Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  I don’t know who the heck said that. I really didn’t care. But the idea of not playing another year for Billy was interesting. It would’ve been a great Christmas present.

  It’s amazing what people said and how important it seemed to say something about me. How I was always supposed to be the problem. You know, today with the Yankees I joke with guys. Jorge Posada always used to kid me about things I’d say, “the magnitude of me” and things like that. But always in good fun.

  Then? I wanted to ask my teammates, “Where are you going with all this? Why all the conversation? Why don’t you just do what you do and leave it alone?

  “If you think I’m goofy and off base, then let me star in my own movie. I’ll be the star, the supporting actor, the camera guy, the lighting guy. I can do it all. Just leave me dangle, dude.”

  I mean, like with Billy Martin, I used to look at him and think, “Who is that dude? What’s the deal?”

  But I got tired of making comments to the public about him. I never went out and said, “He’s drinking so much that alcohol must be going to his brain.” I never went to the writers and said, “He’s out of control. He sleeps up to game time in his office.”

  You don’t get me, and I don’t get you. Okay. When the game starts and I’m in the lineup, root against me if you want. But just let me do my thing.

  Part of it, I’m sure, was racial. This was 1977. Part of it, I’m sure, was me. Part of it was Billy. Part of it was the media’s job in selling papers. The ingredients were perfect for constant drama, all of it happening in the Big Apple. George Steinbrenner had all the players for a Hollywood blockbuster, and I wouldn’t let everything get by without a comment sometimes.

  I don’t know, it’s funny. I wish I played today. In some ways, with ESPN and additional media, the controversy would be bigger. It would never stop. They’d have to bring back Walter Cronkite. They’d cover the things I said and supposedly said on the evening news. That would be such fun.

  If I played today, I’d stay in trouble. I’d be in the commissioner’s office all the time, I guess. I’d be everywhere—including where I wasn’t supposed to be.

  I remember asking Mickey Mantle, “Mickey, are all the stories that people tell about you true?” Mickey’s response to me: “No, Reggie, if I’d have done everything everybody said I did, I’d have been three freaking guys.”

  On the other hand … you know, nothing I was saying or doing was that outlandish. I wasn’t getting into fights in strip clubs. I wasn’t getting arrested or doing drugs. I was never staggering around drunk, never made any stupid remarks.

  I only wanted to play the game. I wanted to go out and play, be left alone and see what I could do.

  And now that I was hitting, I was going to hold the deck.

  16

  “THAT’S THREE, MOM!”

  MY FATHER ALWAYS said, “As long as you have a bat in your hand, you can control the story.”

  Everybody was still yipping about this or that in the papers. I really didn’t care. The Yankees held a press conference that Tuesday morning, the morning of the sixth game, and announced they were giving Billy a $50,000 bonus and a new Lincoln Mark V, and paying the rent on his apartment, as a reward for the brilliant job he’d done.

  Good for him.

  I didn’t care. I had a bat in my hand.

  Before the game, Joe DiMaggio came to the clubhouse. That was awesome. Joe DiMaggio was walking nobility. They finally worked it out where he was throwing out the first pitch, and we got him good seats up front.

  Joe was royalty, he acted like royalty, and you were going to treat him like royalty, or he wasn’t going to participate. Joe came to the clubhouse to see us before the game and talk to us, and that was a real treat.

  Joe told me, “I know you’ve had some issues, but you’ve made the Yankees proud. Nice going”—something along those lines. I’d known him since Oakland in 1968, when he was a coach for the A’s. He just hung out, got paid, and had some useful things to say about hitting. He was always nice, and I always got along with him. Everybody thought he was aloof, but I thought Joe was a regal guy.

  Very private man, didn’t let too many people in, but I got along with Joe very well. He’d always sign balls for me when I asked him. I remember one time, though, I asked him to sign a ball for Buck Showalter, the manager then, and he told me, “I already signed one for Buck, a couple years ago.” (He was keeping track.)

