Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics)

by Jim Bouton

  Even Bowie Kuhn wrote about Mantle’s drinking in his own book, Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner. I mention it here to help his sales, which I figure is only fair. Kuhn said that Mantle and Billy Martin were running around drunk in some hotel trying to round up votes against his reelection. All I’ve got to say about that is, “Commissioner, how could you? These guys are heroes. You’ve done the game a grave disservice.”

  But the guy who has the most fun with Mickey’s reputation as a boozer is Mickey himself. On the corporate lecture circuit one of Mickey’s standing jokes is, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

  Lately, people have been asking me if ballplayers today behave worse than the players I wrote about twenty years ago. They are referring to players taking drugs, the Wade Boggs affair with Margo Adams, Steve Garvey fathering several kids out of wedlock and Pete Rose’s gambling.

  Actually, the players aren’t any different today, it’s just that the world is a much more dangerous place. And players, as always, are ill-equipped to deal with it.

  Years ago, most of the team would go out and drink after a ballgame. A few guys would get drunk and eventually some would become alcoholics. But today, just a few snorts of cocaine at a party can turn any ballplayer into an addict.

  It’s the same thing with sex. Years ago, we had girlfriends on the road but they were happy just to be girlfriends. It was fair for both sides. The players liked convenient sex and the women liked the status of sleeping with a ballplayer. Our biggest fear was getting the clap.

  Now that ballplayers are making big money, some girlfriends want to make a good living, too. That’s why this person named Margo Adams sued Boston Red Sox batting champ Wade Boggs for “palimony.” Getting the clap is nothing compared to getting clapped with a 12-million-dollar lawsuit.

  Why do ballplayers have to take drugs and have girlfriends in the first place? This may come as a shock to some people but it’s because they’re human beings. Young human beings. Think of a ballplayer as a fifteen-year-old in a twenty-five-year-old body.

  Being a professional athlete allows you to postpone your adulthood. You grow up in Hero World. Parents change the dinner schedule for you, teachers help with grades, coaches fawn over you, cops ask for an autograph and someone else buys the drinks. Or worse. As basketball great Bill Russell put it, “most professional athletes have been on scholarship since the third grade.”

  And a lifetime spent developing one skill doesn’t allow much time to develop others. Lots of athletes can’t function in the real world. That’s why they only feel comfortable in each other’s company. They sense that something is missing in their lives, but they’re not sure what. At the same time, they feel invincible because of their success on the field.

  This combination of emotional immaturity and physical ability makes athletes uniquely vulnerable to temptation. They can’t “just say no.” They’re too busy trying to fit in and show how great they are at the same time.

  Meanwhile, most athletes don’t know who their friends are. They think their friend is the guy who picks them up at the airport or gets them a girl in Detroit. Or invites them to a party. The surprise is that there isn’t more drug use among professional athletes. These guys are the market.

  If you think I’m exaggerating, just ask people who deal with professional athletes. Radio station managers, TV producers and booking agents all have stories about athletes showing up drunk or not at all, without even the courtesy of a phone call. People in the business know that to guarantee an appearance by a famous athlete you’ve got to send a limo, along with someone to make sure the athlete gets into it.

  Okay, but do we have to know about all this pandering and philandering? Shouldn’t kids have someone to look up to?

  Personally, I think kids are better off knowing the truth. I don’t believe kids think it’s all right to take drugs because some famous athlete did it. Usually, what they see is that the athlete got suspended, ended up in jail or died. I believe the kid figures that if the famous athlete can’t handle this stuff, how can he?

  The people who get most upset about athletes falling from grace are the ones who built them up in the first place. I’m talking about the league owners and their friends in the media who help sell the sports product. Heroes sell tickets and newspapers and TV advertising.

  But why do we need heroes in the first place? A philosopher once said: “Don’t pity the nation that has no heroes; pity the nation that needs them.” Another problem with heroes is that in order to look up to them, you have to lower yourself.

