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. ONeill (1969)
“Placing too much importance on where a child goes rather than what he does there . . . doesnt take into account the childs needs or individuality, and this is true in college selection as well as kindergarten.”
—Norman Giddan (20th century)
“Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your childrens infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married! Thats total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art scientific parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)