“Ball Four Goes Hollywood”

When Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four hit bookshelves in 1970, it exploded myths, revealed secrets, and offered tales of baseball, theretofore kept protected from the public.  If reporters knew about Mickey Mantle’s alcohol problem, for example, they...

The Man Behind the Tiffany Network

Under William Paley, CBS became the gold standard of television programming in news and entertainment.  Nicknamed the Tiffany Network, CBS fell under Paley’s patriarchy from the 1920s to 1990, when Paley died. It was Paley who gave Edward R. Murrow an outlet to...

Mary Dobkin a.k.a. “Aunt Mary”

This weekend, America lost a television treasure.  Jean Stapleton. In the 1970s, television audiences empathized Stapleton’s alter ego, Edith Bunker, on All in the Family.  Edith was optimistic, sunny, and kind to balance Archie Bunker’s grouchiness.  But...

Bouton, Baseball, and “Ball Four”

Jim Bouton peeled back the veneer protecting Major League Baseball in his 1970 exposé, Ball Four. It reads like a friend sharing secrets with you over a couple of beers at a baseball game. Bouton, a quasi-phenom pitcher in the early 1960s with the New York Yankees, he...