  And what about Pete Rose? People are always asking me, so I’ll tell you. I think his lifetime ban for betting on baseball was cruel and unusual punishment. The major-league rule against gambling (even on your own team) is an anachronism, adopted as a response to the Black Sox scandal where players actually “threw” the 1919 World Series.

  There is no evidence that Pete Rose ever “threw” a ballgame. But it is pretty clear that he’s a compulsive gambler, even though he denies it. Today we know that compulsive gambling is an addiction, just like alcohol or drug addiction, and denial is part of the illness. Accordingly, Rose should have been treated the same as baseball’s drug users: a one-year suspension and rehabilitation with Gamblers Anonymous.

  The worst thing about the punishment is that it sends the wrong message to kids. Pete Rose gets banned for life for gambling while the drug addicts are allowed back after a year; and then they get extra chances after that. Baseball is saying, in effect, that gambling is worse than drugs. How do kids make sense out of that?

  I believe that the real reason Pete Rose was banished for life was that he dared to challenge the authority of the Baseball Commissioner by going to court. When the late Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti suspended Rose, he said that no one man is bigger than baseball. This may be true. But it’s also true that baseball is big enough to survive without crucifying one man. Especially one sick man.

  And how about those sports commentators, criticizing Rose for going on television to sell his memorabilia? The guy’s got legal bills and probably gambling debts to pay off. What did those guys expect Rose to do after devoting his life to nothing but baseball—get a job as a television executive?

  The feeling against Pete Rose is so strong that NBC balked at his appearance at the first annual Masters Baseball game. Masters Baseball is an idea developed by me and former Dodger pitcher Andy Messersmith. Our idea is to have an eight-team league of recently retired All-Star caliber major-league players. The games would be played on weekends during the summer at different stadiums around the country.

  We took our idea to NBC and they agreed to televise a one-game pilot of Masters Baseball in May of 1990. If this game is successful we’ll probably have another one in September. We hope Masters Baseball will be as popular as the Legends of Golf tournaments that led to the Senior Pro Golf Tour.

  In case you’re wondering, Masters Baseball is not the same thing as that new Seniors League using retired players in Florida. And it has nothing to do with The Baseball League, which had plans to compete directly with Major-League Baseball using current players. But these new leagues are evidence of an expanding market for baseball.

  I talk like that now because I’m a businessman. Actually, what I do is invent things and try to sell them. It’s a long-shot business but it’s fun, if you can handle failure. Fewer than two percent of new ideas ever make it. That’s why I’ve got a garage full of ideas that have bombed.

  Like the Baseball Brain. This was my idea for a cardboard slide calculator that allowed fans to match up the batter and the pitcher and predict what might happen during a game. I sold 20,000 in a month. Unfortunately, I had manufactured 100,000.

  And then there was Rodney’s Cube. This was a spoof of the Rubik’s Cube that I got Rodney Dangerfield to endorse. It had only three moving parts. “It’s so easy I can do it with my eyes open,” said Rodney. Rodney’s Cube wa
s introduced just after the Rubik’s Cube craze died out. It was a lesson in timing.

  Fortunately, all you need is one success to keep you trying. Like Big League Chew. This is that shredded bubble gum in a pouch that Rob Nelson and I invented in the bullpen in Portland, Oregon. We licensed it to Amurol Products, a subsidiary of the Wrigley gum company.

  The good news is that Big League Chew has had sales of $14 million a year for the past ten years. The bad news is that Rob and I had to file a lawsuit against the Wrigley Company in order the get the royalties we had coming to us.

  The good news is that we won about $2 million in damages. The bad news is that it took five years and cost $400,000 in legal bills. And it’s still not over yet because Wrigley is appealing the decision. Of course, we’ll eventually get our money. “Of course,” says Paula. “But not in our lifetime.”

  Meanwhile, all the people I owe money to—lawyers, banks, friends and family—are rooting very hard for the success of my other ventures, like Big League Cards.

