September 14, 1978: Jim Bouton Completes His Comeback

September 14, 1978: The Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The winning pitcher is Jim Bouton.

In 1962, '63 or '64, seeing Bouton listed as the winning pitcher of a game would not have been a surprise. From 1965 to 1970, it would have been a surprise, but not a big one.

Bouton hadn't won a game in 8 years. And it wasn't because he'd been losing for 8 years straight.

He was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1939, and grew up in nearby Bergen County until the family moved to the suburbs of Chicago. He pitched at Western Michigan University, and was signed by the New York Yankees. When he reached the major leagues in 1962, he was given uniform Number 56, a very high number for the time. Later that season, clubhouse manager Pete Sheehy said he could now receive a smaller number, recommending 29. Jim said that he would rather keep 56, to remind him of just how difficult it is to stay in the major leagues.

The Yankees won the World Series in 1962, and Bouton, 7-7 that season, got a ring. They won the Pennant in 1963, and he went 21-7. The won the Pennant again in 1964, and he went 18-13, winning 2 more games in the World Series, but the Yankees lost. Still, at age 25, his future looked limitless.

Then the limits came. In 1965, all the Yankee stars seemed to get old or hurt, or both, all at once. Bouton hurt his elbow, and his great fastball was gone. He was left exposed in the 1969 expansion draft, and the Seattle Pilots chose him, converting him to a reliever with a knuckleball that they didn't really trust.

Jim began keeping a diary of the 1969 season. In it, he noted that, contrary to their public image, where ballplayers were all nice guys who never swore, never cheated on their wives, never drank anything stronger than a milkshake, had normal hobbies like hunting and fishing, and were always pro-God and pro-America, could be the other way around. There had always been a great amount of immaturity among athletes, and Jim wrote about it. He also wrote about how team management hurt players, in ways large and small.

He also wrote about how he was frustrated that the Pilots only used him in non-pressure situations, until trading him to the Houston Astros in late August. The Astros were only a little better in this regard, but Jim seemed happier. The Pilots went bankrupt, were bought, and moved, and became the Milwaukee Brewers for 1970.

The diary, under the title Ball Four, was published the next June, with saucy excerpts printed in Look magazine in May. The public reaction was horrible. Jim was booed in every ballpark. When they played the Cincinnati Reds, Pete Rose yelled from one dugout to the other, "Fuck you, Shakespeare!"

When the Astros came into New York to play the Mets, Daily News sports columnist Dick Young, once liberal but grown conservative and nasty in his middle age -- his backstab of Tom Seaver on behalf of Mets management was yet to come -- wrote that Jim had become "a social leper." That night, before the game, Dick came to Jim, and Jim said the comment didn't bother him. Dick said, "I'm glad you didn't take it personally." That became the title of Jim's sequel book.

Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn summoned Jim to his Midtown office. He told Jim to disavow the book before it could be published in full form, say that he'd made a lot of it up, or that Shecter had made a lot of it up, or that Shecter had manipulated him into saying the controversial things.

Jim refused to lie, and wouldn't back down. He said it was all true. He said that any player whose marriage was now on the rocks because of what he wrote was probably not in a particularly strong marriage anyway. He struck back, and said that he purposely left a lot of things out, like certain players going for underage girls (which as we have since seen, may have included the aforementioned Rose), or spouting racist and anti-Semitic remarks, and that he was actually trying to protect the sport from what would have happened had he named names with such things.

Like boxer Muhammad Ali, track star Tommie Smith and baseball player Curt Flood at the time, and like football quarterback Colin Kaepernick many years later, Jim was willing to stand for something, even if it meant sacrificing everything.

He said the backlash wasn't getting to him. But on July 29, with a record of 4-6 and an ERA of 5.40, despite having pitched decently in 9 of his last 11 outings, he was sent down to the minor leagues. The knuckleball didn't work there, either.

