The BASEBALL RELIQUARY Inc.
Jim Bouton
Jim
Bouton’s Major League Baseball career was short-lived. After a
7-7 rookie year, he went 21-7 in 1963 and 18-13 in 1964, helping
to lead the New York Yankees to two World Series appearances. A
sore arm in 1965 derailed Bouton. From 1965-1968, he compiled a
9-24 record before being traded to the expansion Seattle Pilots. David Davis: When Ball Four was first published, you were called many names, including traitor. Were you surprised at the reaction? Jim Bouton: Don’t forget “social leper” and “Benedict Arnold.” I was surprised at the level of anger. It seemed to go on for a long time and was pretty widespread throughout baseball. But that didn’t bother me once fans started reading the book and writing me letters about it. They told me that the book didn’t turn them off from baseball. They liked what I wrote. They said it made baseball players all the more human. DD: What was the harshest reaction you got? JB: I think the Yankees banning me from Old-Timers Day for 28 years. DD: Did Mickey Mantle ever say anything to you about the book? JB: Mickey and I had an exchange of communication without speaking. I sent him a condolence note back in 1995, after his son Billy died, in which I told him that I never meant for the book to hurt him or anybody else for that matter. He left a message on my answering machine thanking me for the note and saying he was okay with everything. I’ve kept that message. DD: Why did you wait so long to write another book?
JB:
The year after Ball Four was published I wrote I’m
Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally, about the response to
Ball Four. And then in the mid-1990s I co-wrote [with Eliot
Asinof] Strike Zone, a mystery novel about an umpire
fixing the game. DD: In the process of pursuing the stadium renovation, when did you decide that the subject was worthy of a book? JB: At the point when one of the members of the [Pittsfield] city council told my partner and me that the city council couldn’t consider our proposal until they were released by Andy Mick, the publisher of the Berkshire Eagle newspaper. And then Andy Mick said that to consider our proposal, he’d have to talk to his boss, Dean Singleton [the CEO of the MediaNews Group, based in Denver]. So here were the citizens of Pittsfield — and their entire fate was in the hands of a guy in Colorado. I started taking notes because something was obviously wrong. DD: You pitched at Wahconah during your comeback in the 1970s, and you watched games there as a fan. Why did you and your partner think Wahconah was worth saving?
JB:
Well, we felt the same way as everybody else did, that it was a
beautiful old ballpark, just a great baseball cathedral. The
people in Pittsfield love it. It’s part of their history, it’s
part of their lives, it’s part of how they define themselves. If
a new stadium went up in the center of town, Wahconah would die.
It would just rot away. DD: You write that, over the past 15 years, some $16 billion of public money has been spent on new stadiums [pg. 2] and call this a “national epidemic.” Why has this occurred?
JB:
Because baseball’s powers-that-be can get away with it. They
have a monopoly, granted by the federal government, and they use
it to bludgeon local governments to bid against each other for
the right to teams. It’s a national disgrace. These owners are
capitalists who don’t want capitalism. When sports owners don’t
have to use their own money to build stadiums and make enormous
profits — when American taxpayers subsidize these wealthy
owners — it’s massive corporate welfare. And the politicians
team up with them: they don’t want to allow citizens to vote on
this issue because, as [former New York City mayor] Rudolph
Giuliani once said, “they would vote against it.” DD: Your plan called for the renovation of a historic stadium, paid for by you. Why didn’t Pittsfield rally around this plan? JB: The people supported us. But the town is essentially run by what I call “the gang of four” — the Berkshire Eagle newspaper; the Berkshire Bank; the law firm of Cain, Hibbard, Myers & Cook; and General Electric. It doesn’t matter who’s the mayor. They wanted to build the new stadium in the middle of town. In addition to enhancing the value of the real estate, which happened to be owned by the Eagle, what they were also doing was unloading a tremendous liability because the land was a toxic waste dump. After I began writing the book — after they had denied us a lease — this came to light. A friend found the document that showed that the property was a toxic waste site. DD: With Ball Four, you became known as someone unafraid to speak his mind. Do you think your reputation hurt you in the pursuit of the ballpark?
JB:
No. I’m sure they didn’t think I was writing a book, or they
wouldn’t have said the things they said. It’s an insider’s book.
