Inside Baseball

Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was hopping mad. "This is a horrible piece of writing!" he fumed at Houston Astro Pitcher Jim Bouton, author of a new book called Ball Four. According to sources close to the commissioner's office, Kuhn went on: "You've done the game a grave disservice. Saying players kissed on the Seattle team bus--incredible! Or that some of our greatest stars were drunk on the field. What can you be thinking of?"

Well, ahem, says Bouton, he was thinking of "social commentary, an honest book that tells what baseball is really like." Kuhn, apparently, is not big on social commentary, and last week he ordered Bouton not to write another word about baseball as long as he remained an active player. In light of Bouton's pitching performances this season --two wins, three losses, an ERA of 7.02--the warning may not stay in effect for very long. In any case, Ball Four (World Publishing Co.; $6.95), a diary of the author's ups and downs with the New York Yankees, the Seattle Pilots and the Astros, tells all. As serialized in Look, the insider's view of the national pastime is the hottest thing to hit the clubhouse since "greenies," the pep pills that Bouton says are used by half the players to perk up their game. Several big-leaguers needed more than greenies to keep from turning red when asked about the book. St. Louis Cardinal Pitcher Bob Gibson: "He stabbed his friends in the back for money." Astro First Baseman Joe Pepitone: "Why didn't he write that he is the horniest guy in baseball?" Mickey Mantle: "Jim who?"

Other players have written "inside" books on baseball, yet none has created more of a furor than Bouton's "muck-stirrer," as one sportswriter calls it. The reason seems to be that players do not mind being knocked for their playing; it's talking about their playing around off the field that they object to.

Bouton tells, for instance, of "beaver shooting," which in his words "can be anything from peering over the top of the dugout to look up dresses to hanging from the fire escape on the 20th floor of some hotel to look into a window. I've seen guys chin themselves on transoms, drill holes in doors, even shove mirrors under a door." When Bouton was with the Yankees, he recalls how Mickey Mantle used to lead hunting parties to the roof of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, B.C. "One of the first big thrills I had with the Yankees," he reports, "was joining about half the club on the roof of the Shoreham at 2:30 in the morning. I remember saying to myself: 'So this is the big leagues.' As for kissing on the Seattle team bus, well, that was just part of another little game called playing the pansy."

Mud Ball. To anyone who ever lived in a college dorm or an Army barracks, Bouton's tales are not all that scandalous. Bowie Kuhn and the players aside, fans will find Ball Four a fast, flip and often funny account of the author's struggle to stay in the big leagues as a knuckleballing pitcher after losing his high hard one (Bouton won 21 games for the Yankees of 1963). To be sure, he gets his digs in along the way. He tells of Mantle showing up for a game "hung over out of his mind" and pushing little kids aside who wanted his autograph; of white umpires deliberately trying to embarrass Negro Umpire Emmett Ashford. He tells, too, of the way former Yankee Pitcher Whitey Ford conspired to load the ball with mud, or scuff it with a ring. "Ford," explains Bouton, "could make a mud ball drop, sail, break in, break out and sing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

To charges that such revelations undermine the sacred image of baseball, Bouton answers: "Fans are fed a constant stream of bull about these clean-cut, All-America guys. Let kids start thinking about some real heroes instead of phony heroes." What riles Bouton most of all is the accusation that he makes everyone look bad except himself. "Good God," he says, "I'm in there most of all. I'm bare-assed naked in a swimming pool at a Hollywood party with martinis in both hands, shouting for joy. How's that for self-image?"

Now 31, Bouton is ready to suffer the consequences for saying that baseball stars are human. After his meeting with Kuhn last week, he reflected: "I figure I've cut my career short by at least three years. If you're a marginal player who's done what I've done, you've got a fine chance to be cut from the squad." Or cut down. "I expect to be punched out one of these days. It's just a matter of time, I suppose."

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