![]() ![]() ![]() ""Okay, all you guys, look horny,"" a coach advises his charges as they are about to deplane and meet wives or girlfriends following a two-week road trip. But his diary, happily, delivered anecdotes, not angst. An articulate and outspoken sort, Bouton found it difficult to play ball with front-office types, field managers, or other powers that be his intellectual pretensions also caused friction with teammates. While playing in the bush leagues, he developed a knuckler (thrown with the fingertips) to replace his lost fastball and caught on as a reliever in 1969 with the Pilots, an expansion team whose roster combined over-the-hill veterans with unproven rookies. An all-star pitcher and World Series hero with the Yankees during the early 1960s, Bouton suffered arm troubles that landed him in the minors. Now the original text, teamed with a brief account of Bouton's further peccadillos, is set for a comeback. ![]() First published a decade ago, Bouton's day-by-day report on a long season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros became the best-selling baseball book of all time-and the progenitor of a candid, even blasphemous new breed of sports chronicles. ![]()
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