Both the world of baseball and the world of literature has lost a titanic figure. Craig Calcaterra from NBC news reports on Jim Bouton‘s fight with brain disease. Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
Jim Bouton, an ace for the late dynasty, pennant-winning Yankees, an outcast on the hapless 1969 Seattle Pilots, and the author of “Ball Four,” arguably the greatest baseball book of all time, has died at the age of 80. Bouton had been suffering from cerebral amyloid angiopathy, which is linked to dementia, for the past several years.
Bouton was born in New Jersey in 1939 and was raised in Chicago before going on to pitch at Western Michigan University. The Yankees liked what they saw and gave Bouton a $30,000 bonus to sign in 1958. A combination of good pitching and some untimely injuries to established Yankees pitchers allowed Bouton to make the defending World Series champs out of spring training in 1962.
Bouton pitched in 36 games that season, serving as a swingman, to modest results, but he did not pitch in the Yankees’ World Series victory over the Giants that October. He truly broke out in 1963, starting 30 of the 40 games in which he appeared, compiling a record of 21-7 and posting a fantastic 2.53 ERA. He’d earn All-Star honors that year and started Game 3 of the World Series. Bouton had a strong outing in that game, allowing only one run in seven innings, but was beaten by an even better Don Drysdale who tossed a three-hit shutout as the Dodgers swept the Yankees.
Bouton was a workhorse in 1964, leading the American League with 37 games started and finishing 18-13 with a 3.02 ERA while tossing 271.1 innings. That October Bouton started two World Series games, winning both of them, pushing his postseason record to 2-1 with a 1.48 ERA. Despite his heroics, however, the Yankees lost to the St. Louis Cardinals four games to three. The loss in Game 7 ended a Yankees dynasty which had lasted over 40 years. It also spelled the end of Jim Bouton’s time as one of the game’s top starting pitchers.
Bouton showed up to spring training in 1965 with a sore arm. It never got better and he, and the Yankees, had a poor year. Bouton bounced back in 1966 — he pitched in fewer than half of the innings he had lodged at his peak but they were effective innings — but the Yankees didn’t. Bouton began the 1967 season with New York but was demoted to the minors. While there he wrote his first published article, for “Sport” magazine, chronicling the life of minor leaguers. Bouton made it back to the Yankees at the end of that season and the beginning of 1968 but had his contract sold to the expansion Seattle Pilots in the middle of the year. As the Pilots would not begin play until 1969, it meant more time in the minors for Bouton. Late in the 1968 season Bouton, still suffering from arm problems and a loss of velocity, began to rely almost exclusively on a knuckleball which he had previously only featured as a “show-me” pitch in his prime.
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