by Jim Bouton
I’d come upstairs soaking wet, ready for the shower.
“Had a good one today,” I’d say to Paula, who had to listen to all those thumps against the wall. “I think my motion’s coming back!”
“Really?” she’d ask affectionately. “How terrific were you this morning, sweetheart?” Then she’d kiss the tip of my sweaty nose. Just wait until I win a few games, I would think to myself, and I get invited to pitch for a local professional minor-league team.
Paula actually came to about half the games. And not just to make sure I didn’t fall asleep on the drive home. She liked sitting in the stands and listening to the comments of people who didn’t know who she was.
“How old is he?” someone would ask.
“Pretty old,” some old guy would say. “I saw him pitch when I was a kid.”
If I pitched well, people would say, “How does he do it?” If I pitched poorly, the same people would say, “He should quit and give the younger players a chance. What’s he trying to prove?”
What was I trying to prove? I’m not sure exactly. Maybe I was trying to stay young, ward off my own mortality, or just feel connected to my past. All I knew for sure was that it was fun, and that it seemed worth doing for that alone. Every once in a while someone would mention the last line in Ball Four.
In any case, I was looking forward to the 1997 season. After having pitched Mama’s Pizza into the playoffs the year before, I had ended on a disastrous note by blowing an eight-run lead in a regional tournament. That was something I couldn’t ever remember having done before in my life, pro or amateur. I couldn’t wait until the next year to prove it was just a fluke.
I was in excellent shape after building a stone facade on the back of the house the previous fall and working out all winter. Just to make things interesting, and get some extra innings, I decided to pitch for two teams—Mama’s and the Saugerties Dutchmen, a well-known independent team from the Hudson Valley. It mattered little that when the Dutchmen’s skipper, twenty-seven-year-old Kiko Romaguera, was told I’d be trying out, he had said, “I never heard of him.” The doubts I had lived with that winter would be banished in the spring.
And I would do it in Cooperstown, New York.
It was early May. The Dutchmen were playing the Otsego Macs at legendary Doubleday Field, just behind the Baseball Hall of Fame. The very same field I had played on with the Yankees back in 1965 when we beat the Philadelphia Phillies 7–4 in the annual Hall of Fame exhibition game.
It’s about a three-hour drive from our home, across the Hudson River, and through the Catskill Mountains to Cooperstown. Paula and I had left at nine in the morning for a mid-afternoon game, which was scheduled to begin as soon as the twelve o’clock game ended. Doubleday Field was rented out like a catering hall. We arrived in plenty of time for me to relax and take a nap.
This was my kind of game. It was springtime; I had always done well in the spring. It was a beautiful stadium. The sun was shining. The crowd was buzzing. I was as ready as I could possibly be.
And I never got past the second inning.
I don’t even remember exactly what happened anymore. The first inning was a fiasco, and it went downhill from there. It began with some walks and a few wild pitches, degenerated into a series of line drives and cannon shots, and culminated in an assortment of mammoth blasts. A late arriver might have thought he’d stumbled into the fireworks display.
This is where the old credentials can really hurt you. Out of respect, Kiko was reluctant to come out to the mound and remove me from the game. I never had a chance to use Fred Talbot’s great line, “What kept you?”
It wasn’t just a case of not finding my rhythm. The knuckler was moving, it just wasn’t moving sharply enough. It was like a balloon up there, floating instead of jumping. There was no pop, no bite. In spite of all those workouts I just didn’t have the arm strength anymore. I had reached a new, and lower, plateau in my life. I wasn’t simply getting older. I was getting old.
When you’re twenty-seven, a bad outing is just a bad outing; chalk it up to a lack of preparation, inexperience, or just give credit to the other team. When you’re fifty-seven, however, a bad outing becomes an embarrassment. “Get him out of there. Put him out of his misery.” It’s funny how, with a few swings of the bat by guys named Justin or Tyler, you can be transformed from a guy who just loves to play into a self-deluded old man.
If I could pitch so badly in my kind of game, what hope was there for the regular games? In all my years playing amateur ball, this was only the second time that I felt I was spoiling the game for my teammates. The first was that tournament game I had blown to end the previous season. It was a terrible feeling. And I didn’t want to feel it again. So at age fifty-seven, I retired for good. I should have quit at my uniform number—fifty-six.
That’s fifty years of baseball since I started playing as a kid in Rochelle Park, New Jersey. Half a century!
Nothing ever stopped me from playing ball.
Until I stopped myself.
It was a long ride home, where we had one of those milestone conversations. Paula talked about the significance of my decision; she understood that this was not a small thing for me. I focused on the lighter aspects; no more wicked come-backers in dimly lit ballparks. No more wondering what rain might be doing to a pitcher’s mound somewhere.
And I seemed to be okay about it.
Until two weeks later, when I went down to the basement to get something, and I spotted my baseball glove sitting on a stool, with the orange rubber ball in the pocket, like they were waiting for me to play with them again. Suddenly, Puff the Magic Dragon popped into my head and I could feel the tears starting to come. So I went to find Paula because I don’t like to cry when she’s not holding me.
Instead of pitching, I’m dancing now.
