Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  In the off-season, I would run Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland three or four days a week; a little over three miles around. I’d run it once around, until the last week before spring training, when I’d run it twice. I did sprints there as well. I truly enjoyed it. I was young, energetic. I came to camp in shape my entire career. I could have played a game a couple days after being in camp.

  But whatever I told Billy, I didn’t tell him I wanted to keep playing until my arm fell off. I didn’t tell him I wanted to keep playing in the field and play all the innings when I couldn’t even make a throw. My first year there with the Yankees, I played every spring training game. I played every spring game all five years I was with the Yanks, until the last year, when I got hurt and missed a couple games.

  The way things would go, it was easy to get paranoid. I mean, you never knew just what was going on beneath the surface. Was Billy putting me out there hurt to show me up? Did he just misunderstand? Was he lying to Pepe because it was really the front office who told him to put me out there and Billy didn’t want it to seem like he wasn’t in charge? What?

  I thought, I’m playing hard for you, why don’t you like me?

  The wheels just went round and round. And nothing ever stayed in the clubhouse. It always leaked to the media in some way.

  When I think back on that time, that’s what went on in my head. Now I understand that it was Billy showing me he was the boss—and showing me up.

  Back in Oakland, in Baltimore, I never paid attention to the media and what they might do. I never worried about remembering what I said or didn’t say. Trying to outwit someone. I just tried to speak the truth and be honest.

  But in New York, people went to the press with everything. Billy told us to stop talking to the media. Then, just before Opening Day, he holds a team meeting, and afterward he goes and tells a writer, Milt Richman, that I said in my twelve years in baseball, it was the best meeting I—Reggie—had ever been in. What was that?

  Nothing was ever confidential. You had to learn to speak in riddles. You had to tell the press something. But the truth? Let’s see, the whole truth? The partial truth? Some of the truth? This was a crazy movie.

  I had to just let it go. You can’t get into a contest of wits with the media. Just tell the truth, let the chips fall. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to worry about remembering anything.

  I couldn’t take it any further than that, because after a while it just became decay. There was no upside to it. You harbor resentments and you get miserable, and where are you going to go with what’s eating you?

  You feel that. And you don’t let it penetrate. You don’t let it get to you. All the racism, the anti-Semitism that was around then, I didn’t really want to get involved in that. But how does anyone stay away from that. All the stories about what I said to Martin, or Thurman, or whoever … it just kept going on and on.

  I never put myself in the class of a Mantle, an Aaron, a Mays, a Clemente—any of the greats. But I hit cleanup for a world championship team for three years in Oakland. And it was too hard to do what I was doing—to try to drive in runs, try to help win a game, try to hit the ball out of the park—it was too hard to do that and care or worry about whatever kind of nonsense was going on or to try to discern the truth. I couldn’t understand why people spent so much time on the negatives. Lies, stories, trying to one-up people all the time …

  I know I was very religious that year. I first became a Christian in 1974 with Oakland. I didn’t live like it yet. But I accepted Christ as my Savior, through our chapel service, in Oakland.

  Being a Christian is not easy; it’s hard work. But the benefits are remarkable.

  Baseball still has a great chapel service going on every Sunday, in every ballpark, home and on the road. There are two services, one in Spanish and one in English, and I enjoy going to both. I’ve enjoyed playing with and watching so many other players, like Sal Bando and Joe Rudi, men like Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Dave Robertson, Mark Teixeira, and many more—a long list of great people—walk the walk, with Christ. The Yanks have great attendance every service.

  I don’t think ballplayers are more religious than other people. With some of the teams I’ve been with, there is a lot of participation in chapel. With the Yankees, it was as much as 50 percent. Oppression and difficulty in life bring you closer to God. The church gives you something to hold on to when you have nothing. It gives you a closer attachment with God. That has been my experience with people of color.

  Most of us, when we’re players, we’re very young and insecure. Very few players have the maturity, just like very few people in general who are under thirty. They tend to come to Christ when they’re a little older—or a little more in need. Most of us are like that. I got close to God because I was hurting.

