Jim Bouton: The ballplayer
who changed the rules

Good bye, Gentleman Jim.

One of my favorites is the harmonica incident, where Phil Linz was playing his harmonica on the bus after a tough loss. Yogi Berra told him to stop playing. Linz was seated in the back of the bus and couldn't hear Yogi, so he asked what he said. Mickey Mantle told Linz, "He said to play it louder. " Yogi was not amused. And then there's the whole interaction between Doug Rader and Jay Alou. Especially the birthday cake. Priceless. Very eye opening to me as an impressionable young baseball fan in the 70s.

The funniest sports book I ever read not written by Dan Jenkins (the best and most consistent LOL writer who ever lived (RIP)). You could tell why Bouton was generally not that popular with teammates. A know-it-all liberal who didn't mind letting you know that he was smarter and more well-read than you. Not smart in a 60's-era locker room. RIP, Jim.

I don't want to say Mickey was drunk, but he spent about a half an hour trying to make a telephone call from a grandfather's clock. So he comes into the ballpark the following morning, and he's hungover. And the manager says, you know, sleep it off. Most managers were players themselves. They understand you come to the ballpark once in a while with a hangover. So Mick is sleeping in the trainer's room. We're playing the Minnesota Twins. We get - stick somebody else in the outfield. And so the game's going on, and it gets tie score after nine innings. And in about the 12th inning, the manager says, I hate to do it, but I need a pinch hitter in the 13th. Go in and wake up the Mick. So we go in the trainer's room, you know, wake up Mickey Mantle, dress him in his uniform, steer him through the tunnel up into the dugout. Thirteenth inning comes around - he put a bat in Mickey's hands and point him in the direction of home plate. The Mick staggers up to the plate. Fortunately, he's a switch hitter - doesn't matter what side he gets on - steps into the batter's box. To show you what a great athlete this guy was - and Mickey was the best ballplayer I ever saw - he takes one practice swing and hits the first pitch into the center field bleachers, a tremendous blast 450 feet away. We win the game. The crowd is going nuts, and the players are going crazy in the dugout. We're laughing and pointing and screaming and slapping each other on the back. And suddenly, it occurs to us he still has to round those bases. There's a rule in baseball that you must touch the bases in order. Fortunately, he heads off in the right direction. The minute he hits first base, the entire dugout goes, make a left - goes around, touches second, touches third, comes across, misses home plate - we have to send him back for that - comes over to the dugout. And, of course, the fans are giving him a standing ovation. And as he's waving to the crowd, he looks at us in the dugout, and he says, those people don't know how tough that really was. I went over to his locker afterwards, and I said, how did you do that? You couldn't even see up there. He said, it was very simple. I hit the middle ball. Jim Bouton

The Yanks also retired Billy Martin's number one and Joe Torre's number six. There are no single digit uniform numbers left available. Bouton recounted that he wore a cap that was a couple of sizes too large so that it would fly off in order to distract the hitter. All that said, Ball Four was a hilarious book. I read it in college and it was a helluva lot more interesting than Paradise Lost. I recall Bouton becoming a pariah for violating the sanctity of the clubhouse after the book was published.

Gosh, I read "Ball Four" when it first came out. Certainly changed my opinion of professional baseball.