Former Major League pitcher and author of Ball Four, Jim Bouton, is going to self-publish his next book according to PW NewsLine:
- the author, who has a reputation as something of a loose-canon, is uncorking a high hard one at venerable Public Affairs publisher Peter Osnos, with whom Bouton had once signed a book contract.
In Foul Ball, a book about a minor-league ballpark that Bouton decided to self-publish after a strong disagreement with Public Affairs, Bouton questions whether Osnos' relationship with an investor clouded his judgment, and also wonders about how the publisher handled the situation after the author and house agreed to end their relationship.
Last year, Public Affairs' editorial director Paul Golob bought the city-hall drama set in Pittsfield, Mass., in which the author leads a group that tries to save the historic Wahconah Park, the oldest minor-league stadium in the country, in the face of other interests. The book was to show how corporations and small-time bureaucrats conspire to sell out the people they purport to represent. Among those that opposed the renovation of Wahconah Park, Bouton argued, was
General Electric, which, instead of refurbishing the old park, supported building a new one to "place a band-aid on the tumor" that was the new site, which Bouton said is shown in city documents to be a toxic-waste dump.
Bouton inserted the passages, which he says came to about ten pages. He says he had no indication that Golob or anyone else at the publisher had a problem with them, until he had a meeting with Osnos, who very quickly disclosed his friendship with GE legal counsel Ben Heineman and told him that Heineman would soon be making an investment in Public Affairs. Shortly after, Bouton writes, Osnos told him that "'My friendship to Ben Heineman is more important than any book. And Ben Heineman's name WILL NOT GO IN THAT BOOK.'" Bouton says that Golob told him not long after that he had to remove nearly all of the GE passages.
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