  My father, my brother Joe in the air force, Fran Healy—they were all there, and I was in a good frame of mind. My sister Beverly, her family came up for the game, which I was glad to see. I was ready to go. I had an unbelievable batting practice that evening. Unbelievable.

  I always hit for the last five minutes of batting practice. At that time, the starting lineup would hit for forty-five minutes, and the last five minutes were mine. I always hit last. I enjoyed it. You usually let your bomber hit last.

  The teams are changing the field. Everyone’s getting ready to go in, everyone’s outside. The Dodgers are about to take the field for their batting practice, so they’re waiting. All the Dodgers are there, all the Yankees are on the field, the media are five-, six-deep for the World Series. I mean, there are so many media there you can’t even move.

  During that batting practice, I probably had fifty swings in five minutes. In the span of those five minutes, I must have hit thirty-five balls in the right-field bleachers, within the space of a fifty-foot circle. Deep, high, majestic drives.

  I remember Dave Anderson, Dick Young, Ira Berkow—I remember all those guys from the press there watching. Ross Greenburg, who later ran HBO for the longest time, was there as a runner for ABC, and he told me the story more than once: “Reggie, I’ll never forget the batting practice you had that night.”

  I think it was a fun time for the people at the game. I don’t think I ever had another batting practice like that. Either Mike Ferraro or Dick Howser was pitching; they threw batting practice to me all the time. The Dodgers were there on the foul line, watching it. Everybody was really enjoying it. People were oohing and aahing while I was hitting them out. It was crazy. The crowd kept getting louder and louder. And by the time I stepped out of the batting cage, they gave me a standing ovation—fifty-seven thousand people. It was fun, man.

  People liked to say, “Reggie played well in big games because of his ego, he loved the spotlight.” That wasn’t true. There are a lot of guys who like attention, a lot of guys who have big egos—and they ain’t worth a crap in that situation.

  Did I like having an opportunity to show what I could do? Did I like having the chance to show my skill set? Yes.

  After the game, I’d have no problem saying, “Did you enjoy that as much as I did?” And people would laugh at that and go, “What the heck’s wrong with this guy?” Nothin’ wrong with me, dude. I’m enjoying what I’m doing.

  Did Koufax get called out because he enjoyed the spotlight? No, he was just great—no matter where he played, or when he played, back alley or the stage of the World Series.

  I was just ready to play. As they write about the warhorse in the book of Job, “When the trumpet sounds, he says, ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle from afar.”

  I was ready for the battle. I had a bat in my hand, and I knew how to use it.

  Mike Torrez was going for us that night, and this time he had three days’ rest. That’s not much nowadays; back then, it was the norm. He was a tough pitcher for us that year. Earlier, he’d already become the first Mexican American ever to win a World Series game. That’s a nice chit to have on your sleeve. I remember when he pitched those five innings of shutout ball to keep us in Game 5 of the ALCS. When he finally came out, Munson was quoted as having paid him a huge compliment: “You are an outstanding Mexican!”—in a positive way.

  That was how we all felt about him. We were confident. We were ready. Mike was the guy we wanted on the mound.

  Sometimes, when you’re up for a game, you can be a little too ready,
a little too fired up. I know that I would get fired up when I was in the playoffs and the World Series in Oakland. In order to combat that, during the postseason I would manage to stay up late, one, two in the morning watching TV, and get up at six, seven. Slow myself down. I had found myself at times getting very antsy along the foul line before the game, during the introductions. So I thought I would make myself tired the night before and just stay up. It worked for me. When the Series was over, I could sleep for two days—stay in bed, eighteen hours. I don’t know if other athletes do that. But it always worked for me.

  I had stayed up late the night before the sixth game of the Series in 1977. I don’t know if the other guys were too excited, but in the first inning Bucky made a rare error for him with two outs, and Thurman gave up a passed ball. Then Mike walked a batter and gave up a two-run triple to deep left by Garvey. We were already down, 2–0.