I have conversations with the mayor, with state senators, with
city councilmen. They would have never spoken to me if they knew
I was writing a book. DD: You claim that Pittsfield’s powerful interests worked, behind the scenes in some cases, to defeat your effort. In retrospect, did your plan ever really have a chance? JB: Looking back on it, I would have to say no. They had already made their decision. They gave the rights [to lease Wahconah] to a guy who came into town once. He gave them a four-page proposal that nobody ever saw. We had a detailed 14-page proposal that was circulated throughout the community, but our opponent knew he had it in the bag. A number of city councilmen said as much to me. DD: What most angered you during this process? JB: The total misrepresentation of our proposal. That and personal slander. They completely made up a story that I had demanded $3,000 to speak to the Boy Scouts. DD: What would you have done differently?
JB:
Nothing. I would have done things exactly the same way, because
what the book did was expose in detail all the different ways in
which powerful people mislead their own citizens. By making it a
daily campaign, Chip and I forced them to respond to us — and
it was their response that made the book interesting. DD: You briefly mention the death of your daughter Laurie [in 1997 in a car accident]. Looking back, was the pursuit of the ballpark part of your recovery during the grief process? JB: That never crossed my mind at the time, even though she comes up in the book at the anniversary [of her death] and a couple of other times. [San Francisco Chronicle book reviewer] David Kipen was the first to write that this campaign had some other benefit in my life beyond what I thought I was going for. . . . Sometimes, you create a piece of work and you don’t understand why you’ve created it until someone else looks at it. Now it makes sense to me. DD: You wrote about your publisher, PublicAffairs, pulling out of its deal to publish the book. How difficult was it to go the self-publishing route?
JB: I
didn’t have much choice. I had turned in the manuscript to
PublicAffairs. They had had no problem with it along the way —
it was going to be the lead book in their catalog, they had
arranged a 16-city tour to promote the book. Then, just before
they went to print their catalog — in the fall of 2002 — the
publisher sat down to lunch with me and said we need to add
balance with comments from General Electric [about PCB dumping
in Pittsfield]. I said, I’m not going to do that. That’s just a
back story — it’s maybe 10 pages in the book. I said, I didn’t
get balancing comments from Major League Baseball for Ball
Four. DD: Since the book was published, what’s been the reaction in Pittsfield?
JB:
The best reaction has been from the citizens of Pittsfield. They
have said to me, at book signings at the library and at Barnes
and Noble: “Yes! Yes! Thank you — someone has told our story.”
That’s been gratifying. The people who come off badly in the
book have gotten together and decided not to say anything.
There’s a code of silence. It doesn’t bother me because the book
is leapfrogging past Pittsfield in talking about the lack of
democracy in these small towns. DD: One of the secondary characters in the book, Northern League commissioner Miles Wolff, commented about Foul Ball that “I’ve heard there is a bit of fiction in there.” How do you respond to that? JB: That’s the closest as anyone will get to commenting on the book. That allows them to suggest it’s not true, without forcing them to be specific about what’s true and not true. But look: here are all these damning actions — and no one has come out and said, “I didn’t say this or that didn’t happen.” My question is, why wouldn’t Miles Wolff read this book. It’s about him and his industry. DD: Are you worried that you’ll be sued? JB: Nobody is going to sue me on this because the truth is my defense. I have all my contemporary notes. I was taking notes constantly, either during conversations or immediately afterwards. DD: One of your rivals, Jonathan Fleisig, ended up moving his Berkshire Black Bears into Wahconah in 2002. What’s the situation now with that team and with the stadium? JB: He has a two-year lease that runs out at the end of this season. It’ll be interesting to see what he does. I imagine he’ll go to the city and cry poverty and want to play for free. He knows there’s no chance they’ll build him a new stadium. Pittsfield is deep in debt, and the state of Massachusetts isn’t going to give him $20 million. DD: What about you: what are you doing these days? JB: I do motivational speaking, with about two appearances a month. Now I’m plugging the book. That’s been a three-year process. Year one to think about the idea, year two to write it, and year three to promote it. I’m very proud of the book. I think it’s a better piece of work than Ball Four. I have no plans to do another book — I like to keep about 30 years between books. So look for me in about 30 years with an expose of the nursing home industry. DD: In the book, you write about a possible Seattle Pilots reunion. Any interest in that idea? JB: I’ve done everything I could to make that happen. Now it’s up to the Mariners, and they’ve decided that they’re not going to do anything because of Ball Four. It would call attention to the book. Editor’s Note: Since this interview was conducted in the summer of 2003, the team that last represented Pittsfield — the Berkshire Black Bears — has abandoned Wahconah. |
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