Overview

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 listeners a look at Bouton's remarkable life. Based on wide-ranging interviews Nathanson conducted with Bouton, family, friends, and others, he provides an intimate, inside account of Bouton's life.

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Reviews

"""A well-researched and fascinating read that tells how the free-thinking Bouton always marched to the beat of his own drummer."" -- ""Waco Tribune-Herald"" ""Baseball fans will laugh alongside and, ultimately, feel touched by this look at an iconoclastic, often quixotic man who...loved baseball to the very end."" -- ""Library Journal (starred review)"" ""Nathanson...an astute writer on the game, is at his best on the Bouton-Shecter collaboration...[and] is good, too, with Bouton wisecracks."" -- ""Wall Street Journal"" ""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."" -- ""Peoria Journal Star"" ""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."" -- ""New York Times Book Review"""

Author Information

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 several books, including Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, 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. Barry Abrams has narrated and produced audiobooks for a variety of publishers. He has worked as a behind-the-scenes producer at ESPN since 1992. Beginning in 2012, he has also hosted and produced ESPN's In the Gate podcast. Based in Danbury, Connecticut, Barry engineers and calls live webcasts of his son's ice hockey games.

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