Did you ever read Ball Four by Jim Bouton?
The baseball diary of the 1969 season by the former New York Yankees pitcher is one of my favorite books. I reread it every couple of years. Although it was controversial at the time (revealing the sometimes racy behind-the-scene antics of Major League ballplayers), the book is quite tame today – but still hilarious.
I had a dogeared copy of the original Ball Four paperback (from Booksellers in Elyria), but over the years Bouton kept updating and reissuing his tome in hardcover, filling in the reader with stories of his latest endeavors and what his old teammates were up to. I eventually bought an autographed copy of the last version, Ball Four – The Final Pitch (2000).
Sadly, Bouton passed away in July 2019.
Anyway, fifty years ago, Bouton’s sequel to Ball Four came out, entitled I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally. He dedicated it to Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball at that time. And that’s the subject of the story below, which appeared in the Journal on June 1, 1971.
I haven’t read I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally since the late 1970s, but will probably order it from the library soon.
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Mike Marshall, the Cy Young Award-winning MLB pitcher and teammate of Jim Bouton during that 1969 season (when both were with the Seattle Pilots) passed away on June 1, 2021. He figured quite prominently in Ball Four as one of Bouton's friends and roommates.
