Author: Stefan Fatsis (page 1 of 1)

Fifty years ago next month, word started leaking that Look magazine would publish two excerpts from Jim Bouton’s diary about the 1969 season, Ball Four. The leaker was the sportswriter who edited the book, Leonard Shecter. In the early ’60s, Bouton was a young, smart, offbeat pitcher with the New York Yankees who stood out in a locker room of jaded, old-school, future Hall of Famers like Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, and Mickey Mantle. Shecter was the beat guy for the New York Post and one of a group of young sportswriters—Robert Lipsyte, George Vecsey, Phil Pepe, Larry Merchant, and others—who cared less about godding up the old stars than writing interesting stories.

As a metaphor for our times, you could do worse than the story of Gimadiah Scrogum. In 2015, the Branson (Mo.) Tri-Lakes News reported, Scrogum was pulled over for driving a white Ford pickup without the headlights on. When the cop approached, Scrogum floored it. According to the police report,