Transcript
The Baseball (Player) is Juiced
June 14, 2002
MIKE PESCA: In 1970, major league pitcher Jim Bouton's memoir Ball Four sparked a controversy in the baseball world. Never before had so much been revealed about the unseemly side of America's pastime. Baseball's heroes, it turned out, could also be drunks, bigots and degenerates. Now big league slugger Jose Canseco says that you can add cheaters to that list. In a tell all book Canseco plans to detail the rampant use of illegal performance-enhancing steroids throughout baseball, naming names, including his own. In a recent Sports Illustrated article, another former MVP admitted to using steroids, estimating that half the league was using too. With the floodgates on a once-taboo subject open, baseball now faces a new threat to its image -- much like the period following the release of Ball Four. Its author, Jim Bouton, joins us now. Jim, welcome to OTM.
JIM BOUTON: Nice to be here.
MIKE PESCA: Do I owe you an apology -- comparing your authorial talents with the presumed literary skills of Jose Canseco?
JIM BOUTON: [LAUGHS] I haven't seen anything he's written so far, but it sounds like he's got an uphill battle considering that he's being scooped every day by the daily newspapers.
MIKE PESCA:That's true. But do you think in his book --does Canseco deserve any credit if people don't come forward -- the steroid issue for one may never change -- and so okay, he's looking to get one last big payday out if it, but isn't it better than silence on the issue?
JIM BOUTON: He may already have achieved what you're talking about. If the idea is to expose the fact that there's steroid use in the big leagues so that the Players Association and the owners ban it -- he's probably already done that. It sounds like it may be a magazine article. It certainly doesn't sound like a book's worth.
MIKE PESCA:Let's talk for a moment about the sports media's role in all of this. In 1970 any number of beat writers could have written what they saw with their own eyes, beaten you to many of your punches, and today it was a writer who did break the first big story --that's Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. But really the Red Sox fans were chanting to Jose Canseco -- Steroids, Steroids in, back in 1988, and it's not like no one knew about this.
MIKE PESCA:You know in my day the few little truths that I told about baseball were shocking back then only because sports writers were not really writing about those kinds of things. It was mostly scores and promos for the team; a lot of writers considered themselves extensions of the teams' public relations department. But since that time, maybe partly because of Ball Four, writers have felt the need to take a closer look at players as human beings, and so they're doing the job they weren't doing years ago which is why Jose Canseco's book won't be shocking to anyone. It-- You know a lot of times these things are shocking to the media, cause you know they need a story, so-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MIKE PESCA:Right. But you can't deny that Verducci actually getting a former MVP, Ken Caminiti, on the record and admitting that he did it moved the story from the realm of rumor to the realm of confirmed fact.
JIM BOUTON: That's true.
MIKE PESCA: And I noticed that he is a writer who covers the sport itself. He doesn't travel with one team, and I think that that's not a coincidence.
JIM BOUTON: I think you find that true not only in sports but in politics--
MIKE PESCA: Right.
JIM BOUTON: -- that the writers who normally cover it on a regular beat basis are the ones who end up deciding that maybe certain things shouldn't be written about. This was one of the things that David Halberstam talked about in the reporting on the Vietnam War -- it was not the daily writers that covered the atrocities of My Lai for example. It was Seymour Hersh [sp?], a writer who was covering it from a magazine point of view and he wasn't one of the daily writers. I do think it helps to have somebody from the outside coming in, which may be a good rationale for rotating writers so that they don't get too chummy with the people they're covering and they are able to have a better perspective.
MIKE PESCA: All right, so I guess the last question is --you've never faced Canseco. How do you think you'd pitch him?
JIM BOUTON:Early in my career I would have changed speeds on him -- throwing fast balls and changeup. Late in my career I would have just thrown him the knuckleball -- right down the middle. [LAUGHTER] The big hitters usually had trouble with the knuckleball.
MIKE PESCA: Jim Bouton, thank you very much.
JIM BOUTON: All right.
