Jim Bouton injected some levity into the moving event.

Why aren't they testing this "levity" that he injected to see if it is a performance enhancing substance?

he did well, considering he was a “mustachioed four-flusher"*

*full disclosure--this was Paul Richards description of Miller, and I actually liked the turn of phrase, even though I was a big Miller supporter at the time. Trivia question: does anyone know where epithet "four-flusher" comes from?

Poker - a bluffer or more generally, a pretender, not to be trusted.

more specific , TYC

Augie Busch spent a significant amount of time in Otsego County.

Let no such man be trusted.


more specific, TYC

Five cards make a flush. If you're a four-flusher, you are representing five cards while actually being one short. While good bluffers are looked on with respect, I'd imagine the players nobody liked (for various reasons) AND were constant bluffers were referred to in the pejorative sense.

Just before the Cardinals voted, related Bouton, who was then with the Yankees, Augie Busch, the St. Louis owner, addressed the players.

Can't read that sentence without a scorecard!

Gussie Busch absolutely HATED unions, starting with the brewery he owned. It would be several years after Miller's arrival on the baseball scene before Anheuser-Busch got a union. The process of getting a union in there involved drive-by shootings and a couple of people shot dead. I'm not kidding. What Gussie said about Miller was simply his opinion of all union organizers. He was an old-style paternalist businessman, and was going to cede some of his control to a union over at least a couple of dead bodies. At least, he saved that level of resistance for the brewery rather than the ballclub. I have no idea how MLB would have responded to Marvin Miller getting shot. - Brock Hanke

Bottom right, fourth from right in the front row.....

The way i have always I have always heard four flusher, is trying to pretend you have a flush, after you have been called, not merely bluffing. E.g. if you have 4 hearts and a diamond, you lay down the cards so that only the red number from the diamond shows, with the rest covered by heart cards. So in other words a cheater, not merely a bluffer.

No idea if that is true though.

The way i have always I have always heard four flusher, is trying to pretend you have a flush, after you have been called, not merely bluffing. E.g. if you have 4 hearts and a diamond, you lay down the cards so that only the red number from the diamond shows, with the rest covered by heart cards. So in other words a cheater, not merely a bluffer.

No idea if that is true though.

that's the way I heard it, too, FPH

that's the way I heard it, too, FPH

Same here; a good way to get your ass kicked (or worse), in some circles.

What is a four-flusher in reference to the wonderful world of poker cheating? Well, look at the term: four plus flusher. You need five cards of the same suit to meet a flush, right? Obviously, a four-flusher would indicate that somebody was trying to get away with passing off only four cards of the same suit as a flush. Impossible, you say? Here's how it is done. You are sitting at the poker table and you drew four diamonds, but your luck ran out with the arrival of that fifth card. However, that fifth card was a heart. If you are attempting to pull off the four-flusher scam you arrange your cards so that your diamonds kind of cover up the heart. They're both red and from a distance even kind of look the same. And you might just be lucky enough to be playing somewhere where the lighting isn't bright like in a casino and the other players have already knocked back four or twelve bottles of Budweiser. Under those conditions mistaking a heart for a diamond really isn't that tough. If you can lay out your cards just right you just might be able to convince the other players to mistake a diamond for a heart, a spade for a club or vice versa. However, the four-flusher poker cheat is even easier to pull off if you are part of a four-flusher team.

And by team I mean just two people. Here is how this four-flusher poker scam works. Let's say you are still the person who drew the four lucky cards and unlucky fifth. Same situation there you where very carefully show your cards with the not-flush suit hidden in the pack. Your partner in four-flushing then immediately expresses disgust with this development and tosses his hand down onto yours as you grab the pot. It works best if the partner's toss succeeds in knocking both your cards and his off the table. Of course, if your partner doesn't actually have a card that fills in your flush this can be very risky. The team approach to the four-flusher scam must be done in rapid succession of showing your hand, tossing the cards, and grabbing the kitty. It doesn't hurt to rehearse it as a little theatrical performance either. The more disgusted the partner acts, the better because that draws attention away from the cards and toward him. In the meantime, the four-flusher can act to mix up the cards. The more outrageously the partner acts the better your chance of pulling this off.

I would guess the second part of the scam is what was tried most often.