Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original
Original price was: $18.95.$11.99Current price is: $11.99.
Price: $18.95 - $11.99
(as of Nov 14, 2025 00:25:53 UTC – Details)
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.
ASIN : B07ZQW37VK
Publisher : University of Nebraska Press
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : May 1, 2020
Language : English
File size : 2.1 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 426 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1496221315
Page Flip : Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #1,148,339 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store) #333 in Baseball Biographies (Kindle Store) #431 in Baseball History #643 in Baseball Biographies (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 200 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
Customers say
Customers find this biography to be a terrific read and seriously researched work, with one noting it’s rich in anecdotes and information. Moreover, the book is well-written, funny, and entertaining, with one customer describing it as an eye-opener into Bouton’s life. Additionally, they appreciate its pacing, with one review highlighting how it showcases the author’s eccentric humanity as a painter, while another mentions it covers his life right up to his death.
6 reviews for Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original
Add a review
Related Products
Original price was: $18.95.$11.99Current price is: $11.99.
Tim Lukeman –
A home run with all bases loaded
I just finished reading this superb biography of Jim Bouton, unable to put it down until I’d reached the last page of it. As a fan of BALL FOUR & a sporadic follower of his career after the publication of that landmark classic, this was an unexpected treat, done as I believe Bouton himself would have wanted. While obviously a great admirer of the man, author Mitchell Nathanson doesn’t hesitate to delve into Bouton’s human flaws. He’s honest, but he doesn’t revel or wallow in them; he simply seeks to understand the man & what drove him. And in the end, there’s still much to admire & respect.Even better, the book is a journey through America in a lengthy period of fast-paced changes in social attitudes. Nathanson places Bouton in the context of those changes, some of which Bouton had a hand in driving forward himself. What emerges is a portrait of a born maverick, his fears sometimes concealed, unable to simply go along to get along. And if he was occasionally his own worst enemy, he also fought the good fight for many, not just for himself. Again, no hagiography here, just a fair account.Previous reviews have mentioned personal anecdotes, and I’ll do the same: in the the late 1990s, my soon-to-be wife & I saw Bouton speak at our local community college. He was as expect, charming & witty & funny. Someone at the college had laid a baseline down the aisle leading to the podium, where a home plate awaited the speaker. Boutin was delighted. And when taking questions from the audience, one woman asked, “Are you going to write another book? Please say yes!” He laughed, and the audience applauded. He even had free packets of Big League Chew for anyone who wanted one. And we all did!Now, having learned more about him, I intend to go back & re-read all of his books. I’ve absolutely no doubt that they stand the test of time. Mitchell Nathanson has done good work with this winning biography, which I heartily recommend to both the sports fan & non-sports fan without hesitation. Well done!
Paul Andre Gosselin –
The Man ,the Game ,the Book !
I grew up in Canada in the ’60s and ’70s as a french canadian in Montréal Québec.In the wintertime i played hockey and in the summertime i played baseball ,so by geography and culture i am a bit of an American too.During those years i was also swept away by the tsunami of rock music coming from both the US and the UK !I was also an avid reader and would buy trade magazines on sports and the music that i loved.During the ’70s one of the major french monthly music magazines was “Rock’n FolK” which had numerous articles on the current music as well as well as other writings by collaborators from the youth culture coming of age,the equivalent of Rolling Stone magazine in the US.I remember reading something by french journalist Philippe Garnier who was based in L.A and writing about his life and times in the US and one of his collumn was about explaining baseball and it’s importance in American culture.Garnier was recommanding movies and books to his french readers who would like to understand more about the great american pastime !That’s where i first read about “Ball Four”and Jim Bouton…A few years later i was browsing in a used book store when i came upon a worn paperback edition of “Ball Four”.Since then i’ve bought every updated editions and re read the book numerous times !No need to go into how the book became an iconoclastic classic of sports literature and beyond .This book from Mitchell Nathanson is very well written biography about a man with big ideas,a big mouth and obviously a big heart !I strongly recommend it to everyone who enjoyed the untamed spirit of “Ball Four” and it’s author or anyone who is interested in learning about this American non conformist through the well researched,balanced and warm account of Jim Bouton’s life as seen by numerous family members,friends,foes and associates and told in such a finely crafted book!Neither hagiography or hatchett book,it takes it’s cue from Ball Four in trying to tell it as it was !!
Amazon Customer –
An honest portrayal of a fascinating man
I appreciated being able to learn about Bouton’s entire life instead of just the aspects fans of Ball Four are familiar with. The author does a good job of presenting Bouton as a talented, tenacious, creative but flawed man who impacted people around him. We can debate whether Bouton always had the best judgment but there’s no doubt that he had a passion for life.
Schangston –
A fascinating account of the life of Jim Bouton, a unique character in baseball and so much more…
There was so much more to Jim Bouton than “Ball Four”. I loved this biography and was excited to see a book on one of the most interesting characters in baseball history released within a year of Bouton’s death last July. Mitchell Nathanson did not disappoint, this excellent biography is well-researched, thorough and incredibly well written, examining Bouton’s baseball career and personal life, his interesting appeal through his television, film (The Long Good-bye), and business careers, and of course, the controversy he created in his groundbreaking book nearly 50 years ago, with some people not as willing to let it go even today. For those of us older baseball fans who remember the 1963-1964 Yankees, (when he won 21 and 18 games respectively), it was great reliving those days when the Bulldog played a key role in bringing the Yankees two World Series championships. And it was just as much fun to follow Bouton’s never-ending comeback attempts, years later, his unconventional sports reporting on local New York television, and his many business ventures beginning with the invention of” Big League Chew”.Bouton was certainly a baseball original who led an interesting life, and Nathanson does a terrific job taking us through the journey.
Vicky J. –
Bought the book for my baseball loving boyfriend and he enjoyed it very much!
Scott Sullivan –
Being a huge fan of Bouton and Ball Four, this book turned out to be a big disappointment. It was less a factual read about Bouton and more an attempt to aggrandize him and inflate the importance of Ball Four in popular culture. Perhaps any biographer wants to think their subject plays a significant role in the history of their times, but this book reaches too far and quickly becomes an uninteresting read.