Bouton - by Mitchell Nathanson (Hardcover)

About the Book

Bouton examines the remarkable life of a player and an author who forever changed the way we view not only sports books but professional sports as a whole.

Book Synopsis

​2021 Seymour Medal Finalist
Named a Best Baseball Book of 2020 by Sports Collectors Digest
New York Times 2020 Summer Reading List

From the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939-2019) was the sports world's deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.

Bouton defied tremendous odds to make the majors, won two games for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, and staged an improbable comeback with the Braves as a thirty-nine-year-old. But it was his fateful 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and his resulting insider's account, Ball Four, that did nothing less than reintroduce America to its national pastime in a lasting, profound way.

In Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, Mitchell Nathanson gives readers a look at Bouton's remarkable life. He tells the unlikely story of how Bouton's Ball Four, perhaps the greatest baseball book of all time, came into being, how it was received, and how it forever changed the way we view not only sports books but professional sports as a whole. Based on wide-ranging interviews Nathanson conducted with Bouton, family, friends, and others, he provides an intimate, inside account of Bouton's life. Nathanson provides insight as to why Bouton saw the world the way he did, why he was so different than the thousands of players who came before him, and how, in the cliquey, cold, bottom-line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.

Review Quotes

"Nathanson's chronicle of baseball's renowned counter-culture renegade as author of Ball Four in 1970 is a masterful exploration of Jim Bouton's impact not only to major-league baseball but also within the larger societal spheres of the overall sports industry and American culture in general."--Charlie Bevis, Bevis Baseball Research

"An astute writer on the game, [Nathanson] is as at his best on the Bouton-Shecter collaboration--late nights at the Lion's Head Bar in Greenwich Village; Shecter making sense of Bouton's scrawls on stationery, envelopes and toilet paper; the pair noodling over the manuscript stripped down to their underwear in Shecter's airless Chelsea apartment. . . . Nathanson is good, too, with Bouton wisecracks."--Maxwell Carter, Wall Street Journal-- (5/28/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"A well-researched and fascinating read that tells how the free thinking Bouton always marched to the beat of his own drummer."--John Werner, Waco Tribune-Herald

-- (6/15/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original is one of the best baseball biographies in recent memory. Nathanson is a fantastic storyteller, capable of juxtaposing Bouton's recollections with those of his contemporaries and situating these stories within their historical context. While researching the book, he spent a significant amount of time with Bouton in the final years of his life (Bouton died in 2019), which contributes to the depth with which he renders his subject."--Clayton Trutor, Reason

"Bouton is a book that deserves space next to Ball Four on the bookshelf. Nathanson has done a thorough job of presenting the life of a complex man who changed the game of baseball, not by what he did on the field, but what he observed on the field, in the clubhouse and on the road."--Bob D'Angelo, Sports Bookie-- (4/4/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Baseball fans will laugh alongside and, ultimately, feel touched by this look at an iconoclastic, often quixotic man who, despite the charges that his landmark book had hurt the game, loved baseball to the very end."--Library Journal, starred review-- (5/1/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Nathanson goes beyond tracing Bouton's life, focusing instead on explicating the roots of Ball Four. In so doing, the book becomes an inside-publishing exposé, showing how the publication and selling of Ball Four changed our expectations of what a sports book could be. . . . In addition, the book provides fascinating details about Bouton's post-Ball Four life, including his fling at acting and his turn as an entrepreneur, developing the successful bubble-gum product Big League Chew. A welcome look at one of baseball's signature mavericks."--Mark Levine, Booklist-- (4/15/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Nathanson's source list is deep and insightful and his writing is crisp. And his access to Bouton's Ball Four notes provides answers to some lingering questions."--Dennis Star, Peoria Journal Star-- (5/20/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Once you start reading, you will not be able to stop. A compelling look at one of the most influential and controversial figures in baseball history. A new generation needs to know the story of Jim Bouton: a man who never wearied of gleefully and hilariously skewering the establishment but who also had the old-school drive to will his dreams into reality. Above all, a lifetime love of baseball shines through in every chapter--a true reflection of Bouton himself."--Brian Kenny, host for MLB Network and author of Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution-- (9/19/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"When Mitchell Nathanson, a professor of sports law at Villanova, approached Bouton about writing his biography, the pitcher gave his blessing, on one condition: that Nathanson write about him with the honesty he'd tried to bring to the game of baseball. . . . Nathanson moves crisply through the deep back story, though he knows a good detail when he sees one."--John Swansburg, New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Mitchell Nathanson is a professor of law in the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at the Villanova University School of Law. He is the author of God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, A People's History of Baseball, and The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit.