Materials From Bouton’s ‘Ball Four’ Days Going Once, Going Twice …

Paula Kurman first met her husband, Jim Bouton, in 1977, at a hospital fund-raiser at a Bloomingdale’s in Hackensack, N.J. She thought he was handsome, but she didn’t understand why people wanted his autograph. He said he had once pitched for the Yankees, but for Kurman that wasn’t a good enough reason. She is a doctor, a behavioral scientist, and the more she talked to Bouton, the more she knew there was something else there. She found him witty, maybe even brilliant, and she knew she liked him.