Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  But mostly, we just let it roll off us. If I didn’t do something at home my father wanted done in some way, I got whupped. In baseball, the owners couldn’t whip you in public. Maybe they wanted to, but all they could do was make it tough for you or trade you. It didn’t scare us.

  We were a bunch of kids who didn’t know much about the big money; we didn’t know anything about the media. We didn’t know much about anything. We were all twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. Nothing bothered you at that age. You just lived your life, helped your family, and played good baseball, and everything was all right.

  It’s pretty much the same as baseball is today. If you play well and win, everything is fine. People think it’s a happy clubhouse that makes a winner, but it’s not. It’s the other way around. You win, then you have a happy clubhouse. You’re not winning, the owner’s not happy. The general manager’s not happy; the manager’s not happy. Nobody’s happy.

  That’s what life is. That’s the sociology of sports. It builds on itself. You’re winning, the clubhouse gets happy, everybody’s having a good time. Everybody stays loose. What’s the saying Al Davis had? “Just win, baby.” But if you’re not winning, and you have a happy clubhouse, you’re accepting losing. If you’re a losing team, the clubhouse needs to have unrest. That’s proof that you care. It sounds crazy, I know, but that’s how it is.

  In Oakland, we didn’t let ourselves lose. Nineteen seventy-five, we won more games than we had in four years. We lost the league championship series in three games to the Red Sox, but they were all close games most of the way, and Boston had a great team that year. The core of our team was still pretty young. We were still in our twenties, save for Campy and Bando, who were in their early thirties. And every year, we were adding terrific young players—guys like George Hendrick, and Phil Garner, and Claudell Washington, who would go on to become stars.

  We could’ve gone on winning for years and years. The only trouble was that free agency was here—and Charlie Finley didn’t have any money to keep up with the “haves.”

  4

  LEAVING CHARLIE O.

  I REMEMBER IT was in spring training when I knew it was all going to change. The first couple years I was with the Athletics, we had our training camp in Bradenton, Florida, but starting in 1969 we moved to Mesa, Arizona, which was great. I always loved it down there, that big sky, the dry heat, the Superstition Mountains in the distance. I had a house down there at the time; I’d liked it ever since I first went to Arizona State, just one town west in Tempe.

  It was a nice lifestyle there, lots of nightlife, plenty of restaurants. I would meet and have dinner with Willie McCovey, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins—three Hall of Famers. I always enjoyed being with them. We would go and eat out in Scottsdale, usually at a place called the Fig Tree restaurant, on Indian School Road. One of those guys would pick up the check, because they were older, they were making more money than I was then. They were always schooling me in what to say, how to act. They always told me to be careful what I said in public—and they were right!

  I remember picking up Willie McCovey to go out to dinner one night, and I was driving a 1973 Pontiac T-top—a brand-new Pontiac I’d been given. McCovey and Willie Mays would get a free car from Chrysler every year. But I had this Pontiac, and it started raining buckets from above, and the T-tops started leaking. It was coming inside, dripping on McCovey’s pants, and he was saying, “What’re you doing, driving this car? This ain’t no star’s car! It’s raining inside!” I’ll never forget that. LMAO.

  I had a condo there, and it was closer to home than what I had in Oakland. I liked it more than Florida.

  What I didn’t love was spring training. I never much liked to go to spring training; it was too long. Unlike most ballplayers of the time, I knew how to take care of myself. I worked out all year long. I didn’t go to spring training to get in shape. I showed up in shape. I was ready to play ball for real a couple days after I arrived.

  I especially didn’t want to go that year, 1976. That off-season, I’d been in arbitration with Charlie Finley and lost. I was making $140,000 a year at the time, which is what now? About a third of the minimum major-league salary?

  I thought I’d had a pretty good year in 1975. I tied for the American League lead in homers with George Scott. Had 104 ribbies, led the league in extra-base hits, was second in total bases. We won the West Division for the fifth straight season, and I’d been an all-star every year since 1971.

  I asked for a raise from $140,000 to $168,500. A raise of $28,500.

  Nowadays, you don’t even hear about raises like that. Nowadays, that’s what you tip the clubhouse guy for a year.

  I lost.

  The team’s argument in arbitration was that I struck out too much. And that we’d only won the division title, not a fourth straight World Series.

