Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  The game itself was kind of my place to escape. People would say I was always so clutch in the big situations. No, I think it’s just that I didn’t let myself get distracted the way a lot of players do in those circumstances. I had the ability to focus and to keep it narrowed down to the need to hit the ball.

  It all comes down to the nature of the person. Not everybody can be a shutdown closer. Not everybody can be a pinch hitter. Not everyone can hit cleanup. It’s just not in their nature, not in their DNA.

  There’s a thousand reasons. Some guys can and some guys can’t, and it’s up to management to realize that. Look in a man’s eyes; they are the windows to his heart. They will tell you if he can or he can’t.

  I remember when I was a kid, my father sent me to the grocery store one time to get a pint of Neapolitan ice cream. You remember that? The kind they used to sell, one-third chocolate, one-third vanilla, one-third strawberry? Called Neapolitan.

  I had twenty-five cents—and there was no pint of Neapolitan ice cream. So I went to the corner gas station and borrowed a quarter from one of my dad’s friends, Bob Bradshaw. I then went to the grocery store and borrowed a quarter from the grocery store owner, Bob Kelso. I then went to the store on the corner, Fleischer’s Drug Store, and I bought a pint of chocolate, a pint of vanilla, and a pint of strawberry. I went home and my father said, “Good job, son.”

  You know, I wasn’t going to bring an excuse home. Nobody wants to hear an excuse. That’s the way it is with baseball and life in general.

  Man on third base, and there’s one out, and you’re two runs down—you have to figure out how to get him in. I got to hit a ground ball to the second baseman if the infield’s back. If the infield is in, I got to square the ball and punch it through. If the pitcher’s a sinker-ball pitcher, I got to get the ball in the air. If the guy’s a left-hander and has got a good breaking ball, I have to try to figure out how to get the barrel on the ball.

  You got to figure it out. How do I get this run in? You got a lot of choices. But some guys look at that situation and they just go, “OMG”—“Oh, my goodness! What the hell do I do?”

  There are certain guys everybody knows in the clubhouse you want up in those situations. Guys who are going to be able to stay calm and figure it out. On the Yankees, Jeter’s the type of guy you’d want up there. There are some guys who aren’t supposed to be clutch, but they are.

  You can get on a bad streak. That happens even to great players—even to clutch players. It can happen to anybody.

  It happened to me sometimes. Not much. Not in October. A lot of people used to say that was because of my ego.

  I don’t know. I don’t know how the ego goes. I don’t know the definition of ego.

  But I think your ego helps you, if you want to be honest about it. I think knowing who you are helps. I don’t have to say, “I’m going to get it done,” because I’m Reggie Jackson. That’s who I am. Whatever that is, good or bad.

  I go to home plate in a clutch situation, I look at it as an opportunity to succeed. It’s like my friend Gary Walker used to say, “Reggie, get your thoughts out of the way. Don’t get in the way of the ability that God gave you. Don’t create unnecessary clutter in your mind.”

  All I would say, at certain times before the game, was, “Dear God, guide me.” Because a lot of the time you can put doubt in yourself by thinking too much.

  But I always knew that I had God on my side. And that 1977 season, I was praying more than I had at any other time in my life.

  I just stayed in there, when I finally got to bat in that last game against the Royals. I figured out what I had to do.

  I was only told I was going to pinch-hit at the last minute. I think it was by Fran Healy, who came in from the bullpen and sat next to me for a while on the bench. Not by Billy. I remember leaving from the end of the dugout, walking to the on-deck circle, taking a couple swings, then walking right up to the plate. I remember being announced as the pinch hitter—but not before you looked around to see who was going to hit.

  It wasn’t like, a couple minutes before, “Reggie, you’re going to be the hitter if we get this far along in the eighth inning. You’re going to hit, go get ready.” I remember being by the end of the dugout, sitting with my bat for most of the game. I never walked down toward the bat rack to get a bat, grab some pine tar and a helmet. I was down there with my helmet by my side. I put on my helmet and walked from the dugout, up the stairs, out on the field, and then down to the on-deck circle. Swung the bat a couple times, I didn’t even pick up the leaded bat. Walked across home plate, not even around back, and got in the batter’s box, ready to hit.