  That’s all right. We felt good, and we were confident. Bottom of the second, I got up for the first time, ready to go—and Burt Hooton walked me on four pitches. I don’t know if he was being cautious after watching me in batting practice, but he was there. Chris Chambliss took him deep to center-right a couple pitches later, and we got it tied, 2–2.

  Top of the third, Reggie Smith, who was a tremendous player and always played well in the postseason (at least he did against us), homered to almost the same place as Chambliss did and took back the lead. That was his third home run against us. As I look back now, he was having a great Series against us and was probably on his way to the MVP.

  Right idea. Wrong Reggie.

  I was back up the next inning with us still down, 3–2. “Old Reliable” Thurman on first with a single. I was ready; I was in a groove. But I had something else, too.

  Back in those days, the technology we had was different than it is today, but very reliable. Sometimes we looked at video, but to be honest, I never really watched video that much. Things happened too fast for me on video, and sometimes it was archaic compared with today. We used to go out and shoot it, then take what we had and put it on a fifteen-inch screen. Stop it. Dissect it. Play it back. And that was just video of batting practice. There was no video of the game, not in the clubhouse like it is today. Today there are video people and a couple rooms of equipment set up.

  Players now … sometimes they come in the clubhouse after an at-bat during the game and go and dissect their actions right away. Not a fan of that. I think the focus should be on the game, on the bench. And then there’s the preparation that the pitching coach, the catcher, and the pitcher have before the game as well—the preparation that the hitting coach and the hitters have, going over the game beforehand in great detail. It is of great value to today’s player—going over the performance and the basic tendencies of the opposing pitcher, his history against your ball club, as well as the history of his last few starts.

  It’s become a science: what he throws first pitch; how many strikes, first pitch. How many curveballs during the game. How many curveballs to left-handers. How many curveballs on different counts. All good information. But sometimes too much creates clutter. I think it’s awesome that it’s available, but knowing how to apply it is also a challenge. So much information can be too much for players.

  Some of the great players don’t want too much information. Some want to get out of the way of all that and let their skill sets perform. Some players like all the information; some players don’t.

  I enjoyed it at times, but at others I didn’t want it. As an example, I was not a player who did well if I knew what was coming. If a pitcher tipped his hand and had a different action when he threw a curveball or when he threw a fastball and you could pick it up … I did not want to know it. I got too anxious if I knew what was coming. Hard as that is for players today to believe, I did not want to know what was coming. It’s rare, but there are players who do better just relying on their instinct. I was one of those guys. I believe Jeter is as well.

  There are guys who analyze everything. The time the pitcher takes to release the baseball, how long it takes for it to get to home plate. They have it down to a tenth of a second—the amount of time it takes the catcher to receive the ball and then to throw it to second base. From that they will tell you precisely how long the leads are that you need to take if you’re going to steal. They’ll figure out that it will take a pitcher 1.7, 1.8 seconds from the start of his motion to the time the ball arrives in the catcher’s mitt. They will also time how long it takes the catcher to receive the ball and how long it takes to get to second base on the throw, maybe 1.8 seconds as well. The combined total will be 3.6 seconds. If a fast runner can get enough of a lead and arrive at second base in under 3.6, then he will have an opportunity to steal.

  This is how the game is played today. Valuable information, plotted down to that much of a microsecond.

  Teams nowadays go over where the fielders should play against everybody, depending on who’s pitching and what he’s throwing. The length of the grass—is it longer on one side of the infield or the other?—and how much it slows the ball down. How much range the infielders have, whether we should cut the grass that day or not … the game is that detailed.

  We didn’t have any meetings with Billy like that. We barely talked. The pitchers and catchers went over things, but there really weren’t meetings for the offense in those days. The bench coach was unheard of when I played. Some teams didn’t even have batting coaches.

