Jim Bouton's madcap tale of his Seattle Pilots' days still hilarious

Jim Bouton wrote the book on baseball. The book that gave fans their first, unvarnished look at players' lives in the majors. The book that spawned a host of tell-all books in sports. The book that was first published in 1970 and still refuses to die.

COMING UP

JIM BOUTON

WHAT: Reading/signing

WHEN/WHERE: 3 p.m., Monday, The Elliott Bay Book Co., 206-624-6600; noon, Tuesday, downtown Barnes & Noble, Pacific Place, 206-264-0156

Late last year came what the former pitcher for the Seattle Pilots asserts is its last edition: "Ball Four: The Final Pitch" (Sports Publishing, 517 pages, $24.95). Here, in a large format hardback with new epilogue by the author, is a genuine reportorial classic of American popular culture, a book that the New York Public Library selected as one of the 100 Books of the Twentieth Century.

Yet this daily diary of Bouton's 1969 season is mainly remembered for its madcap glimpse of a wacky collection of losers known as the Seattle Pilots in their first and only year of existence. This misfit team seemed to have been created just for Bouton to immortalize, Bad News Seafellas on their ragged sail into history.

"Each year, the Seattle Pilots represent more and more of a contrast between modern life and baseball back then," Bouton, 61, said in Seattle last November. "They soon became quaint in their forelornness, their pitiful circumstances. If I hadn't actually written down notes, nobody would believe that the Pilots actually had to clean up in the whirlpool bath because the showers didn't work at Sick's Stadium. Jesus!"

Bouton's wicked wit and passion for detail did much to enliven the pages of "Ball Four." But what really made the book so appealing was that Bouton, once a budding star for the Yankees, was no super nova for the Pilots and thus brought a bemused detachment to his observations. The team bard was such an outsider that he was traded in August to Houston.

Bouton comes across as much more engaged in his new epilogue, and more introspective. Six decades of life has a way of doing that even to the confirmed iconoclast. So Bouton writes with emotion about his reconciliation with Mickey Mantle, his homecoming to an Old Timers' Day at Yankee Stadium following a published appeal by his son.

But what stands out most in the new epilogue is Bouton's grappling with the death of his beloved daughter, Laurie, in a 1997 automobile accident at the age of 31.

She had always been "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" to the Bouton family and her loss left her grieving father at such a loss for words that it took him six months to write 10 pages about Laurie's death.

"That was, by far, the most difficult experience of my life," Bouton said in the interview. "As a parent, you feel such responsibility to your children, no matter how old they are. So when I got the horrible news about what happened to Laurie, I wanted to be there for her and stop it. Just stop it! I had always made things happen in my life before -- I had that ability.

"That was the first thing in my life that I really couldn't control, and it changed me. I'm not so cocky, not so sure of myself. I'm not the luckiest guy in the world anymore."

New baseball books

"When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!" Yogi Berra, with Dave Kaplan (Hyperion, 175 pages, $16.95).

Baseball's beloved Yogi, the Zen master of malaprop, uses some of his famous quotations as inspirations for individual chapters that include his colorful reminiscences and no-nonsense philosophy of life. Already a best seller, this fine little book underscores why the Yankee backstop remains so popular.

"The Final Season: Fathers, Sons, and One Last Season in a Classic American Ballpark," Tom Stanton (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 245 pages, $23.95).

A small-town Michigan journalist attends all 81 games during the last season in Tiger Stadium and produces a heart-felt, often bittersweet reflection on baseball and place and family. It is a worthy obituary for a shrine of a ballpark, and an affectionate valentine to those who graced its field and its stands.

"Home Run," edited by George Plimpton (Harvest, 269 pages, $13).

George Plimpton, the best-selling author and jock pretender, has compiled a four-bagger of a baseball anthology, with a crackerjack collection of writings centering on the round-tripper. Great sportswriters like Grantland Rice, Red Smith and Roger Angell have work here, but so do such literary stars as Bernard Malamud, John Updike and Don DeLillo.

"Major League Dad: A Daughter's Cherished Memories," by Julia Ruth Stevens, with Bill Gilbert (Triumph Books, 117 pages, $12.95).

Baseball stars come and go, but they are all pretenders to the throne of the Babe. The rumpled Sultan of Swat still looms larger than life as folk hero, matinee idol and sports icon. Julia Ruth Stevens, stepdaughter of Babe Ruth, adds father to those Ruthian roles, with this affectionate little memoir of her strict, but loving parent. What makes this small volume such a treat is a great collection of photographs of the Babe, in private and in public. Here was a true legend who retained the spirit of a kid and could never resist the allure of wearing a funny hat.

P-I books reporter John Marshall, and baseball Answer Guy columnist, can be reached at 206-448-8170 or johnmarshall@seattlepi.com.

Add P-I Book headlines to