The former New York Yankees and Seattle Pilots pitcher Jim Bouton is a controversial figure; not the bad kind like A-Rod but just as notorious. In many articles written about Bouton, the word “iconoclast” always seems to pop up mainly due to his controversial baseball book “Ball Four,” a tell-all memoir and expose of his 1969 season including his experience with the Houston Astros, New York Yankees, and particularly his experience with the Seattle Pilots (a club which existed only for that year). Despite criticisms and denials from teammates and baseball officials, “Ball Four” remains to be one of the most important and entertaining books about Major League Baseball ever written.

Bouton is now working as a commissioner at the Vintage Base Ball Federation, which is a league dedicated to, and plays vintage 19th century baseball. The game includes wearing gloves that are barely larger than the hands and the umpire is addressed as “sir.” Showboating is also illegal in this kind of baseball, as well as pajamas, helmets, and trash talking–a world away from what we know it to be today. Bouton also adds that there is no pointing to the sky and no wearing of jewelry in vintage baseball. He said that these days, players get a curtain call for hitting a single.

On vintage baseball, you have to just put your head down, run the bases, go back to the dugout and shut up. As of this writing, the league boasts a total of 225 clubs in 32 states.

Bouton’s book, which was published in the 70s, was the first to address the problem of the use of amphetamines in baseball, called “greenies.” Today, Bouton’s insight on baseball’s problems with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs is just as relevant. Bouton, however, wants to clarify that he doesn’t believe that amphetamines are performance enhancers because they did not enhance. He said that amphetamines or speed only brought back the skills of a player tired from a grind of 162 games to normal but it did not enhance the skill of the player per se, beyond what they could already do. Bouton believes that baseball players as well as athletes need protection from their own competitiveness. He has the opinion that a pitcher would take any kind of pill that will guarantee him 20 wins even if it means that it would take years off his life.

Bouton said that something needed to be done about the drug use 10 years ago and that it was a legitimate issue for the government to tackle because high school kids are taking steroids now. He believes that there is a lack of leadership in the country and that what baseball does is wait and wait then reacts too late.

Baseball as a game suffered as well as baseball fans’ love of numbers and history, as players secretly cheated and MLB and the players union reacted to revelations of steroid use the same way they did to amphetamines—by blaming the messenger and not by just attacking the problem. Bouton is in favor of a lifetime ban because he believes that it is a conscious effort to cheat and should be treated like gambling—one strike and you’re out.

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