MIKE PESCA:Jim Bouton is the author of Ball Four, the best selling sports memoir of all time. His new book, Wakona Park [sp?] will be out this spring. [MUSIC]
June 14, 2002
MIKE PESCA: In 1970, major league pitcher Jim Bouton's memoir Ball Four sparked a controversy in the baseball world. Never before had so much been revealed about the unseemly side of America's pastime. Baseball's heroes, it turned out, could also be drunks, bigots and degenerates. Now big league slugger Jose Canseco says that you can add cheaters to that list. In a tell all book Canseco plans to detail the rampant use of illegal performance-enhancing steroids throughout baseball, naming names, including his own. In a recent Sports Illustrated article, another former MVP admitted to using steroids, estimating that half the league was using too. With the floodgates on a once-taboo subject open, baseball now faces a new threat to its image -- much like the period following the release of Ball Four. Its author, Jim Bouton, joins us now. Jim, welcome to OTM.
JIM BOUTON: Nice to be here.
MIKE PESCA: Do I owe you an apology -- comparing your authorial talents with the presumed literary skills of Jose Canseco?
JIM BOUTON: [LAUGHS] I haven't seen anything he's written so far, but it sounds like he's got an uphill battle considering that he's being scooped every day by the daily newspapers.
MIKE PESCA:That's true. But do you think in his book --does Canseco deserve any credit if people don't come forward -- the steroid issue for one may never change -- and so okay, he's looking to get one last big payday out if it, but isn't it better than silence on the issue?
JIM BOUTON: He may already have achieved what you're talking about. If the idea is to expose the fact that there's steroid use in the big leagues so that the Players Association and the owners ban it -- he's probably already done that. It sounds like it may be a magazine article. It certainly doesn't sound like a book's worth.
MIKE PESCA:Let's talk for a moment about the sports media's role in all of this. In 1970 any number of beat writers could have written what they saw with their own eyes, beaten you to many of your punches, and today it was a writer who did break the first big story --that's Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. But really the Red Sox fans were chanting to Jose Canseco -- Steroids, Steroids in, back in 1988, and it's not like no one knew about this.
MIKE PESCA:You know in my day the few little truths that I told about baseball were shocking back then only because sports writers were not really writing about those kinds of things. It was mostly scores and promos for the team; a lot of writers considered themselves extensions of the teams' public relations department. But since that time, maybe partly because of Ball Four, writers have felt the need to take a closer look at players as human beings, and so they're doing the job they weren't doing years ago which is why Jose Canseco's book won't be shocking to anyone. It-- You know a lot of times these things are shocking to the media, cause you know they need a story, so-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MIKE PESCA:Right. But you can't deny that Verducci actually getting a former MVP, Ken Caminiti, on the record and admitting that he did it moved the story from the realm of rumor to the realm of confirmed fact.
JIM BOUTON: That's true.
MIKE PESCA: And I noticed that he is a writer who covers the sport itself. He doesn't travel with one team, and I think that that's not a coincidence.
JIM BOUTON: I think you find that true not only in sports but in politics--
MIKE PESCA: Right.
JIM BOUTON: -- that the writers who normally cover it on a regular beat basis are the ones who end up deciding that maybe certain things shouldn't be written about. This was one of the things that David Halberstam talked about in the reporting on the Vietnam War -- it was not the daily writers that covered the atrocities of My Lai for example. It was Seymour Hersh [sp?], a writer who was covering it from a magazine point of view and he wasn't one of the daily writers. I do think it helps to have somebody from the outside coming in, which may be a good rationale for rotating writers so that they don't get too chummy with the people they're covering and they are able to have a better perspective.
MIKE PESCA: All right, so I guess the last question is --you've never faced Canseco. How do you think you'd pitch him?
JIM BOUTON:Early in my career I would have changed speeds on him -- throwing fast balls and changeup. Late in my career I would have just thrown him the knuckleball -- right down the middle. [LAUGHTER] The big hitters usually had trouble with the knuckleball.
MIKE PESCA: Jim Bouton, thank you very much.
JIM BOUTON: All right.
MIKE PESCA:Jim Bouton is the author of Ball Four, the best selling sports memoir of all time. His new book, Wakona Park [sp?] will be out this spring. [MUSIC]