Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  But of course it wasn’t over. It never really was with Billy. We played a little better for a while, got back into first place in early July. But then we started to struggle again. We just couldn’t seem to sustain anything.

  Thurman was in a bad mood. He was a typical catcher; catchers are always nicked up. I got to say, most of your catchers are underpaid—it’s the toughest position on the field. Try putting an extra fifteen to twenty pounds of equipment on before you sit down at your desk in the morning. He kept getting hurt: He got cut over his eyes; he needed seven stitches in his hand. He kept playing, because that’s who Thurman was. But he wasn’t happy. He was still fuming about his contract. He started ripping Steinbrenner for interfering with Billy and dictating the lineup.

  When we fell behind the Orioles in the standings, George started ripping Billy, saying Earl Weaver should be manager of the year, telling the press he’d got Billy everything he wanted and he still couldn’t win. Billy started telling the writers he just ignored all the notes George sent down.

  And then, of course, Billy brought the whole merry-go-round back to me, telling the reporters that what the players were thinking is that “the whole club lineup has been changed since we got Reggie.”

  Now, here we go again. This was about Thurman’s contract, Billy, and George. Now Billy has me back in the mix. Uh-oh, maybe I am the straw stirring the drink again!

  Yes, the lineup changed. I was playing right field and hitting fifth or sixth. Instead of Carlos May, who hit .227 for us with two home runs, before Gabe sold him to the Angels. That was one terrible change. I could see why that would upset everything.

  It went on and on like that, all the pettiness and the silliness. It wasn’t just me, either. I would get down to first base sometimes in a game, and guys would say to me, “Man, I don’t see how you can be here.” As in, “I don’t see how you can put up with all that crap.” Billy. Everybody talking to the press but never putting their names on it. I didn’t operate like that. Everything I said, I put my name on. People knew right where to come and find me.

  The worst was a series we had out in Kansas City in mid-July, just before the All-Star Game. It was the tail end of a long road trip for us. We were playing bad and had fallen a couple games out of first place.

  Everybody was tired and on edge, and of course there was another big controversy going on over nothing. Mr. Steinbrenner called a meeting while we were in Milwaukee and gave all of us who were going to the All-Star Game $300 so we could bring our wives and girlfriends and families. He gave everybody else $300, too, so they could get out of town for a couple days.

  I thought it was a very generous thing to do, and I told people so. I told some of the writers, “I mean, how nice can you be?”

  Wrong thing to say. Believe it or not, I even got in trouble for that. It seemed there might or might not have been some rule about giving guys money like that, so the league announced it was going to look into it. Some of the guys started worrying they were going to lose their money, so they blamed it on me, of course.

  Why not? It’s like throwing dirt on a guy’s grave. Other players going around ripping everybody anonymously—that was okay. Me thanking the owner for giving us all a bonus he didn’t have to give us … that was a crime.

  When we got to Kansas City for our next series against the Royals, everybody was mad at me for not keeping my mouth shut about their $300. I had another bad series in the field. In the second game, Hal McRae hit a ball deep to right-center. I ran into Mickey Rivers going after it, and it rolled all the way to the wall. I tried to pick it up there, but I dropped it.

  Picked it up again. Dropped it again. Before I could get it in, McRae had gone all the way around the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

  I would take the blame for that, because I’m the right fielder. Mickey’s the center fielder; he’s in charge of everything out there. He was calling for the ball, but I just didn’t hear him. I accept the blame, no question.

  But then it just turned out to be an excuse to get on me.

  The end of that inning, I came back to the dugout, and Sparky Lyle, who was pitching, was standing on the top step. He looked right at me and said, “Get your head out of your ass and play the game right!” And I looked back at him like, “What are you talking about?”

  I really didn’t understand. I was still a little dazed from running into Mickey. It wasn’t like I had dropped the ball or made some bone-head play on purpose. I was embarrassed by what happened—though it also didn’t make a damned bit of difference in the game. We were already behind by 4–1 in the seventh, and it only meant that we lost 5–1.