  Didn’t stretch, didn’t do any knee bends. It didn’t matter. I was locked in; I was somewhere between mad and disgusted. I just got in the batter’s box and just locked down. I figured out what I had to do, I didn’t let anything distract me, I stayed within myself even when I got behind, 1–2, in the count. Then Bird came in with a fastball, and I just took what he gave me and hit a line-drive single into center field. Not a lot, just what I could do. Just took what there was. It scored Willie and cut their lead to 3–2. Job done.

  Whitey Herzog pulled Bird for Steve Mingori, and Mingori got Nettles and Chambliss then to get out of the inning. But we’d cut their lead to one run. In the bottom of the eighth, Mike finally got tired and walked a couple guys, but Billy brought Sparky in again, and he struck out Cookie Rojas to keep us in it.

  We had just one more inning now; the whole season came down to this. Whitey replaced Mingori with Dennis Leonard, who was usually their best starter, to begin the ninth. We had a great inning, one that exemplified what a great clutch team we were, all working together to get it done.

  First, Thurman coached Blair on how to hit Leonard, and Blair hung in there; he spoiled a couple sliders from Leonard, and then he fought off a tight fastball and plunked it into center. A professional piece of hitting. Next Roy White pinch-hit for Bucky, and he battled Leonard all the way, fouled off some more great pitches, and drew a walk. Another clutch at-bat.

  Herzog brought in a lefty, Larry Gura, who was normally another starter, to pitch to the left-handed-hitting Mickey Rivers. It was great baseball, the crowd was going nuts, every at-bat going to four, five pitches or more. Everybody expected Mickey to bunt, but when he couldn’t lay one down, he worked the count to 2–2, then lined a single into right to score Blair and tie the game.

  Herzog went back to the pen again; he brought in Mark Littell, a closer. Same guy who gave up the home run to Chambliss that cost the Royals the pennant in 1976. This time, Willie Randolph hit a long sac fly off him to center to put us ahead, and then Brett, a future Hall of Famer, booted a ball by Piniella, and suddenly we were up, 5–3.

  You should have heard how quiet their more than forty thousand fans got then. Bottom of the ninth, the Royals were still battling, and Sparky was tired. But he got Freddie Patek to hit into a double play to end it, and that was that. Somehow we’d won the pennant.

  Afterward, a lot of people were saying that Whitey Herzog overmanaged those two innings, bringing in five pitchers, including three to face just four batters in the ninth. I know that’s the way it can look.

  Did he overmanage?

  This is for all of us who manage when we’re watching TV, or at the game, without background knowledge. First of all, if the players do their jobs, the manager never leaves the dugout. That makes him a great manager. If the players don’t do their jobs, then the manager has to go to other players, to try to get the one player out of trouble. Whether it’s a player who’s struggling on the mound or a player who’s struggling offensively. The great players Casey Stengel had made him a great manager with the Yankees in the 1950s. The great Cardinals’ teams Red Schoendienst had in the 1960s made him a great manager. Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Dave McNally—they all helped make Earl Weaver a great manager. Dick Williams was a great manager with the Oakland A’s. The team had three future Hall of Famers on
it. Derek Jeter, the great Mariano Rivera, and all those other great players the Yankees had in the 1990s helped make Joe Torre a great manager.

  What people don’t realize is that you need to understand people’s makeup and what a guy is cut out for. Because a guy does not do well under pressure does not mean he’s not a good player. It means that we as management need to not put that player in that situation.

  So, when managers use a player in certain situations and not in others, it may be because that player is not suited for the situation. All of your great players—from Whitey Ford to Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Frank Robinson, Gibson, Marichal, Koufax, Aaron, Jeter, Rivera—they have a meanness to them that you would be shocked to discover that they have. They have a killer instinct in them that’s a very controlled, very managed part of their character and ego that’s almost anger. It makes them extremely difficult to beat in a one-on-one situation.

