Amateur and College Career
Bouton was born in Newark, New Jersey, United States. While attending high school in Chicago Heights, Illinois, Bouton was nicknamed "Warm-Up Bouton" because he never got to play in a game, serving much of his time as a benchwarmer. Jerry Colangelo, future owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Suns, was the ace of that Bloom High School staff. In summer leagues, Bouton did not throw particularly hard, but he got batters out by mixing conventional pitches with the knuckleball that he had experimented with since childhood. Bouton played baseball while he attended Western Michigan University before he played professionally.
Read more about this topic: Jim Bouton
Famous quotes containing the words amateur, college and/or career:
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“Jerry: She’s one of those third-year girls that gripe my liver.
Milo: Third-year girls?
Jerry: Yeah, you know, American college kids. They come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture. They give me a swift pain.
Milo: Why?
Jerry: They’re officious and dull. They’re always making profound observations they’ve overheard.”
—Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)