  Sparky, I felt, was making a grandstand play and putting on a show, talking down to me like that: “Get your head out of your ass!”

  I just looked at him, and I didn’t know what to say. I went in and sat down. I felt like, “I just ran into a guy, and screwed up a ball, don’t tell me that.” I wondered where his reaction came from. You’re supposed to pick up a teammate. I wouldn’t run in to the mound right after Sparky gave up a dinger and say, “Get your head out of your ass!”

  I thought, “Why would you say that to me?” It pierced me. It hurt. I felt bad. I wasn’t prepared for a player to almost challenge me with fighting words like that. And nobody said a thing; nobody came to my defense. It was a lonely feeling.

  Things just kept getting worse. Billy would sit me whenever he could, come up with some new way to insult me. That July alone, I was booed, benched, and sued.

  The suit came after the All-Star Game, which was in Yankee Stadium that year. After the game I was going to the parking lot with George Scott, who was an old friend and was staying at my place while he was in town. Along the way to the lot, I was signing autographs for a bunch of the kids out there, but finally I said all right, I had to go.

  One of these kids—no more than maybe ten, twelve years old—he calls me one of the vilest names I’ve ever heard. I started toward him, just to chase him away, and he takes off running and falls down. The next day, his family files suit against me. Nice, huh?

  The kid wasn’t hurt, and the suit got dismissed. But nothing else seemed like it was ever going to change. That was when Phil Pepe called to ask me about the whole incident with the kid. I just told him, “I don’t want to play in New York. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  That’s how bad it really felt. I don’t know what I would’ve done, I don’t know what I could’ve done, if it hadn’t been for faith and family and the friends I had.

  I usually had good support from George Steinbrenner. I said it at the time, “I love that man. He treats me like I’m somebody. The rest of them, they treat me like I’m dirt.” It was true, too. I could go into his office at any time, he’d listen to me, and I’d cry on his shoulder a bit. I had support from my agent, Gary Walker. He would read the Bible to me over the phone from Arizona on a daily basis, whenever I’d listen. He didn’t travel, but he would get on the phone with me and read me passages, things of support. He would stress, “Get personal desires out of the way.” He would say, “Stop thinking of yourself.”

  He would tell me, “Always remember, when God reaches out and grabs your right hand, He never lets go.” He used to say, “Reggie, behold. That is, ‘be whole.’ You know that God made all of those things around you. Enjoy them. Put your manly thoughts out of your mind, and do not create clutter. Appreciate. Be grateful. Be humble. Ask God to help you clear your mind.” That’s all I was asking God: “Help me stay with it. Stay with me now. Stay with me.”

  Once I did that with Gary, I was good to go. I was good to compete with whatever the world was bringing me. But I needed that every day.

  Fran Healy was a tremendous help, as always. There was a guy here in New York, Tony Rolfe, he was very supportive. He was one of George’s very close friends who became my friend. Also the Fisher brothers, Larry and Zach, who’ve both passed. A guy named Ralph Destino, who was chairman of Cartier, the elegant jewelry compan
y, he was always there for me. And of course my dear friend and agent, Matt Merola.

  These were solid businessmen who understood what was going on in the city socially and appreciated what I was going through. They were staid businessmen in their late forties or early fifties, but they knew how things worked in New York, what the press was like, and you could talk to them about it, I could share things.

  They’d just say, “Reggie, you’re playing ball, the city loves you. Don’t worry about small-minded people, worry about your job. Listen to your father. You’re going to be all right. Keep playing hard.” Things like that.

  So I did. So I tried to.

  My father was the key. He pounded it into me that I had to keep one thing in the foreground, and that was hitting baseballs. When I was going bad, or when George Steinbrenner thought I was letting Billy Martin bother me too much, he would call my dad.

