And he tells you: "Off the back of a Wheaties box, years ago. The box had Dutch Leonard's picture on it, and he told how to throw the crazy thing..."

'Bulldog' Bouton showing how he grips ball with fingernails to throw the "Crazy One."

Dutch Leonard was as good a knuckleball picher as ever lived. He pitched for the (Brooklyn) Dodgers, the Senators and a few others for twenty years.

Bouton again: "I learned the knuckler as a kid, when I was too light and too skinny to throw really hard. Then when I filled out, that fast ball came to me...and I forgot the knuckler..."

Then, wistfully: "You think those bullets are never going to leave you. When you can't throw 'em any more, you're the last to know. You think you still have the hop on the fast one..."

"Now the knuckleball is saving my life..."

That's Jim Bouton...pronounced BOW (as in bend from the waist)-TON.

Call him Bulldog, which he likes, and which is his handle among the other ballplayers. And color him red. Oh, not THAT red, like a maverick or an agitator. Just a spunky competitor...outspoken...opinionated. And he has those long sideburns, like the Mississippi River gamblers used to wear.

Listen to Robert Lipsyte, in the austere New York Times: "He's an educated man...alert...too progressive for the stodgy...baseball world."

This guy Bouton really had it, once. In the pin-stripe suit of the proud Yankees, he won 21 and lost only 7 in 1963. Next year, he won 18. Then the bottom fell out for the Bulldog.

"Throw your knuckleball," said Major Ralph Houk, his manager on the Yankees.

Bouton wouldn't and didn't. Too proud. Thought he still had the fast one. So the Yanks fired him. He bounced all the way down to Syracuse.

The Pilots, looking to this year, bought him and he had a chance to experiment on the farm-club ANGELS in Seattle. He threw the knuckler, and they said "Wow!" Good hitters broke their backs trying to swat it.

"Sometimes it breaks three different times," the Bulldog chuckled, "and out there on the mound I just about die laughing as I watch them try to hit the thing..."

It's been a long comeback trail, full of discouragement. Why did he bother?

Just to give my friends the satisfaction," he grinned, "of seeing me get up off the canvas!"

That's Bouton. You've just gotta like him!