That’s ballroom dancing, as in fox-trot, tango and waltz, not to mention swing, rumba, cha-cha, two-step, salsa, and whatever other new dance comes along that Paula finds out about. Granted, it doesn’t involve a ball—except in the name—so why would I be interested? Because, as Paula so eloquently communicated to me, dancing is a sport. There are competitions. You can beat other people.
Well, okay then.
We had started back in 1993, shortly before Hollis’ marriage to the Dutchman Gert Jan van der Hoeven. (He has two brothers, Robert and Paul; she has to marry the one whose name takes practice.) Anyway, Paula didn’t want us (read me) to be embarrassed on the dance floor. So we took a few lessons at a local Fred Astaire Dance Studio in New Jersey. And we (read Paula) liked it so much we continued to take lessons even after we thrilled and amazed everybody at the wedding.
The trick to learning how to dance at those chain studios, we discovered, is to pay for private lessons, which are five times more expensive but twenty times faster. Then what you have to do is pick out a few dances that you want to learn and insist on focusing on only one of those dances at each lesson so that you can lock it in. Otherwise, they’ll try to teach you a tiny fraction of a dozen different dances at each lesson, that you can never remember, so it takes years of lessons before you get to be any good, which is the whole idea. So if it turns out that you like it, negotiate a package of private lessons and don’t sign any contracts.
A big problem with beginners is that the woman is often the better dancer, but the man is supposed to lead, ballroom dancing being an old-fashioned enterprise. So what happens is that women try to lead the men into initiating the proper steps.
This was a big problem for Paula and me until we got some marvelous advice from Pierre Dulaine of the American Ballroom Theater: “The man’s job is to lead, and the woman’s job is to follow his mistakes.” Precisely! We are now working on the part about the funny looks whenever I do something weird.
The best thing to happen to our dancing, and one of the best things in our lives, was to meet Marge Champion—of Marge and Gower dance-team fame—also known as America’s Dancing Sweetheart. On the classic mov
ie channel, Marge is the one with the huge smile, doing all the tricky steps in those Broadway musicals from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. In person she’s a nuclear-powered icon, performer, arts activist, board member, world traveler, mother, grandmother, and dear friend.
As the best ballroom dancer to have pitched for the Yankees—as far as anyone knows—I’m often featured as Marge’s dance partner at local fund-raisers. I’m like the talking dog; it’s not that the dog speaks well, it’s that he speaks at all. Before Marge and I do our number we have to practice in order to look smooth, but more important, so that I don’t hurt Marge. Ballroom is not your basic grab-ass dancing, but moving-across-the-floor dancing. Done right, it’s like flying. My job is to keep from plunging us into a nosedive.
Sunday, June 21, 1998.
The phone rang at eight in the morning. I picked it up.
“Happy Father’s Day.”
“Thank you, David,” I said.
“Did you see The New York Times this morning?”
“The Times?” I said. “No, we haven’t been down to the general store yet.”
“Well, there’s something you have to read,” he said.
“We’ll get it later,” I said. “We just woke up.”
“I think you should read it now,” David insisted.
“We’ll read it after breakfast,” I said. “Whatever it is can wait.”
“No, it can’t,” he said. There was a pause. “Okay, I’ll read it to you myself.”
Mystified, I motioned for Paula to pick up the other phone.
“It takes up half the page,” said David. “There’s a big picture of you and Mickey Mantle and another smaller picture of you… and Laurie.”
I felt a familiar ache in my chest.
“The headline is,” said David, “‘For Bouton, Let Bygones Be Bygones’.”
This made no sense. I hadn’t spoken to any reporters lately.
“Then there’s a smaller headline,” said David, who was having difficulty speaking. “It says…” David seemed to be choking back tears.
“It says…,” continued David, “‘Son’s Wish on Father’s Day… Is to See Dad and Yogi Stand with Old-Timers.’”
Son’s wish?
“By… Michael Bouton,” said David.
Michael? When did he do this? The New York Times? I was too stunned to process it.
Then David began to read his brother’s letter over the phone, haltingly at times, as follows:
Today is Father’s Day, but the date I have circled on my calendar is July 25. That is Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium. Traditionally, it is the day when past Yankee stars take their annual curtain call. It is the day my father, Jim Bouton, No. 56, the Bulldog, is snubbed, and not invited back. Although an invitation to attend Old-Timers’ Day is an honor he can live without, it is what I wish for him this year.
You see, this past August my sister Laurie died in an automobile crash at the age of 31. She was beautiful and sweet. And tough as it is to lose a sibling, I cannot even fathom the loss my parents must feel.
Philosophers say it is because of tragedy that we give such importance to our games. Baseball, seemingly, has always been here for us. The key to baseball’s future as America’s pastime lies in its continuity between generations.
I realize the big loss for Yankee fans and baseball continues to be the absence of Yogi Berra on Old-Timers’ Day. Yogi has let it be known that he refuses to be part of the celebration as long as George Steinbrenner is the owner. I have applauded Yogi’s decision on this matter of principle, but recently I have had a change of heart and mind.
