The man behind the bubblegum card was famous, but not a wizard, and often a flawed human being with problems like anyone else. At the time, having your face on a bubblegum card made you an idol – to be admired and even revered. Players didn’t like him because he wrote about how unheroic and adolescent they behaved. What got him in trouble was calling out the absurdity, not just in using it against The Man, but he broke the cardinal rule by exposing it by writing a best seller. He saw the absurdity in things, and baseball was full of absurdities. In addition to ball player and author, he was an actor, co-owner of Big League Chew bubblegum, sportscaster, inventor, motivational speaker and philanthropist.īouton was a guy who could be blunt, not mean, just direct. I am reading the 50th anniversary edition, published a year after his death in 2019.īefore I get into the book, Jim Bouton was an interesting man. Jim Boutonīouton updated his book several times for anniversary editions. The diary became a book, a very popular book, making Bouton very famous, and very hated by players and management, who never agreed on anything except their disdain for the man who told their secrets. The diary recorded the baseball that fans did not see or hear about. He was approached about keeping a baseball diary to cover the 1969 season. He won 18 games in 1964, then his arm gave out, winding up a struggling pitcher on the 1969 expansion Seattle Pilots.

He had once been a member of the proud New York Yankees, where he won 21 games in 1963, and appeared in two World Series, even winning two game in the 1964 series. Jim Bouton was an average baseball pitcher, although he had a couple of very successful years.

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