  That he did. He would call up my father and say, “Mr. Jackson, Reggie is letting Billy Martin bother him now. And the press as well. I can tell these things are bothering him, because he’s not hitting. I need you to come up and see me on Monday.”

  This would be on a Friday. My father would call me and say, “I need you to meet me at your brother Joe’s house,” which was near McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. He was stationed there in the air force at the time.

  My father would call and say, “I don’t have time to go see George Steinbrenner. I’ve got to be at work on Monday at eight in the morning.” He would say, “I’ll give you an hour and a half to get down there after the game on Sunday, and we can have supper together. I need to straighten you out so you can start pounding on that ball again and just get Billy Martin out of your mind.”

  So he’d have me down there with Joe, and sometimes with my other siblings, and he’d talk. I had tremendous support from Dad. He would tell me, “Billy Martin is nothing to you. Don’t worry about him. The money Mr. Steinbrenner is paying you should be your focus. Do your job. You don’t want to come out here in the real world and get a job with me, working in my shop at $60 a week.”

  My dad was still a tailor, still owned a laundry and dry cleaning business. That was who he was. He’d say, “You’ve got a good job, you’re getting paid well, take care of your family. Go on and do what you’re supposed to do. Beat on the baseball.”

  For my dad, you just went on, and did what you needed to do, and appreciated that you had the opportunity. You appreciated God for having blessed you with the skills and the ability you have—for the opportunity you had to put good meals on the table and get a good home for your family. If you had the other essentials—a roof over your head, a pillow to lay your head on, heat in the house—you were blessed and lucky.

  My dad liked to say, “I’m not concerned about you being happy. You be grateful and thankful. And go on and do what you need to do.”

  My oldest brother, Joe, was the same way. He was a chief master sergeant in the air force then. He’s a wonderful guy, very understanding of the necessities of life. He had that same attitude: “Go and do your job, Reg. Forget that Martin guy. Don’t worry about him. He is not your family.”

  But my father really knew what playing baseball every day was like. He’d played ball with the Bacharach Giants, down in Atlantic City, and with the Newark Eagles in the old Negro Leagues, and he knew what it was like. I’m sure he could have been a major-league player if the color line hadn’t been in place.

  It was harder in his day. He also had to work as the traveling secretary and drive the team bus, which was typical back in the Negro Leagues. But he knew what it meant to keep your mind on what’s most important, to keep concentrating on the task in front of you. He would tell me, “You get back out there and beat on that ball, son.”

  It may seem strange to some people, I know, to have Mr. Steinbrenner, the team owner, calling up my dad. I thought it was cool.

  I wasn’t a grown man. I was thirty-one. At that age, even when you have two, three kids, you’re not grown yet. At least I wasn’t, being on my own, in this big town. I needed help—and it was nice to know somebody cared. Thanks, George.

  I can’t tell you how much it brought me back into myself, going down there to southern New Jersey on a Sunday. Having most of the family there. Not everybody. My mother was ill at the time; she had a bad heart. But she was still supportive, still let me know she was behind me. Having the rest of the family around the table there, knowing that they cared, that they wanted to help and see me do well in the world—that was everything.

  We all know the importance of family. Everybody cooked and helped out, then we’d sit down and eat home-cooked food. It was extremely important, getting to be around your brothers and sisters, having your dad talk to the family at the time. Give everybody support, correction, comfort. You’d go in with need and come out armed for the world.

  That was tremendous. That’s one key to the whole conflict between Billy and me, too.

  You know, I had a dad. Growing up, he could be hard on me when he thought I needed it, but he was always there. He was always proud of me. When he was older, he even had cards made up that read, “Marty the Tailor, Father of the Famous Reggie Jackson.”

  George Steinbrenner, he had a dad who was important in his life. He sounds like he was always hard on him as well, always pushing him. But he was there.

