The tenacity of a bulldog
More than eight years pass – 2,987 days, to be exact – between Jim Bouton’s last victory in the major leagues for the Houston Astros on July 11, 1970 and his next one in the majors 45 years ago today with the Atlanta Braves.
As you might imagine, there is quite a bit of backstory behind Bouton’s eight-year gap between those victories.
Back in 1970, Bouton’s midseason banishment from the Astros is tied, in great part, to the release of his controversial, tell-all biography Ball Four, which sells a gazillion copies and upsets an even greater number of folks in baseball’s ultra-conservative establishment.
Bouton’s departure from the majors also, in part, has something to do with a knuckleball that no longer knuckles as well as it did during Bouton’s comeback season in 1969, first with the Seattle Pilots and then with the Astros.
Obviously, no one likes a knuckleball pitcher who has lost his only good pitch and no one especially likes a knuckleballer-turned-author who pulls back the curtain on the sordid details in the lives of his onetime teammates with the New York Yankees (yes, we see you there on the roof of the Shoreham Hotel, Mickey Mantle).
Bouton does some TV work in New York in the early 1970s after his baseball career seemingly ends at only 31, less than a decade after he wins two games for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series.
Back in the early and mid-1960s, Bouton lives on a fastball that disappears by the end of the decade.
Now, in the early and mid-1970s, he hopes for another chance with his knuckleball.
There is an abbreviated comeback in 1975 with the Class A Portland Mavericks, for whom the then 36-year-old Bouton goes 4-1 in five starts with four complete games and a 2.20 earned-run average.
Outstanding numbers, of course, but no teams run up their long-distance bills phoning this guy for help.
Bouton takes another season away from the game in 1976 before making yet another comeback in 1977, this time splitting the season between the Mexican League, Class A Portland and Chicago White Sox’s Class AA team in Knoxville.
None of the stops produces much as Bouton combines to go 6-11 with a 4.89 ERA over 22 starts and three relief appearances.
Once again, no one calls. No one wants the 38-year-old Bouton.
That changes in the spring of 1978 when a call comes from the Atlanta Braves, who are looking to fill a spot on their Class AA roster in Savannah, Ga., and nothing says roster filler more than a 39-year-old knuckleballer who now has not one, but two controversial books to his credit.
Bouton does well enough in Savannah with a team-high 11 victories in 21 starts with a 2.82 ERA for the last-place Braves to promote him to the majors.
After a rough return and a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in his first game back, Bouton picks up the victory in his second start 45 years ago tonight in a 4-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park.
Bouton works the first six innings and allows only an unearned run on three hits before leaving with a 3-1 lead.
Turns out that the victory also is Bouton’s last in the majors as he records no-decisions in his three other appearances with the Braves before he is granted free agency after the season.
Once again – and for a final time – no team calls.
No matter.
Bouton remains quite busy counting the profits from his involvement with Big League Chew; writing five more books between 1994 and 2013 and, perhaps most important to him, making amends with the New York Yankees, who in 1998 finally forgive Bouton the author and invite their former pitcher-turned-pariah to participate in their annual Old Timers’ Day.
That day, wearing pinstripes for the first time in more than 30 years and with his grandchildren among the 55,638 in attendance, Bouton takes to the field with his fellow Old Timers.
And receives a standing ovation.
