Jim Bouton (seriously) raps steroids

It was Jim Bouton day at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) convention Friday, and as avid readers of "Ball Four" would expect, he was hilarious.

You had to be there, but his acappella rendition of "Proud to be an Astro" (lyrics unsuitable for a family newspaper, but check out page 331 of any vintage edition Ball Four) brought down the house.

Twice. Once in a morning panel discussion with former Seattle Pilots teammates Mike Marshall, Jim Pagliaroni and Steve Hovley ("Orbit" to "Ball Four" aficionados), and reprised by Bouton later in the afternoon as the keynote speaker for the SABR awards ceremony.

However, amidst the ribald tales of his days as a Pilot in 1969, and the warm interaction with his former teammates, Bouton had a surprisingly serious message to deliver on the hot-button baseball topic of the day — steroids.

Bouton scandalized the baseball world in 1970 with his depiction in "Ball Four" of players popping amphetamines, dubbed "greenies." But he said Friday that steroids are far more insidious than greenies.

"We used greenies to overcome hangovers," he said. "They were performance enablers. They allowed you to play up to your ability, but not beyond your ability."

Steroids, he said, have caused "a crisis of confidence among fans that has put the integrity of the game at stake. This is worse than the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Far more games have been compromised by steroid use than ever by gambling."

Speaking to a group whose members have invented a pantheon of new and exotic statistics to evaluate performance, Bouton proposed convening a SABR-led panel to determine the impact of steroids on slugging.

That, in turn, would result in the insertion of a new statistic in modern-day batting records: the Steroids Adjusted Number (SAN), to appear in parentheses next to the actual number of homers hit.

The SAN would disappear, Bouton said, only if "history shows the actual homers hit were not an aberration, just as time has removed the imaginary asterisk next to Roger Maris' 61 homers in 1961.

"But if history shows the actual home runs were an aberration, they would end up in parentheses, and the SAN would be recognized as legitimate."

Luckily for those who came to revel in "Ball Four" revelry, Bouton didn't stay in his heavy mode long. Much like a concert in which the artist is expected to perform all his hits, Bouton re-told many of the classic anecdotes.

That included the time Bouton fooled Pilots teammate Fred Talbot into thinking a fan for whom he had won $25,000 by hitting a home run in a designated inning — Donald Dubois of Gladstone, Ore. — was going to send him $5,000 as a token of appreciation.

And, of course, there were many fond tales of the Pilots' lovable manager, Joe Schultz, who perpetually implored his players to "pound some Budweiser."

Said Pagliaroni, "We later found out he had stock in Budweiser."

"The great thing about Joe," Bouton said, "is he was the opposite of Vince Lombardi. Joe felt sorry for us. He told us not to feel bad; we just didn't have the talent."

Summing up "Ball Four," Bouton said, "I feel I had a full appreciation for my teammates. I feel 'Ball Four' shows I loved them then as I do now. I don't think I would have that feeling today if I hadn't paid attention and written that stuff down."

Many players, however, were outraged. Bouton told of Pete Rose, after the book's publication, screaming at him from the Reds' dugout, "[Bleep] you, Shakespeare!"

"Which I thought was great ... I mean, a literary reference from Pete Rose," Bouton said.

Marshall, who won the Cy Young Award after pitching in an astounding 106 games with 208 relief innings for the Dodgers in 1974, said of "Ball Four": "I thought it was a celebration. I thought it was funny, and made us look far better than we were. It made us look human, and vulnerable, and struggling, all the things we were."

Notes

• Mariners scouting director Bob Fontaine Jr. received the Roland Hemond Award for meritorious service to scouting. Hemond, a special adviser to White Sox general manager Kenny Williams and a SABR member, presented the award.

• The convention, at the Renaissance Madison Hotel, concludes today.

• Larry Stone is a member of SABR.

Larry Stone: 206-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com