The former New York Yankees pitcher who wrote the most famous tell-all book in baseball history has died.
Jim Bouton, author of “Ball Four,” was 80.
According to the New York Daily News, Mr. Bouton died Wednesday at his home in Massachusetts from a brain disease linked to dementia.
In his 10-year major-league career, Mr. Bouton had his most productive time with the Yankees World Series teams of the early 1960s, winning 20 games with a 2.53 ERA in 1963 and 18 games with a 3.02 ERA in 1964.
His career mark — which included stints with the Seattle Pilots, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves — was 62-63 with an ERA of 3.57.
But it was his off-the-field actions that won Mr. Bouton his greatest fame, as “Ball Four” depicted off- and on-the-field and in-the-clubhouse antics that had previously remained hidden by ballplayers’ and sportswriters’ code of silence.
In his 1969 season with the Pilots — the team’s only one before moving to Milwaukee and renaming itself the Brewers — Mr. Bouton began consciously collecting old and new anecdotes that became the best-selling book.
In “Ball Four,” he described the widespread use of stimulants on game days, the vulgar-at-best tirades of Pilots manager Joe Schultz, and most famously the behavior of Yankees legend Mickey Mantle around women, around alcohol and around both.
According to the Daily News, the controversial smash hit was the “only sports book cited when the New York Public Library drew up its list of the best books of the 20th century.”
He later became a New York sportscaster, but suffered two strokes in 2012.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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