20 IN THESE TIMES Sept. 28-Oct. 4,1977

By Paul Goldman, The independent Mavs, in contrast, view Peter Dreier, and SPORTS the game differently. "All we do is play Mimi Goldman to win, chase women, drink and have n 1970 ex-New York Yankee pitcher fun," says the Mavs' Russell, a Holly- IJim Bouton shook the world wood actor best known for his long stint with , a. best-selling irreverent on TV's Bonanza. inside look at life in the "biggies." I'm Jim Bouton Which regimen is best? Few individual Glad You Didn't Take It Personally Mavs will climb much higher in pro followed a year later. baseball, but as a team they are the win- We caught Jim Bouton and some of ningest club in the Northwest League. his Portland Maverick team-mates Everyday life in the six-team league during a minor league game in Eugene. follows his dream hasn't changed much. All the teams are Bouton, age 38 and attempting to within 300 miles of each other, but eight his way back into the big or ten hour bus trips still give the minors leagues, was expansive and relaxed even an aura of "a traveling circus," in the after having been knocked out of the words of one player. A few players com- box by an eight-run barrage in the third mute on the shorter trips. inning by the Eugene Emeralds, the Cin- The three-month Northwest League cinnati Reds "single-A" minor league circuit—Salem, Eugene, Portland, team. Grays Harbor, Bellingham, and Walla As a hard-throwing Yankee pitcher Walla—suggest that the small city, but Bouton won 21 games in 1963 and two not the small town, has survived the de- games. The Yankees let cline of the minor leagues. Attendance Bouton go when his arm gave out, but at Eugene's rickety Civic Stadium— Bouton hung on with the Houston which the local government almost con- Astros, and a few minor demned earlier in the summer and which league teams until 1970, when he called will close unless someone comes up with it quits, saying he couldn't drag his $38,000 in repairs—averages under family though the minors again. 1,000. Portland attracts more fans and He then cashed in his "celebrity" Bellingham fewer. Few minor league status and spent several years as ABC- teams are money-making operations. TV's nightly sportscaster in New York. Bouton is adament that a strike would He also played the lead in a TV version be a total failure in the minor leagues— of Ball Four, which played for 13 weeks unlike the majors, where a 1972 strike last year. cut into the season. "Minor league ball- Having made the circuit— from the players have absolutely no leverage. minor league where he started in 1959, None. If every minor leaguer went on to the majors, and now back to the mi- strike, they'd go three years without let- nors — Bouton is ideally suited to de- ting them play," Bouton says. "The scribe the changes in minor league base- first minor leaguer who stood up in the ball. clubhouse to call for a union would be found in the river with cement spikes Less desperate and uptight. on!" The most important change has been in the attitudes of both players and man- Following a dream. agement. Minor leaguers are "less des- Politically, Bouton's a liberal humanist, perate" and "uptight" than they used to but he's also very individualistic, a hust- be, he says. While each player still wants ler. He was recently asked to do a TV to make it to the majors, and usually be- commercial for a Portland lumber com- lieves that he is good enough to do it, pany. "If it's a choice between ravaging failure seems less traumatic. "They un- the environment and a couple of hund- the most important thing red bucks," he says, smiling but slightly in life isn't hitting a ball with a stick." guilty, "I'd take the bucks." Demographic changes have played a Bouton made $80,000 a year as a part in this transition. The days when a broadcaster, compared to his six year **" small-town high school star could jump major league average of $19,000. Join- to the high minor leagues or even the big ing the Mavs in early July, after being time are over. According to Bouton, the released by the "double A" Knoxville typical new baseball talent is a young Sox, Bouton gets the same $400 a month white from the suburbs of the sunbelt as everyone else. where baseball is played all year. Many He sold his $125,000 home in the New players also have at least a couple of Jersey suburbs and bought a less expen- years of college (and college ball) under Bouton is working on his knuckleball, an "old man's pitch " that is effective and sive house nearby, but he doesn't know their belts when they sign their first con- easier on the arm. what he'll do after the season is over. He tract. expects to be back in Portland next sum- Changes in the structure of baseball mer, maybe play winter league ball in itself may have reduced