  After that, I just didn’t have it in me to go to camp on time. I was berated so much in that arbitration case I was harboring bad feelings. I showed up about a week late; that was my protest. And when I did, Charlie Finley comes up to me, and he gives me a check for $2,500. He tells me, “I know you lost in arbitration, but here’s $2,500.” He didn’t want it on my official salary, because if we wound up in arbitration the next year, he didn’t want me starting off with $142,500.

  That was Charlie O., nickel-and-diming you on something all the time. Back in 1969, my second full year in the majors, I hit forty-seven home runs. I was twenty-three years old, making $20,000 a year. When I asked for more money, he offered me a $10,000 raise. I held out to get more for six weeks, until April 2, while he leaked his side of negotiations to the papers, turned the writers and the fans against me.

  I had no idea of how to handle the fact that whatever was said to the papers, they would write it as the truth. I had no idea what to do.

  In the end, I got him up to $40,000 for 1970, plus a rent-tree $750-a-month apartment on Lake Merritt for the year—big money for those days. But I had to go in cold, no spring training at all, missed the first week of the season; the fans were on me all the time. There were threats of sending me to the minors and numerous belittlings by the owner. I had a bad year in 1970, hit .237 with twenty-three homers—and Charlie cut me $2,000 for 1971.

  I was shocked and hurt that Finley turned out not to be the father figure he had presented himself as. But anytime you get ready to sign a contract, everybody’s in love. Five, ten years later, you’re ready for the divorce. It can get bitter, contentious; things turn sour. With Finley by then, it was “My way or the highway.”

  You had to put up with that then, because we still had the reserve clause, which had applied to all players in the majors since the 1890s. Under the reserve clause, you had a choice. You could take what they offered you, or you could stay home. Whoever owned your contract controlled you for as long as you chose to play organized baseball, unless they decided to trade you or sell you to another team, like a piece of property. It didn’t matter when the contract expired. Your “owner” still held the rights to you. Forever.

  That began to change once the Players Association hired Marvin Miller as its executive director, just before I came up to the majors. He helped us to build the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) into one of the strongest unions in history. You could tell things were changing because we had an impartial arbitrator. For the first time in the history of the game, we could take contract disputes to an independent outsider. The players’ union was changing things for the better for the players.

  But the owners still fought us every step of the way. We had to go on strike for two weeks in 1972, just to get arbitration and additional pension money, among other benefits. As a business, baseball was doing well. Attendance was going up; TV money was going up. But the average ballplayer was still making less than $45,000 a year.

  Then came the Messersmith case. Near the end of 1975, Peter Seitz, the independent arbitrator, ruled that the contracts Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally had with
their teams had expired and that they were now free agents, eligible to sign with any club they wanted.

  Naturally, the owners took it to court, forget about the independent arbitrator. They’d been fighting every case like it for more than fifty years. They ran Curt Flood out of baseball, rather than give in when he sued. He never got the credit he deserved for challenging the reserve clause all the way up to the Supreme Court. He stepped up years before everyone else. His timing wasn’t right, and he paid a terrible price for that. He got kicked to the curb, died a broken man. It was really a tragedy, and nobody came to his rescue. He just didn’t get the support from his own fraternity, us players.

  But now, in 1975, the owners lost. I remember it was right before we reported to spring training a federal judge upheld the decision by Seitz. McNally retired, but Messersmith signed a three-year deal with Ted Turner and the Braves, for a million dollars. Ooh—one million clams!

  The owners couldn’t believe it. They had no choice; they had to deal with us now. For the first time in more than eighty years, ballplayers had the same right that every other American citizen enjoys. That is, when his contract expires, he can go and work for whoever he pleases. It’s as simple as that—some still can’t accept it!

  Of course, the owners appealed again. It wasn’t until July 1976—mid-season—that we had a new agreement in place, setting up exactly how the free-agent system was going to work. But once that court ruling came down, we knew the world had changed forever.

  Under the agreement, you had to have six years in the majors to become a free agent. Marvin Miller put that in himself. Charlie Finley wanted to let everyone become a free agent every year. He was the smartest guy on the owners’ side at that time, because he knew that would have driven the price down. It would have been like Rotisserie baseball every season!

  Marvin was afraid the owners would go for that, but they didn’t. That meant Charlie Finley and the A’s just didn’t have the money to compete with the really deep-pocketed owners, people like the O’Malleys in Los Angeles, or Bronfman in Montreal, or Tom Yawkey up in Boston—or George and his Yankees. Charlie had a small-market team that didn’t draw well even when it won, and small cash reserves—hardly any local TV or radio revenues. He couldn’t keep the team together any longer.