  I thought it would be fun to put people on their own baseball cards with their picture on the front and their personal story or stats on the back. So my brother Bob and I set up a company that combines short-run color printing and custom typesetting to make small quantities that people can afford.

  We introduced Big League Cards with a full-page ad in a local newspaper showing sample cards with kids’ pictures on them. Kids wearing baseball and football uniforms. Kids in band uniforms and cheerleading outfits. Kids wearing jeans and bathing suits and school clothes. We covered all the bases.

  At a price of $30 for a minimum fifty cards, we needed a hundred orders to break even. We got up a pool in the office to see how many orders we’d get. Highest guess was 650. I said we’d get over 400. Paula guessed only 250 so she wouldn’t “jinx us.” I had visions of kids on their own Big League Cards chewing Big League Chew.

  Would you believe we only got fifty-three orders? And that wasn’t the only surprise. Of the fifty-three orders, only twelve were from kids. The rest were from nineteen salespeople, five joggers, four newborn babies, three dentists, two guys and their cars, a motorcycle, a scoutmaster, a wedding picture, an engaged couple, two dogs, a pet monkey and some lady with a snake. I knew we were onto something, but I wasn’t sure what.

  My latest invention is something I call “Collect-A-Books.” It popped into my mind when I was speaking with a publishing company about how to encourage kids to read. I know that kids read baseball cards. So I made a little book the size of a baseball card. “It’s interesting,” said the publisher, “but we don’t make anything like that.”

  I took it to a dozen other publishers and they said the same thing. “We don’t make anything like that.” Of course, if they did make anything like that, it wouldn’t be a new idea.

  Then I showed “Collect-A-Books” to Larry Greenwald of Collectors Marketing Company. “I love it,” he said. “Now let’s figure out how we can make it.” So, Collect-A-Books is coming on the market in 1990. Larry Greenwald should be the president of General Motors.

  And if Collect-A-Books doesn’t make it, there’s Collect-A-Bats. These are ice cream sticks shaped like baseball bats, with major-league players’ autographs stamped on them. I licensed the idea to Good Humor. All you have to do is eat the right twenty-six Big League Ice Cream bars to collect the complete set.

  A friend recently said, “Bouton, the secret of your success is that you have the mind of a nine-year-old.” This may be true. A reporter once described my office as “a long table littered with boxes of caramel popcorn, scissors, T-shirts, Silly Putty, paintbrushes, glue, a moldy baseball and other flotsam. It’s a third grader’s conception of Edison’s laboratory.”

  My best idea may be Table-To-Go, a combination plate, tray and table which allows someone to hold a complete meal and a beverage in one hand, leaving the other hand free to eat with. It’s for cookouts and picnics or anywhere people want to be mobile with food. I finally got a patent for it after two years of trying.

  I’m convinced that Table-To-Go will be a winner because it’s already been turned down by all the major paper and plastic cookware manufacturers. Big companies are the last to know if an idea is any good or not. As an executive at International Paper candidly told me, “Jim, this may be a good idea but we’re too big to know if it is or not.”

  While all the big companies are merging, acquiring and leveraging, I’ve licensed a small local outfit to market my invention. The Wecolite Company, run by a nice fellow named Ralph Stern, is introducing Table-To-Go in 1990. Still, it’s always tempting to bring your idea to a big company first. As my friend Bob Bell at Licensing Corporation of America says, “A big dog takes a big shit.”

  When I’m not playing Gyro Gearloose (the Donald Duck character with the propeller hat), I give motivational talks to corporations. I tell them that people need to do what they love or find a way to love what they do. That if you focus on the process rather than the goal, you’ll achieve the goal more often. Of course, I always mix in a few Joe Schultz stories to keep everybody laughing.

  Sometimes Paula joins me if the business meeting is at a nice resort. Or I go along as the spouse when Paula gives one of her Communicational Judo seminars. And I’m learning to live with an independent woman. I always introduce her as Paula Kurman, not Mrs. Bouton. This did not, however, prevent Paula from introducing me once as her husband, “Jim Kurman.” It was an accident but I get a lot of mileage out of it.

