“Here lies David T. Young. Dave tried to tell us the truth. We didn’t want to hear it.” — My request for my tombstone epitath

The playwright George Bernard Shaw was reported once to have said, “If you’re going to tell the people the truth, you’d better be funny. Otherwise, they’ll kill you.”

They didn’t kill author Jim Bouton, who died of dementia last Wednesday of age 80, but there were many who might have wanted to.

For what it’s worth, Bouton is on my short list of truth-tellers I have admired, his as a slayer of scared cows in athletics, along with comedians George Carlin and Bill Hicks and film documentarians Adam Curtis, Ken Burns and Michael Moore.

Bouton turned the world of baseball upside down in 1970 when his non-fiction work, Ball Four appeared on newsstands and on the New York Times best-seller list. It was a ground-breaking examination of sports, in the words of Howard Cosell, “Telling it like it is.”

Bouton kept a diary of the entire 1969 season — yes, 50 years ago — as a former flame-throwing pitcher for the New York Yankees trying to make a comeback in the Major Leagues with the knuckle ball. He landed on the expansion Seattle Pilots ballclub, later to become the Milwaukee Brewers.

He didn’t make the final cut at the start of the season and was sent to Hawaii to pitch for a Class AAA minor league team. He did well enough to be recalled to the parent team.

Bouton was very articulate and intelligent in his observations of everyday life in the Big Leagues. Most important, he was funny.

It was a revolutionary act for him to write a tell-all book about how our sports heroes really behaved. And many did not graciously accept what he did.

He was accused of violating the sanctity of the clubhouse, tattling on teammates. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn insisted on having a closed meeting with him and later publicly said to him, “To suggest the Seattle Pilots players kissed each other on the bus and Mickey Mantle was a drunk… you have done the game a grave disservice.”

Former Yankees catcher Elston Howard was even more critical, decking Bouton for suggesting Mantle was hung over while hitting a home run.

Billy Martin, as a former Yankee and manager of the Minnesota Twins, was very vocal in his dislike for Bouton and what he had done and led the charge in making sure Bouton wasn’t invited to take part in the annual Yankee Old-Timers ceremony. Martin himself was outed later as a drunk killed in a car wreck.

By the end of 1970, Bouton was out of baseball and not much later was hired to be a sportscaster in New York. There were times he was denied interviews because of Ball Four.

I remember in 1971 he and Pete Rose appeared on a talk show together and yelled at each other. When Rose went into his “Baseaball has been berry berry good to be” routine, Bouton told him he owed baseball nothing, he had earned his fame because of his ability.

When the smoke cleared slowly over the ensuing years, Bouton was found to be telling the truth, particularly when it was reported Mickey Mantle was searching for a liver transplant as a result of alcoholism. Many more of his observations and commentary were backed up as well.

When I checked the book out of the Henika Library in 1970, it took me one night to devour it. It was indeed a real page-turner.

Bouton got lucky afterward in being the co-founder and co-owner of the Big League Chew bubblegum business, which made more money than playing baseball ever did.

Interestingly, he played his college baseball at Western Michigan University and his first wife, Bobbie, was from Allegan. Another tidbit: He was the winning pitcher in a 1963 game between the Yankees and Tigers that went 24 innings. The loser was Phil Regan, the pride of Wayland. Bouton won 21 games that year and Regan 15.

But today, 50 years later, he seems to be just a footnote in the history of the game he admitted he loved. Sports Illustrated placed Ball Four No. 3 in all-time most influential books about sports. And that and 73 cents would’ve gotten Bouton a senior’s cup of coffee at McDonald’s. In my book, Ball Four would be No. 1 for changing forever how athletes are viewed and taken off their pedestals.

Charles Pierce, writing in Esquire magazine this week, acknowledged Bouton’s book made a major impact on him in his younger days.

He wrote, “Up until Ball Four, with the honorable exception of Jim Brosnan’s work (Pennant Race, 1961), baseball books were generally as reverential as prayerbooks, as truthful as a Jack Chick tract, and as dull as week-old porridge. Most of them read like the Iliad would have read if the gods on Olympus all had worked in advertising.”

RIP, Jim Bouton. You were a ground-breaking truth-teller. And funny to boot.

COVER PHOTO: Jim Bouton as he gets ready to meet with Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in 1970.