It was a gutsy thing to even think about. At the age of 39, Jim Bouton decided he wasn’t quite finished as a pitcher. He won a spot in the minor leagues at Savannah in the Southern League, and worked himself up to Atlanta. It wasn’t handed to him in any way – he earned it. He started 22 times at Savannah and completed 13. His ERA was a very nice 2.77 and he finished with a 12-9 record.
In September, when the rosters expanded, Jim was called up to Atlanta. At the time, some of the writers were calling it a publicity stunt. Nonsense. The Braves were heading for 6th place and a 69-93 record. Niekro was the ace, with a 19-18 / 2.88 showing that year. The #2 starter was Preston Hanna, 7-13 / 5.13. It went downhill from there. It was the weakest staff in the National League. And here’s Bouton, the only guy in their whole farm system who put up any good numbers that year. Why not? His name could have been Mudd and they would have still called him up.
And he did pretty good, especially for a 39 year-old guy who had been out of baseball for nearly a decade. The ’78 Braves were a bad team going nowhere, but Bouton was facing big-league hitters, including the Dodgers, Giants, and Reds, who were fighting for the division title. He started five games, and pitched well in three of them. He beat the Giants 4-1 on September 14, his first major-league victory in eight years. After a 2-1 loss to the Reds, their manager Sparky Anderson said, “We didn’t even hit the ball hard off of him, and we got two runs we shouldn’t have gotten.”
Bouton finished 1-3 with a 4.91 ERA in his three weeks back at the top. After the season he retired again, saying that he had achieved his goal and had nothing left to prove to himself.
His first book, Ball Four, is still my favorite baseball memoir of all time. He was the first one to take the reader into the clubhouse, the team bus, and the bullpen. Many thought he was one of baseball’s “bad guys” but he turned out to be one of the “good guys” in the end. That’s why I made this card, because he was good for baseball, and also because he had the guts to make what can only be regarded as a remarkable comeback.