Jim Bouton, the former New York Yankees pitcher turned author, whose candid book Ball Four has been hailed as one of the greatest sports volumes of all time, died Wednesday at his home in Great Barrington at the age of 80. Bouton structured Ball Four as a memoir of a year spent struggling in the lower echelons of the game after being dropped by the Yankees, but used the 1970 tome to go behind-the-scenes of baseball, revealing hallowed players as fallible men who cheated on their wives, took amphetamines, cursed, and drank to excess. Bouton retired in 1970, but in 1978 returned to the game, pitching for the Atlanta Braves, and continued to play for another twenty years before finally retiring again in his late 50s.
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