’re not gonna win many games but if somebody writes a book, this is a hell of a ballclub.”

On the most important element of the book, his teammates:

“The characters in the book were so funny and so interesting that they live on.  You pick up the book today and Fred Talbot is just as funny now as he was back then (laughs), and Ray Oyler and Don Mincher and those guys, Mike Hegan.  They’ve become immortalized in a way, you know what I mean.  You just can’t ever forget those guys.  I just decided I was gonna keep notes that summer and who knew, every once in a while you get lucky and I certainly got lucky with that cast of characters, I’ll tell ya.”

His take on the performance enhancement controversy:

“The player’s association has let the players down by not insisting on tougher drug rules.  The owners wanted to do that too – they could have easily joined forces with them but they saw, I don’t know, they were elevating the players’ rights to privacy above the players’ rights to good health and fair competition among their teammates and opposing players.  The privacy rights was far outweighed by the other considerations of fairness and good health.  That was a very big strategic mistake by the Player’s Association and they’re still paying for that today.  I don’t know if players will ever get the respect they deserve – the guys who were not on steroids – because everybody is tainted with it now.”

Listen to Jim Bouton with Dan Needles and Drew Olson on ESPN Milwaukee

Tags: Ball Four, Classic Literature, Jim Bouton, MLB, Seattle Pilots