Convinced that his fastball would never return, he turned to something less strenuous but just as intimidating to hit…the knuckleball. Louis Cardinals.īeset by arm miseries two years later, Bouton and the Yankees eventually parted ways after the ’68 season. Ultimately, the Yankees lost that series in seven games to Bob Gibson and the St. Once a fireballing rookie with the 1963 New York Yankees, Bouton won 20 games that season and then backed that up by winning 18 games the following year, plus two in the 1964 World Series.
It was during my second year of Double A baseball in the Southern League, and Bouton was trying to make it back to the big leagues as a knuckleball pitcher in the Atlanta Braves organization. Funny, because it unwrapped and exposed some of professional baseball biggest personalities and showed them to be just regular people.Īs I thumbed past the cover to the opening page there in faded blue ink was a signature and date: Thanks for not laughing at the knuckleball….Jim Bouton, 7/27/78.Įditor/publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine. It was relevant, it was irreverent, insulting to many of the book’s subjects identified by name, but most of all…it was just funny. I know I read it 50 times during my junior and senior year at Ohio State. Once upon a time, when it first came out, I read it so incessantly that I knew every story in the book and could cite the page on which it appeared. I was rummaging through a drawer full of stuff last week, and there it was: A dog-eared, well-used paper edition of Ball Four, the 1972 blockbuster book on baseball by former New York Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton. Remembrances of a face-to-face meeting with former New York Yankee, and author of the blockbuster best-seller ‘Ball Four’, Jim Bouton.) Such as this one originally shared in July of 2014, one of those minor league baseball experiences you never forget, and in this case…a most unforgettable person. Note: From time to time we relive stories previously published, simply because they’re good stories.
I was once lucky enough to see Jim Bouton and his knuckleball…eye to eye! My signed copy of his book, Ball Four, is more important to me than most other signed books. He won two games against the Cardinals in the ’64 World Series. Jim Bouton, as he appeared with the New York Yankees in 1964.
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