Jim Bouton

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Personal

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Family

American athlete, a top ranking major league baseball pitcher, who played for the New York Yankees (1962–1968), Seattle Pilots (1969), Houston Astros (1969–1970) and Atlanta Braves (1978). He was physically a late starter, as he had an unhappy childhood and severe acne as a kid; Bouton always painfully felt that he was an outsider. He signed with the New York Yankees on 20 November 1958 and played in his first World Series in 1963, winning 21 major league games. An irreverent nonconformist, he was an author, an actor, and a TV sportscaster the year after he retired, in 1969. His autobiography was published in 1970, entitled "Ball Four." A few years later he wrote a sequel, "I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally." In 1994, he co-wrote "Strike Zone" with veteran writer Eliot Asinof. His hobbies were art, painting, designing and making jewelry, not what one usually finds with ball players. Married in 1962, he had two children, Michael and Laurie, and one adopted daughter; the marriage didn't last, Bouton was divorced in 1981. He had a vasectomy. In 1997, Laurie was killed in a car accident at age 31. Bouton later married Paula Kurman. In 2012, he had a stroke that did not impair him physically but damaged his memory and speaking. Bouton died at home on 10 July 2019, after weeks of hospice care for cerebral amyloid angiopathy, at age 80. Link to Wikipedia biography