  You see it in other sports. Guys like Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, others. They truly are special people, and your managers know who you can trust with the baby and who you can’t. Guys like Munson, guys like Nettles—love ’em or hate ’em, they’re great players, and you must respect ’em. You’re in a dogfight, you want ’em on your side, because they’re going to go down scratching.

  You can beat them sometimes. You can whip those butts. But when you get over ’em, your comment is, “Gee whiz, if I ever run into that guy again, I’m sure gonna do my best to talk my way around it. Because even though I won the fight, my jaw hurt for a year. Every time I took a bite out of an apple, I thought of Thurman Munson.” You know, when people in the other dugout look out in the bullpen and say, “Oh, Mariano’s up,” that manager, that coach, says, “Boys, you’d better score now.” Because they don’t have Mariano up for practice. “This is not a fire drill. That blankety-blank is coming in. He ain’t down there playing catch.”

  All of which is to say about Whitey Herzog, like other managers, most of the time he’s making moves, it’s because the other guy can’t handle it. Sometimes a guy overmanages, but usually it’s when you force his hand. When he doesn’t have one of those killers out there, he has to do what he can.

  Now, I’m not saying who Whitey had out there in that ninth inning maybe couldn’t handle it. I have no idea. But I know that we had plenty of guys with that killer instinct on our side. Munson, Nettles, Piniella, Mickey Rivers, Chambliss, Randolph, so many guys. They set their mind to square up that ball, and they’re going to hit that ball off anybody. It doesn’t matter to me who’s on the mound when I set my mind to square that ball, hit it on the barrel of the bat.

  There are exceptions. When you go out and a Koufax or a Bob Gibson is on the mound in the ninth, or when you’re facing a Mays or a McCovey, some of the all-time greats—you’re maybe going to get something you never saw before, which is why people pay to sit close. They can stop anyone, and that’s how history is made.

  But certain guys, like a Jeter or a Miguel Cabrera today, they can make you a bad manager. They can beat you no matter what you try to do. Sometimes you have to go strength to strength, and you can still get beat.

  Postseason, sometimes you’ll bring in your starters when you have to, the way Whitey Herzog did. Starters have their “throw day,” when they throw thirty-five pitches or so to keep their arms loose between starts. In the playoffs, you’ll have the starters down in the bullpen, ready to take their throw day on the mound, if you have to—particularly in a situation like the one we were in in 1977, where it came down to the fifth and final game. You have a few days before the World Series starts, so ELAIA—“every living a—h— is available.”

  Most of the time bringing in the starters works out. Or maybe you want to pull the starter, because you know he’s done, or you don’t think he’s going to get the batter out. Doesn’t mean it was the wrong move. Maybe the reliever isn’t as strong as he usually is; maybe he’s pitched too much. But he’s your best lefty—and you’re facing a great left-handed hitter. Especially near the end of the year, when it’s win or go home. It’s different in the playoffs, we all know that.

  All you can do is put together the best-case scenario. The best you can say is, “Well, the reliever’s arm was fresh. This was the best matchup at the time.” There are so many variables, so many things that can go wrong, it’s so easy to say the manager made a mistake. That’s baseball most of the time. You’re always being second-guessed, and you’re always wondering what would have happened if you shoulda, woulda, coulda.

  That playoff series against the Royals, our pitching staff was hurting. We were out of pitchers, and Billy, to his credit, took some big risks. He left Sparky Lyle out there a lot of innings in Game 4, and he brought him back again in a key situation in Game 5, the very next day. A tip of the cap to Sparky. Billy started Figgy when he was hurt, then he started Guidry on short rest, then he brought Mike Torrez on with short rest.

  All risky calls. But we win! So the manager—great job. More important, great job by the players. No slight to the manager. He’s in a no-win situation. If the players do their job, he’s a great manager. If they don’t, he’s a bum. That’s part of the deal.

  Not all of that worked out. But almost all of it did. Taking me out of the lineup so he could prove something to somebody? That was a huge risk he didn’t have to take. But he got away with it. Good for us.