  I think nowadays having specific coaches helps teams be more aware of tendencies, because there are some great baseball minds available to you. But my first couple years on the Yankees, we didn’t have hitting coaches. Later, we had Charley Lau, but before that I don’t think there was anyone specifically for hitting. You did it yourself.

  You worked with other players like Lou Piniella and Roy White, who were knowledgeable about hitting. Guys like Munson and Bobby Murcer a couple years later, when he came back to the team—he was an outstanding baseball man. Chris Chambliss had knowledge. You might talk among yourselves with guys who knew how someone would pitch against you.

  But before the World Series, we had reports from our experienced advance scouts. We had a guy named Jerry Walker, who had twenty-plus years in the game, but most of all we had the great Birdie Tebbetts. Birdie was in his mid-sixties, a former major-league catcher. I had worked with him when we were in Oakland. Both he and Jerry Walker were there as advance scouts, because the A’s were usually in the postseason.

  Gene Michael, who was a coach at this time for the Yankees, also had a tremendous baseball mind. He still does today. Many people give him some credit for the collection of great players who came through the Yankees’ organization in the 1990s. You know, I learned a lot from Gene Michael about using scouting reports.

  These guys all went out and scouted National League teams we were likely to see in the World Series. From them, you could learn the “tendencies” that their pitchers had, as well as hitters and defenders, who had a good arm and who was accurate. They gathered a wealth of info.

  You had to have that, because in the days before interleague play you didn’t really see the National League guys. Maybe at the All-Star Game, or a little bit in spring training. But not much. And in the spring, you wouldn’t see as much. They’d be working on things, getting ready for the season. You never saw what they were like at the top of their game, giving it everything they had.

  I leaned on Michael and Tebbetts most of all. I had my own meetings with them after they talked to the whole team before each World Series game. I would huddle with them for a good twenty to thirty minutes. I used our scouts in my own special way, to try to get a little more specific, more detailed knowledge. I’d asked them when they went out on the road to scout, “When you go watch the Dodgers, would you find out the pitch sequences for me? Find out what pitches they like to throw in different pitch counts. The counts I am most concerned about are 1–0, 2–0, 2–1, 3–1—when I have a free wheel. Take note of what they thro
w in those counts to guys like myself: Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Billy Williams, Al Oliver.” Any left-handed hitter with sock. Boom in the barrel.

  They were the guys I thought I was most like—the guys I hoped I was like. Left-hand hitters with power. Like me, they had the dynamite in the barrel. The danger level was the same. I thought if the scouts could see twenty at-bats with hitters like that by a certain pitcher, I could find out some tendencies.

  And I thought if I had seven or eight of those situations, I could pick out which ones were the free passes—I could look for a pitch to hit. Eight out of nine times, or six out of eight—if they threw the same thing that often on a 2–1 count or a 2–0 count … I had a free look. I could take a shot for a banger. For a bridge piece. You know—a chance to collect a toll.

  There were always fans—there were writers—who didn’t understand the game. Who insisted on looking at me as just a big, unthinking guy who went up there and swung for the fences. They thought I struck out too much. Sometimes I did. They didn’t think of me as a complete player.

  They had it wrong, I thought. What I understood was what my role was. I understood that I had four chances a game to put a number on the board. One, two, three, four. That was my role.

  That wasn’t the role for everybody. Great as players like Derek Jeter and Pete Rose are, you can’t ask them to go up there and try to hit it out. They have their roles; there’s a lot of things players like that do. Their role is to get on base, move the runners along, keep the rally going. Jeter is a great clutch player, probably the best in the game in his era—it’s either him or Mo! (When you add Mo to the mix, I guess, we all become second. Even Ali.) Jeter is a guy you always want there to drive in a big run. The greatest.

  Roles change sometimes. You can expand your role. Jeter’s hit some big home runs. I remember he hit a home run on the first pitch against the Mets in the World Series, leading off the fourth game after we’d lost the night before. Had a home run the game after that, to tie the score. Great players can expand their roles at times.