  You learn through difficulties, through problems and issues. I learned from Mike Singletary, the Hall of Fame linebacker from the Bears, to always carry a prayer book. He talked to me about how I had to learn to let my rules go. I’ve been fortunate to have a few people help me with my relationship at special times. Even an ex!

  What I learned from him, too, was that the Bible is really like a guide. I say to people, “The Bible is like a map.” I would say to someone, “Go down to the third stoplight and make a right turn. I really don’t know the address, but when you go down a little ways, you’ll see it. I don’t know the address. I don’t even know how far it is. But you just go down the road. When you get there, the light’ll be green. You’ll see it. You’ll know it when you see it.” That’s how you come to grace and salvation.

  I remember praying a lot in 1977. Praying with my agent at the time, Gary Walker, who was and is very close to Jesus. Gary always preached about Christ, and I really thought I was insulated from a lot of the worst of the strife because I prayed.

  That was another underappreciated talent of Billy Martin’s. He could bring a man to God.

  8

  THE HOLE IN THE DOUGHNUT

  “YOU KNOW, REGGIE, you have to look at the whole doughnut, not just the hole in the doughnut.”

  That’s what Gabe Paul told me when I asked him for about the second or third time in spring training if he would please trade me to anyone. Gabe had a million little sayings like that. He also liked to say, “One man’s … crap is another man’s ice cream.” I was about to find out what that meant! LOL!

  I had a kind of unwritten agreement with the Boss that he wouldn’t keep me in New York if I didn’t like it or I didn’t want to be there. So I went to Gabe and asked to be traded during spring training. Later, during the year, I insisted. I was always going to Gabe and his assistant, Cedric Tallis, and trying to get myself traded.

  But it didn’t work. I was in New York and I couldn’t get out.

  The talent we had was impressive, I have to say that. I read in the paper that on Opening Day the umpire looked into the dugout of the team we were playing, the Milwaukee Brewers, and said, “Time to play ball—if you dare.”

  You could see what he meant.

  We had Thurman behind the plate. He was the MVP the year before, and he was about to have his third straight season hitting over .300 and driving in at least a hundred runs. I’m told that nobody in baseball had done that since Bill White, more than ten years before.

  Chris Chambliss at first base, a great team guy, played every day. Was a good RBI man and an outstanding hitter, hit .290 to .300, fifteen to twenty homers. And he drove in runs when they counted. Very steady, a great defender, Gold Glove winner. His nickname was “Snatcher.” If he could get anywhere near a ball, he’d snatch it.

  Second base, you had Willie Randolph. He was a great young man, a real pro at a young age. He lockered near me. Randolph was a great defender, best second baseman in the league at the time. Only Bobby Grich had as much range. Willie became and still is a great friend.

  Third base, you had Graig Nettles, power hitter, home run champ, hit thirty-seven homers for us that year. Best fielding
third baseman in the game, one of the best I ever saw—and I played with Brooks Robinson. Bucky Dent, we got in a trade just as the season was starting; he was a great glove, too. If you hit it to Bucky, you were out.

  In the outfield, we had depth. We had Mickey Rivers in center, who hit .320-plus and could cover the ground like Bambi. Lou Piniella, who hit .330, Roy White, me. We had Jimmy Wynn, Carlos May, Oscar Gamble. We brought over Cliff Johnson to catch and play first, and he crushed balls, great pinch hitter. We had all-stars backing up all-stars, with Paul Blair, the best defender of his era, behind Rivers in center.

  The pitching staff had Catfish Hunter, Ed Figueroa, Don Gullett, Holtzman. Mike Torrez came over in a trade a little later. We had a young “Louisiana Lightning,” Ron Guidry. He was supposed to relieve for us, but instead he had his first great year as a starter. In the bullpen, we had Sparky Lyle, who won the Cy Young in 1977, and Dick Tidrow, a great versatile arm. He could start and pitch long or short relief.