Finally, Jim got an interesting offer: Al Primo, inventor of the "Eyewitness News" format, had gone to WABC-Channel 7 in New York, and wanted Jim, with his willingness to tell the truth and use his sense of humor, to be his sports anchor. On August 12, the Astros, probably glad to be rid of the bad publicity, gave Jim his unconditional release, and he spent the next 5 years doing sports behind anchors Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel.

He left TV journalism, and announced a comeback. In 1977, he went back to the Pacific Northwest, and signed with the Portland Mavericks, in the Class A Northwest League. Getting the knuckleball to work again, he did well enough there that Ted Turner signed him to a contract with the Atlanta Braves. Jim was assigned to the Savannah Braves of the Class AA Southern League, and did well enough there to become a September callup. He had become, in his own words, the 1st player to make the major leagues twice.

On September 10, 1978, at age 39, he put on Braves uniform Number 56, took the mound at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, started against the defending National League Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, and went 5 innings, allowing 6 runs, and ended up as the losing pitcher.

Four days later, the experiment was redeemed: He started against the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park, allowed 1 run, unearned, in 6 innings, and the Braves beat the Giants 4-1. Ironically, while the Giants' run was unearned, it was on a throwing error by Jim. The Braves got a run on a suicide squeeze bunt by Glenn Hubbard, another on a single by a rookie named Dale Murphy, another on a double by Jerry Royster, and one more on a single by Hubbard. Jim had gone without a major league win between July 11, 1970 and September 14, 1978 -- 8 years, 2 months and 3 days.

He made 3 more starts: A no-decision against the Astros in Houston, a tough loss to the Reds in Atlanta, and a battering against the Reds in Cincinnati. That was on September 29, 1978, his true major league finale. In one of those games, Rose, who, earlier in the season, had collected his 3,000th career hit and had a 44-game hitting streak, hit a home run off Bouton, seemingly making his point.

But, much more so, Bouton had made his point. But an unintended consequence of his comeback was that he fell below .500 for his career: His 1978 record of 1-3 (with an ERA of 4.97, an ERA+ of 83, and a WHIP of 1.586) dropped him, lifetime, from 61-60 to 62-63. His final ERA was 3.57, his ERA+ 99, his WHIP 1.264.

So Rose got the last laugh, right? Well, Bouton spent the rest of his life still eligible to participate in professional baseball. In 1989, Rose was permanently banned from the sport. He still is.

Jim continued to be an iconoclast, accepting interviews about Ball Four, until stricken with a debilitating illness in 2012. He died in 2019, 50 years after starting the book.

UPDATE: Rose died in 2024. Shortly thereafter, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred reinstated him.

*

September 14, 1978 was a Thursday. This was also the day that the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy premiered. I have a separate entry for that event. Also, Ron DeSantis, a Republican elected Governor of Florida in 2018, and definitely not a man that Jim Bouton would have liked, was born on this day.

These other Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Graig Nettles hit 2 home runs, and Reggie Jackson went 1-for-4, in support of Ed Figueroa. It was his 15th win of the season, on the way to becoming the 1st, and still the only, Puerto Rican pitcher to win 20 games in a season.

* The New York Mets beat the Montreal Expos, 7-6 at Shea Stadium.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 11-5 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt went 2-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-4 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Willie Stargell went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. Lou Brock did not play.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Sox were still choking, before rebounding to get back into a last-day tie with the Yankees in the American League Eastern Division. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Robin Yount hit a home run. Rookie Paul Molitor did not play. Eddie Murray went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-1 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. George Brett went 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

* The California Angels beat the Texas Rangers, 16-1 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. The Angels scored 13 runs in the top of the 9th inning. Lyman Bostock, Rick Miller, Brian Downing and Ron Jackson each had 3 hits for the Halos, including a home run by Jackson. Just 10 days later, Bostock would be dead, shot in a case of mistaken identity.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-1 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Dave Winfield went 3-for-4. Johnny Bench went 1-for-4. Pete Rose? He went 2-for-4, and probably didn't notice that Bouton was pitching that night.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Seattle Mariners, 6-5 at the Kingdome in Seattle.

* And the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays were not scheduled.