  Billy didn’t grow up with a dad. I understood he was always looking for one. The story has it that Billy was always hoping Casey Stengel would be a father to him, when he was playing for the Yankees back in the 1950s.

  I remember hearing that Billy always complained, “I’m sitting in my hotel room, and George is wining and dining Reggie all around town. Why doesn’t he ask me, too? Why doesn’t he invite me to lunch, why doesn’t he take me to dinner?”

  I think Billy was looking for George to be a friend, and he saw me as competition. That’s what Fran Healy thought as well, that Billy saw me as soaking up all the love from George.

  There never were that many owners who really hung around with their players. I know Horace Stoneham used to like to hang out with Willie Mays, but other than that …

  George really liked it. I know he thought of Thurman like a son. I’m sure he thought of Piniella that way, as well as Mariano Rivera or Derek Jeter. I know George felt very close to Derek. I remember when he was telling me that he was going to go to Cincinnati and make him the captain. It was a big deal for him.

  I’m sure that he felt that way about me as well. The number of George’s suite in the new Stadium could have been anything he wanted, and he made it number 44. I was aware of how Billy felt. I stopped hanging out with George because it bothered Billy so much. I know George was even complaining to his friends, guys like Tony Rolfe and Larry Fisher, “Reggie doesn’t hang out with me anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong. He doesn’t talk to me.”

  I don’t know, maybe if George had invited Billy along things would’ve gone differently. But you know, Billy had trouble letting people know what he wanted. He had trouble letting people in, letting them see what was going on with him.

  I did know that he had a habit of coming to the ballpark late. He would show up ten to thirty minutes before the first pitch sometimes and have alcohol on his breath. He’d have his sunglasses on, his hat pulled all the way down over his glasses. He would go in his office and fall asleep on the couch, while Dick Howser got the team prepared to play, wrote the lineup, and so on, sometimes. Dick really ran the team until it was time for Billy to wake up, just before the game. You’d see Billy wandering down the hall to the dugout. It was strange, obviously.

  Sometimes Dick would take the lineup out to the umpires on his own. Billy wouldn’t like it, he’d get mad at him, but Dick would tell him, “I gotta give ’em something! You weren’t here. You weren’t in the dugout. What was I to do? We’re playing in five minutes! The umpires are standing at home plate. Should I just tell ’em to hold on?”

  There was always plenty of drinking in baseball. There i
s less today, without a doubt. Back in the old days, guys drank—and drank and drank. It was like the pictures you’d see of old movie stars: They always had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That was accepted; that was then. But even for that time, Billy drank a lot. Billy drank too much. It impacted him and those around him.

  You just couldn’t drink like he did. It wouldn’t have been tolerated by George if he’d known about it—if he’d known the full extent of it. George didn’t drink himself; he was a Diet Coke guy. But obviously, everybody would cover for Billy. Writers would cover for him, players would cover for him, staff would cover for him. It never got in the papers. Except in the winter.

  Now that I think back about it, it’s amazing that word never got out of the clubhouse, nobody ever said anything, and as a team we just … went by it. We didn’t walk by it. You just went by—without attention being called to anyone upstairs. I think it went back to the old locker-room placard:

  What you do here

  What you see here

  What you hear here

  What you say here

  Let it stay here

  When you leave here.

  I understood the coaches. They were loyal to their manager, and Billy was lucky to have them to back him up. That was maybe the best coaching staff that I was ever associated with—Yogi, Ellie Howard, Bobby Cox, Gene Michael. Dick Howser, who really was the manager. Hall of Fame, anybody? Guys who played on championship teams, or managed them, or built them. There was a lot of baseball knowledge there. They had all been with the Yankees for years, even decades.

  George made sure to keep past Yankees with the organization. It was the same thing with the great coaching staff that Joe Torre had. I think if George were still around, there would be more former Yankees players still associated with the team. George kept people around; he paid ’em—even if they didn’t do anything, he still paid ’em. George had great understanding of the Yankees brand.