It is just as petty for Yogi to spite George as it is for George to spite my father. It does not serve the greater good for families, the fans or the sport we supposedly love so much. It does not factor in the human equation.
I know that not having Old-Timers’ Day on our calendar like a holiday gave us fewer days with Laurie. I wonder if Yogi knows how important it is for his grandchildren to witness him out there under the classic facade of the stadium. There is no substitute for smelling the grass and hearing the cheers. It will be time for dusting off the scrapbook soon enough.
For the fans, their children and grandchildren, the great difference between a regular game and Old-Timers’ Day cannot be gauged. How many stories from their own lives are triggered by the sight of a player from the past?
The type of story that places them in time, describing what they were doing, say, on that afternoon when Yogi won his first of three most valuable player awards.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, when you are more remembered as a line in a pop song than for an acrobatic catch or a batting streak? Old-Timers’ Day is a chance for fans to give back. To forget this aspect will ultimately doom baseball’s primacy among sports in America.
It has been nearly thirty years since my father wrote Ball Four. And for all the hullabaloo about his book, the major detractors have all written their own tell-all books, affirming the validity of what they once called lies. Last year, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, the New York Public Library listed Ball Four as one of the 100 most important books of the century. The question is this: Why do the Yankees feel as if they still have to punish him?
For years, the rumor was that Mickey Mantle had threatened not to attend Old-Timers’ Day if my father was present. I am thankful that the Mick was big enough to make what amounted to a deathbed call to my father to put that rumor to rest as being untrue. He understood the significance of the snub and wanted no part of it.
So that leaves only George, who was not even the team’s owner when Ball Four came out in 1970. If George blames Ball Four for contributing toward free agency, one would expect a different reaction, because everyone knows it is only through the acquisition of such free agents as Reggie, Catfish, Cone, et al., that Steinbrenner’s reign has seen any championships at all.
I’m hoping that a compromise on positions can take place without necessarily a compromise on principles. I mean, if George really hates my father that much, is it good for him to still hold it inside? Wouldn’t it be more healthful to have my father there, if only to boo him?
George has said that this year he will be turning over more of the day-to-day operations to his sons Hal, Hank and Harold. Might that be enough for Yogi to return to Yankee Stadium and still save face?
I am hoping to reach George’s sons. Despite our different upbringings, I think we have a lot in common. It is never easy growing up the child of a public figure. I know that they have heard mean things said about their father, much the same way I have. I think there have been days when they have been publicly embarrassed by him and there have been times when they have been as proud as any child has ever been about a parent—exactly like me. I’m sure they love their father as much as I love mine. That is what Father’s Day is about—celebrating that love.
I see this as an opportunity to get my father some extra hugs at a time in his life when he can use all the hugs he can get. It is something he would never seek for himself—he is going to kill me when he reads this—and maybe the kind of thing only a son or daughter can do for their father.
I am not asking for any favors, just reconsideration. That is all. Life is short. Time is at hand.
I couldn’t believe it. What a Father’s Day gift! What a beautiful letter.
“Did you know about this, David?” I asked.
“No.”
Amazing.
Not just Michael’s writing, or that he kept it a secret, but that he had those feelings in the first place. I never knew he cared that much about my not being invited to Old-Timers’ Day. The kids were little when I wrote Ball Four, and they grew up just accepting that their dad was some kind of pariah. The only one who ever said anything was Laurie, who would get personally offended at the Yankees for a few days every summer, and then she’d let it go.
I always tried to joke about it, saying they didn’t want me back because fans don’t like to see the old-ti
mers strike out. They’re going to wait till I’m the oldest living Yankee; by the time I go back I won’t even know I’m there.
I never knew the kids’ private thoughts on the matter, never guessed how it might have affected their view of me all these years.
Until now. Evidently it had bothered Michael.
We spoke with David a while longer, I thanked him for his Father’s Day wishes, and then we hung up to call Michael. I had this flash thought of him in his Brooklyn apartment with The New York Times opened up on the table, examining the layout, checking to see if anything was cut at the last minute, as writers do.
He was waiting by the phone. I could hear the smile in his voice.
“What can I say, Michael?” I stammered. “It was just beautiful. Powerful. A great surprise. Thank you.”
“I’ve wanted to write that letter for a long time,” he said, “but I could never finish it. This time I did.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s not something you just knock off in a few hours.”
“I had a little help from Laurie, too,” said Michael.
“I use her for inspiration myself,” I said.
“So, do you think the Yankees are going to invite you back?”
“I don’t know, Michael,” I said. “But whether they do or not, your letter stands by itself as a wonderful gift. It doesn’t have to produce a result to be meaningful.”
Then I called my dad to tell him what one of his grandsons had done.
For the next few days, Mike and I were on the phone, still buzzing about his letter. I told him about strangers stopping me on the street, mostly men, telling me how they had cried when they read it and how lucky I was to have a son like him. Michael said the Yankees would have to invite me back. They had no choice.
I said don’t count on it.
A week went by, then two weeks, then three. We went on with our lives. There would be no invitation to Old-Timers’ Day. The game was only two weeks away; the Yankees would have had to invite me by now.