I just finished reading a book by Jim Bouton a Yankee great baseball player who was a 1963 All Star.
That diary became Ball Four.
Published in 1970, it was the most honest book ever written about professional baseball — and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called it "detrimental to the game." He tried to force Bouton to sign a statement declaring it fiction. Bouton refused. Ball Four described drug use, infidelity, alcohol, petty cruelties, front-office manipulation, and all the ordinary human wreckage hiding behind the pinstripes. Teammates never forgave him. He was informally blacklisted. For years, he was quietly uninvited from every Old-Timers' Game, every reunion, every back-slapping ceremony where men who had played the game pretended it had always been noble.
The blacklisting lasted nearly thirty years.
Talked about all the things that were going on in 1963 and basically got blacklisted because of the revelations that he put in his book. My whole point is probably this type of behavior which I can only speculate probably still exists today in MLB. Noone will spill the beans anymore because of the consequences they will face. In my humble opinion this type of behavior has filtered down to the colleges. Not naming any schools, coaches. But look at the landscape of college sports. I mean look at all the national championships that schools have won in the name of culture, this is a special place. Really. Look at women's softball schools tampering with players from other schools, paying a pitcher $1,000,000. College baseball, football the same. Student athletes that probably will never have a professional career staying in college because they get free tuition, 3 meals a day, great medical attention, NIL and rev share. So, after their eligibility is over, they have to get in the real world and guess what no one unless they are a graduate from Harvard, Yale or any prestigious academic is going to pay them what they were getting in college. Athletes flock to the SEC, ACC, Big10 because of all these things. Hopefully congress will pass legislation to help the schools with these issues because 5 years from now a lot of schools including power 4 schools will say this is not sustainable anymore. What happened back in 1963 with MLB is going on today except in a larger degree. Of course, no one will spill the beans because of the repercussions.
That diary became Ball Four.
Published in 1970, it was the most honest book ever written about professional baseball — and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn called it "detrimental to the game." He tried to force Bouton to sign a statement declaring it fiction. Bouton refused. Ball Four described drug use, infidelity, alcohol, petty cruelties, front-office manipulation, and all the ordinary human wreckage hiding behind the pinstripes. Teammates never forgave him. He was informally blacklisted. For years, he was quietly uninvited from every Old-Timers' Game, every reunion, every back-slapping ceremony where men who had played the game pretended it had always been noble.
The blacklisting lasted nearly thirty years.
Talked about all the things that were going on in 1963 and basically got blacklisted because of the revelations that he put in his book. My whole point is probably this type of behavior which I can only speculate probably still exists today in MLB. Noone will spill the beans anymore because of the consequences they will face. In my humble opinion this type of behavior has filtered down to the colleges. Not naming any schools, coaches. But look at the landscape of college sports. I mean look at all the national championships that schools have won in the name of culture, this is a special place. Really. Look at women's softball schools tampering with players from other schools, paying a pitcher $1,000,000. College baseball, football the same. Student athletes that probably will never have a professional career staying in college because they get free tuition, 3 meals a day, great medical attention, NIL and rev share. So, after their eligibility is over, they have to get in the real world and guess what no one unless they are a graduate from Harvard, Yale or any prestigious academic is going to pay them what they were getting in college. Athletes flock to the SEC, ACC, Big10 because of all these things. Hopefully congress will pass legislation to help the schools with these issues because 5 years from now a lot of schools including power 4 schools will say this is not sustainable anymore. What happened back in 1963 with MLB is going on today except in a larger degree. Of course, no one will spill the beans because of the repercussions.