  It was a great team—though I thought the teams we had in Oakland were better. Easy now! That’s just my opinion. But I thought they were better, and they would have been even better still if we’d got to play in Yankee Stadium. With the great pitching we had on those teams, they would’ve really used the massive center field they still had in the Bronx. When I got there, it was still 430 feet to left-center, close to the dimensions of the original park, which had been 457 to left and 461 to center. You needed a sandwich to just walk to the fence at 461 feet from home plate.

  It hurt me, because I was never really a pull hitter. So I hit a lot of balls to center field and left-center field that just became long outs. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. But that was all right. After everything, all the crap that happened in Florida, I was just happy to start the season.

  Before Opening Day, I was still wearing Terry Whitfield’s uniform, with his name on it, after he was traded to the Giants. Back in Oakland, I wore number 9, but Graig Nettles already had that, so I wore number 20 in spring training, honoring my friend Frank Robinson. He had mentored me in the winter of 1970–71, when I was playing winter ball in Santurce, and he was the manager. He taught me how to control my temper, focus, and become a team leader.

  I had worn number 9 because that was the number the A’s gave me. I just said, “Hey, Ted Williams wore number 9, that was good enough for me!” (What not too many people know is that Williams was also the first great Hispanic ballplayer in the majors. His mother had Mexican, Spanish, and Basque roots, as well as American Indian.)

  I finally decided on number 44 because of the great “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron, of course, who wore that number. So did my great friend Willie McCovey, so did a lot of great black ballplayers because of the Hammer, Mr. Aaron.

  Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, I saw already how things were going to be very different than they were in Oakland. Like the ad says, it was a “whole ’nother ball game.” The Stadium was only a year old then, bright, shiny, and new. The crowd was over forty-three thousand.

  It had been a long time since I’d played before so many people. That used to be a week’s attendance, where I came from. We didn’t have fans in Oakland.

  We had a good day, that day, and everything went right. Jimmy Wynn hit a ball 420 feet into the center-field bleachers. Catfish, who had been having arm troubles all spring, pitched a great game. He threw seven shutout innings before he got hit in the foot by a line drive hit by Von Joshua, I think. He had to leave the game because of it, and later he tried to come back too fast and hurt his arm, many believe, the way pitchers sometimes do when they’re throwing a different way. Some think because of the injury he was never really the same again.

  But we didn’t know that at the time. The sun was out, and it was a great day. I had a walk and two singles. I went first to third on a headfirst slide, then scored on a squeeze play when I slid under the catcher. Couple innings later, I hustled in on a wild pitch and ended up scoring two runs. We won, 3–0.

  When I came up in the eighth inning, that’s when I started to hear it for the first time. That whole Stadium, chanting, “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!”

  For a few years, starting back in the late 1960s, they had a thing called Reggie’s Regiment in Oakland, out in the right-field bleachers. I used to give away tickets to kids—they were like fifty cents, a dollar—and they’d sit out in the bleachers and call themselves Reggie’s Regiment, and root for me and the team. That was pretty cool.

  But it wasn’t anything like this.

  You hear that sound, “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!” and it turns on your adrenaline. You feel welcome, like the fans have their arms wrapped around you, and you feel comfortable. It makes you feel loved. It makes you feel you can do anything. You know, when you’re a major-league hitter, you never pay too much attention to the crowd. You can’t pay too much attention to it. But you do hear the support and the chants—and oh, yeah, the boos, too, when they come!

  I always liked that sound in the background. It always felt good to hit to that sound. “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!”

  So the team played great, I had a good day, and Billy got to play Billy-ball. He had me batting fifth again, but so what. He had me run in on a squeeze play.

  When was the last time you saw a team’s best power hitter score on a squeeze play? Billy must have remembered how I stole home against his Tigers team five years before in the American League Championship Series—but that was a double steal, and, more to the point, I tore a ligament right off the bone, and missed the World Series.

