Photo: insidesocal.com

I’ve long been a fan of former MLB pitcher Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four.

The Blue Workhorse’s Shotgun Spratling caught up with Bouton for a candid telephone conversation on “the transformation and evolution of media since his playing days” (and also a little baseball talk).

“The media coverage now in sports is more distant than it was in my days. There’s so much media now, so many television cameras, so many reporters. There’s no intimacy any more. If a reporter wants to spend time with a professional athlete, get to know him and learn something about his life, he can’t do that. He has to show up at a press conference where the guy sits behind a long table, answers questions, and then gets up and walks out behind a curtain. There’s no intimacy. … There are more cameras, more reporters, less information.”

You can read the entire interview here.