  Whitey Herzog, he thought, “Why mess around and take a chance on letting somebody who’s not my best pitcher lose this game?” So he brought in his best arms, his best starters—the way managers have always done in the postseason. The way Casey Stengel used to do with Allie Reynolds, or the way Bob Brenly brought Randy Johnson out to face us in that seventh game in the 2001 World Series, when he pulled Curt Schilling.

  It worked for those managers. It didn’t work for Whitey Herzog.

  As long as you’re a manager, you’re going to be second-guessed. It’s fair and it’s unfair. It is what it is. Start letting it bother you and get in your head, you need another job.

  It bothered me some that I didn’t get to be on the field when Sparky got the last out. But they wouldn’t want to put me in for defense at that point.

  We won. That was the one thing we all wanted. But afterward in the clubhouse, I became the big issue again.

  George was supportive at least. He told the press about me, “When he came in, he delivered a hit instead of sulking. That shows everyone in New York he’s a team man.”

  Most of my time in New York, George stayed in my corner. George and I never really had any problems until I had a bad year, an off year in 1981, and I was let go. That was George. He’d stand behind you as long as you produced. He later admitted publicly that was a mistake. He told me jokingly on the phone that he had listened to his advisers for the first time.

  I was disappointed to see what still wasn’t behind us. Paul Blair was giving Munson a lot of credit for advising him on how to hit Denny Leonard, and Thurman told the press, “Yeah, this beach ball can’t stir the f—ing drink, but he can show you how to hit.”

  Okay, so he still wasn’t over that. So what?

  The press asked Billy why he couldn’t be a man and come tell me himself that I wasn’t going to be in the starting lineup. He told them, “How do you tell a guy he’s been butchering the outfield and not hitting worth a damn? How do you do that diplomatically?”

  S.O.B. Doing this book was the first time I learned some of this stuff. While I’m here in my sixties now, I have to tell you it’s still unbelievable to hear it. Yeah, that was Billy. Always worrying about how he could do things diplomatically. I gotta say, the only word I can use is “crazy.” I’m glad I didn’t know all that went on.

  I hadn’t made any errors in the outfield for a while, and I hadn’t been hitting for all of four games after having a great stretch run. You can run up a list of Hall of Famers long as your arm who have had bad postseasons, much worse and much longer than mine. It happens, because it’s only a few games.
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br />   You don’t bench one of your best players over it. You don’t rub it in—especially not after he takes the benching with class, doesn’t say a thing, and comes off the bench to get a big hit. You don’t bring up fielding errors from months before to taunt him with as well.

  Whatever. I knew somehow I’d be in the middle of everything again, getting it from all sides even when we won. Thurman was talking out loud about wanting to go to play in Cleveland the next year. Billy was taking the opportunity to mock me …

  “All season I had to eat it in here,” was what I told the writers. “Thank God. I can’t explain it because I don’t understand the magnitude of Reggie Jackson and the magnitude of the event. I am the situation.”

  Seriously, what I meant was how I couldn’t understand how it kept coming back, even when I didn’t do anything. It just seemed like a recurring nightmare. I’m getting away, and all of a sudden the guy starts to grab me—and I wake up. It never seemed to end.

  You could say, all right, some of the trouble I got in my first year in New York was my fault. Some of it was me not understanding yet how to say nothing. I didn’t understand how to measure and weigh my every word before speaking it. I didn’t understand how the press thought of themselves in New York. I didn’t understand what a different dude the manager was.

  But here we go again. I had a great stretch run, didn’t hit so well the first four games of the championship series … and we were tied. I got benched. Unlike everybody else who wasn’t hitting so well. Then, when I got benched and I took it well, I got called out by my manager anyway and ridiculed in the press.

  Whoever my manager was.

  The next day, when we met the media the day before the World Series started, the press was fifteen-deep. All of them asking me, “Reggie, are you playing tomorrow?”

  I said, “I don’t know. Let me ask the manager.” Then I called over, “Hey, Fran, am I playing tomorrow?”