  But we won; we had a great team. The schedule was on our side. Most of our early games were against Toronto, which was an expansion team that year and finished last in the division, and Milwaukee, which finished next to last.

  What could go wrong?

  Then we lost seven of the next eight.

  Two weeks into the season, we’re 2–8 and dead last. The team’s playing terrible. I was playing bad. Next game against Milwaukee, I dropped a fly ball in the outfield, led to all three of their runs. We lost, 3–2. Game after that, I got picked off first in the ninth inning, and we lost, 2–1.

  Oh, man.

  First game of the season, it was “Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Reg-gie!” By the third game, it was “Boo! Boo! Boo!”

  Well, that’s why they play 162 games. You never like to make a mistake. I never liked to screw up. Who does?

  As major-league players, though, we knew it was a long season. We all knew you can’t dwell on one mistake.

  What I was learning, though, was that in New York everything gets magnified. Billy Martin jumped all over me for dropping that fly ball. He even called me a “bad defender” in the press.

  I’d always been a pretty good outfielder in Oakland. I played center field in the 1973 World Series and was the Series MVP. I played some center field in 1972, and I would’ve started the Series there if I didn’t rip up my leg.

  But here in New York, I make one bad play and he’s calling me out. In the second game of the year. And the media picked up on it. I was having a little trouble out there, with the new park and everything. Great as it was to play before all those fans, it was loud. It was louder than I’d ever heard before. It just required some adjustment, but after two games I make an error and I become a “bad defender,” according to my own manager.

  That was part of Billy at times. He tried to undermine his own players when he didn’t like them. He did it to Ken Holtzman whenever he got a chance. Tried to do it to Elliott Maddox. I tried not to pay attention to that kind of stuff, but he did it to me, too.

  So there we were, 2–8, in last place. Must be one of the worst starts the Yankees ever got off to, and the Boss was freaking out. He’d come to town and raise hell in the locker room. Go on for ten minutes at a time. It was pretty funny, but you couldn’t laugh. Get all over us for not concentrating enough, not trying hard enough. You had to hold it in sometimes; you couldn’t look at another player sitting near you, or you might lose it. George thought that with the talent we had, we should
be 162–0. But he was “the Boss,” so …

  You know, he felt if he owned the team, he had the right to say what he wanted when he wanted to say it. He’d come down and give us his pep talks. Just kind of rah-rah stuff, “go out and beat ’em” stuff.

  George meant well, but he didn’t understand. He was a football guy, and he didn’t realize baseball doesn’t work that way. Twelve and oh, 16–0, is not 162–0. No one gets close to that. He was a fan as much as an owner. All in all, you had to admire his relentless desire.

  We knew we were too good a team to stay down, though. And Billy had a good idea to break up the tension. He had us pick the lineup out of a hat, an old baseball tradition. That’s what you have to do in baseball: stay loose, stay within yourself over the long season. I was the one who picked the names out of the hat.

  I had no idea how I got the honor. I couldn’t believe I was going to be the player. You would have thought I’d have been the last guy. You’d think it would be Thurman, as the captain, or somebody who Billy loved. But how the hell he ever picked me … Clearly, he must have been going for the opposite of what he usually did.

  As luck would have it, I picked my own name for the third spot.

  I guess that was the only way I was going to hit that high in the lineup with Billy as manager. And as it happened, we won the next six games in a row, and I had eleven hits in those games. You’d think that might have told him something.

  After that, we played better. We got up maybe five or six games over .500. Going into May, we moved into first place for a little while. It was already obvious it was going to be a three-way race between us, the Red Sox, and the Orioles. We split a couple short series with the Sox, won a game in Fenway when Mickey Rivers made a great throw to the plate in the ninth and Munson just hunkered down and flipped Butch Hobson right over him in the collision at home plate.

  We knew we could play with anybody. We all knew it. But we were still treading water. I don’t know how much it had to do with how we were playing, but there was a bad atmosphere around the club still. From how anxious Billy was, from all the fights in spring training. This was the feeling around the league. Even other teams could feel it.