Bouton

“Once you start reading, you will not be able to stop. A compelling look at one of the most influential and controversial figures in baseball history. A new generation needs to know the story of Jim Bouton: a man who never wearied of gleefully and hilariously skewering the establishment but who also had the old-school drive to will his dreams into reality. Above all, a lifetime love of baseball shines through in every chapter—a true reflection of Bouton himself.”—Brian Kenny, host for MLB Network and author of Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution
"Baseball fans will laugh alongside and, ultimately, feel touched by this look at an iconoclastic, often quixotic man who, despite the charges that his landmark book had hurt the game, loved baseball to the very end."—Library Journal, starred review
"An astute writer on the game, [Nathanson] is as at his best on the Bouton-Shecter collaboration—late nights at the Lion’s Head Bar in Greenwich Village; Shecter making sense of Bouton’s scrawls on stationery, envelopes and toilet paper; the pair noodling over the manuscript stripped down to their underwear in Shecter’s airless Chelsea apartment. . . . Nathanson is good, too, with Bouton wisecracks."—Maxwell Carter, Wall Street Journal
"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. . . . Nathanson moves crisply through the deep back story, though he knows a good detail when he sees one."—John Swansburg, New York Times Book Review
"Nathanson goes beyond tracing Bouton’s life, focusing instead on explicating the roots of Ball Four. In so doing, the book becomes an inside-publishing exposé, showing how the publication and selling of Ball Four changed our expectations of what a sports book could be. . . . In addition, the book provides fascinating details about Bouton's post–Ball Four life, including his fling at acting and his turn as an entrepreneur, developing the successful bubble-gum product Big League Chew. A welcome look at one of baseball's signature mavericks."—Mark Levine, Booklist
"Nathanson's chronicle of baseball's renowned counter-culture renegade as author of Ball Four in 1970 is a masterful exploration of Jim Bouton's impact not only to major-league baseball but also within the larger societal spheres of the overall sports industry and American culture in general."—Charlie Bevis, Bevis Baseball Research
"Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original is one of the best baseball biographies in recent memory. Nathanson is a fantastic storyteller, capable of juxtaposing Bouton's recollections with those of his contemporaries and situating these stories within their historical context. While researching the book, he spent a significant amount of time with Bouton in the final years of his life (Bouton died in 2019), which contributes to the depth with which he renders his subject."—Clayton Trutor, Reason
"Bouton is a book that deserves space next to Ball Four on the bookshelf. Nathanson has done a thorough job of presenting the life of a complex man who changed the game of baseball, not by what he did on the field, but what he observed on the field, in the clubhouse and on the road."—Bob D'Angelo, Sports Bookie

"A well-researched and fascinating read that tells how the free thinking Bouton always marched to the beat of his own drummer."—John Werner, Waco Tribune-Herald

"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."—Dennis Star, Peoria Journal Star