the pressure too. Latin America in-between. Once there were over a hundred minor Jim Bouton has made the circuit— He has few regrets leaving TV sports- leagues; almost every small town in the casting behind. "I decided that my day U.S. boasted its own farm team and to day happiness is more important." local heroes. Today only seventeen from the minor leagues, to the How does Jim Bouton—baseball's minor leagues remain,. iconoclast, a minor culture hero—fit The demise of the minors reflects the majors, and now back to the minors, into this old fashioned game played by rise of televised baseball and the emer- young men? The minor league players— gence of colleges as a free farm system, with a couple of books and a many half his age and away from home weeding out players who previously for the first time—look at Bouton as a would have toiled in the minors. As a re- guru who rose to fame with the Yankees sult, fewer players get an opportunity to newscasting stint in between. and fortune with his book and TV, but play in the minors, but those who are who still just enjoys playing baseball. He signed by pro clubs have a realistic— relates easily to these young men because though still small— chance of making it. will sign them, but almost all we inter- graham says he'll give pro baseball an- he shares with them the same dream. About seven percent reach the majors. viewed hope to give it "one more year" other two or three years. "You don't More than anything else, Jim Bouton Bouton recalled that when he joined before giving up on their dream. know where you're going to be next wants to play baseball, preferably once the Yankee system in 1959 (after a year In the team's five-year existence under year, or even next week." The Reds again in the majors. He's not planning - at Western Michigan University) there owner Bing Russell the Mavs have yet to could shift him to their AA or AAA another book because that would impair were 100 minor league pitchers above send a player to the major leagues. Of 13 farm teams or release him altogether. the concentration needed to perfect his him on the various Yankee farm teams. Mavs signed by pro teams, only two Ingraham, like many of his team- knuckleball—an "old man's" pitch that Now each major league teams owns only have gone as far as the "triple^A" level mates, doesn't have a college degree or is difficult to control but both effec- three minor league clubs and keeps care- and both quit after a brief stint. With other career plans if he strikes out in tive and easier on the arm. Bouton ful track of its young players. those odds, Russell comments that "this baseball. "I try not to think about knocks the mystification of baseball and is the hungriest team in all of baseball." that," he says. the baseball establishment, but not the :- Hungriest team in baseball. For the Eugene Emeralds, minor John Underwood, the Em's manager, game itself. Independent teams like Bouton's Port- league life is only slightly better. All is only 22 years old and reflects a trend For Bouton, even after a 21-game sea- land Mavericks sign players passed up have contracts with the . in minor league management. There are son, two World Series victories, and a by major league scout s,_and often field a The Reds front office likes to sign young few jobs available for the grizzled old successful career outside baseball, team of older players. players (average age on the Ems is 19), veteran whose main qualification is that pitching in the big leagues is still his big- All players on the Mavs earn $400 per and a relatively high proportion of Latin he is a crony of the big club's manager. gest dream. For millions of other young month during their June through August ballplayers. This has resulted in a more relaxed at- men, old men and a growing number of baseball season. All have regular off- Pat Ingraham, a 21-year old center- mosphere on minor league teams with women as well, that dream still has a season jobs — as lumberjacks, sporting fielder from the Bahamas, is the team's less stress on conformity. powerful influence on their lives. goods salesmen, schoolteachers, bar- leading hitter, batting close to .400. He The three authors teach sociology—Paul tenders, and so on. Several even hold earns $600 a month for June, July and and Mimi Goldman at the University of jobs during the season, forcing them to August and works in a carpentry shop in Play to win and have fun. Oregon, Peter Dreier at Tufts Univer- miss road trips on occasion. Freeport during the off-season. Still, the Ems enforce some degree of sity. All are available for the next player •«•"- Few Mavs expect a major league club Now in his third year at Eugene, In- discipline, such as nightly bedchecks. draft.

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