  Yes, the Magic Lady and I are married now. It’s lots of fun and we’re always learning from each other. Paula has taken up jazz ballet dancing to be more of an athlete and I wheel and deal in the business world with Communicational Judo.

  And we try to separate our business from our personal lives, but it’s not easy. The other morning at breakfast I said to Paula that the strawberry jam seemed to be “a hot item” because we were “out of stock.” She said she couldn’t keep the pipeline filled and that the jam “was on back order.”

  Paula and I are enjoying having the house all to ourselves. The kids are all out on their own now. Lee, twenty-eight, is an attorney with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. We need all the free legal advice we can get. Hollis, twenty-six, is working in the Paris office of McKinsey, the international consulting firm. She covers the European market for us.

  Michael, twenty-six, is still very active in politics. He fought to lower car insurance with New Jersey Citizens Action and is now working to save the environment with Greenpeace. Mike is disproving the theory, popular in college, that you can’t make a living as a philosophy major.

  David, twenty-five, a Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers, is in a management training program at First Fidelity Bank. And he’s learning to speak Korean. We may join David in a trip to Korea to try and find his biological mother.

  And Laurie, twenty-four, is back in college, working toward a degree after a couple of years in the business world. When I asked Laurie if she wanted to add any comments, she said, “Just say, ‘Laurie Bouton, twenty-four, still as beautiful as ever.’” That’s easy. I believe in telling the truth.

  It’s been quite a decade, with all the ups and downs of steering five kids through their teenage years. Marrying Paula, opening our own businesses and the Wrigley lawsuit.

  My mom died of cancer five years ago. She was much too young. Dad remarried some time later. And then this past summer he had cancer, too. They had to take one-and-a-half kidneys out of him, but tough guy that he is, he was up and on his feet in a week. Now he’s back in Florida getting ready to play in the over-seventy softball league. As brother Bob says, “He should be faster, now that he doesn’t have to be lugging all those kidneys around.”

  So, I’m fifty years old but I don’t feel any older, although I think I’m a little wiser. I have some wrinkles, but I’ve been squinting at batters in the sunshine for a lot of years. I’ve earned them. And when I look at my life I realize how lucky I am. I still have plans and dreams. And every day is
a new adventure.

  About five years ago, just to get a little workout, I pitched some batting practice for a local semipro baseball team. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was pitching in a game the next weekend. Today I’m the ace pitcher for the Little Ferry Giants in the North Jersey Metropolitan League. When the knuckleball is working, I’m tough to hit. When it’s not, Paula can’t stand to watch.

  No, I’m not nostalgic about playing in the major leagues. I have no interest in getting on the road again or reliving any part of that. It’s just that every year in the spring I get this urge to play some ball in the sunshine. Just for fun. And, while my life is fun, I know it’s not that way for most people. There is too much poverty, too much greed, and too much ignorance in the land. As one of the lucky ones, I’d like to help make things better. That’s my dream these days.

  Thirty Years Later……

  BALL SEVEN

  Laurie died on August 15, 1997.

  And I’m not the same guy who wrote Ball Four. I’m not so cocky, not so sure of myself. I’m anxious about the future. I get nervous when the phone rings. I can’t just will things to happen anymore. I worry about losing it. I’m not living a charmed life. I’m not the luckiest guy in the world.

  But I was until that night.

  It had been a very exciting summer. Paula and I were on top of the world, literally, in our mountaintop home in the Berkshires. Paula had just appeared in a Williamstown Theater production of Dead End. I’d just finished a brief stint with a troupe of Athletes as Dancers at Jacob’s Pillow. Our life was rich with friends and activities. We were feeling good about ourselves, happy as can be.

  We had met some friends for dinner and gone to an outdoor performance at Shakespeare & Company. It was a warm summer night with a full moon. It had been a lovely day. When we came home, we had just stepped inside the door, hadn’t even taken the messages off the blinking machine, when the phone rang. Paula picked up and it was Lee.