  You knew intellectually what would change, but still you weren’t prepared. I knew what the arbitrator’s ruling meant; I knew what the court decisions meant. I knew what getting rid of the reserve clause meant. But I still didn’t expect it to change anything for me. I was in spring training; I was still ticked off at losing in arbitration and Charlie Finley giving me that $2,500 off the books, like he was tipping the groundskeeper. I was preoccupied with that and getting ready for the season.

  Then, a week from Opening Day, it came down. I remember it was the first or second day of April. I was driving in my car, and I heard it first on the radio. Me, Kenny Holtzman, and a young pitcher named Bill VanBommel were traded to Baltimore for Don Baylor, Mike Torrez, and Paul Mitchell.

  Finley had started unloading his players, and Kenny and I were first. Before two more seasons had passed, we were all gone—Rudi, Campy, Sal Bando, Vida Blue, Tenace, Garner, Washington, Billy North. And almost every one of us went to teams that went on to win still more rings, or that at least became contenders overnight. It was like we were the magic A’s.

  But we would never play together again. Just like that, everything we’d done, everything we built, was over. It broke my heart. I was still in the prime of my career, didn’t know what “traded” meant! You can still see it in the pictures of me at the time. I had no idea what was going to happen; Finley never said a word to me. I was walking around in shock.

  As I look back, I can see he was trying to protect his investment. But ultimately, Charlie still wasn’t able to hang on to his team—and it still didn’t make me feel any better.

  I wasn’t an old man yet. I wasn’t thirty-five or forty, I was still twenty-nine, and I thought, “What’s the matter with you, trading me away?” I drove over to my agent’s office, Gary Walker, who was also one of my best friends at the time and still today, and we just sat and talked. I didn’t know what to do. I’d been with the A’s since I was twenty years old. I had played together with all those guys, and now we were all leaving. And I was going first.

  I was so upset that I just went and hid out for a while. I went to Hawaii, stayed at this hotel I liked on Waikiki, the Rainbow Hilton, where I used to go and do the commentary for the old Superstars sports shows they used to have. I wanted to get away, and I didn’t want to go back. Nothing against Baltimore, it was just that the A’s were the only team I ever played for. I knew nothing else. I was depressed or in shock, take your pick!

  And it was there that I figured, “Well, if that’s how it’s going to be, that’s how it’s going to be.” I knew then that I had them in a bind. They had just traded two pretty good players for Kenny Holtzman and me. And I took a cold, calculated attitude, just as I felt their attitude had been toward me.

  Charlie Finley got some good young players instead of just losing us to free agency. The Orioles got Kenny and me to help them make a pennant run. It worked out all around, and everybody’s happy—except for the players. Nobody asked us what we wanted. So I just felt, “Okay, you’re gonna trade me and not tell me about it beforehand, and do whatever you feel like doing? I’m good with that. If you’re going to do it this way, here’s how I’m going to do it. I’m gonna stay out here in Hawaii until you feel like doing what I want to do. Now we all good!!” I was okay with that.

  The Orioles wanted me to report right away, but I drew a line in the sand. I told them right up front I wanted the money I lost in arbitration. And more. I wanted a contract for $200,000. I knew that was what Dick Allen was making with the White Sox. He was the highest-paid player in the game at the time. I felt I deserved the same. I was going to either make that or sit out. Gary Walker listened to what I wanted, and he said I could get it. It would take time. But I could get what I wanted if I held out. He said to just stay out of the papers.

  So he started talking to Hank Peters, who was the Orioles’ general manager at the time. He was a good man—and if I had talked to him, I would probably have given in. But Gary kept me away, and kept the pressure on him, and kept me informed.

  I hung out in Hawaii, and Gary negotiated. They had never dealt with a player this way before. Nobody had in baseball, at least not since Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale held out together on the Dodgers, back in the mid-1960s.

  I came back from Hawaii, stayed around the neighborhood where I was living in Berkeley. Worked out, stayed in shape, made a couple of trips down to Arizona to talk to Gary there. He kept negotiating with Hank Peters, who was a wonderful man, and in the end they got the deal done. I got the $200,000, minus the time I missed. That came out to $190,000, so I was the second-highest-paid player in baseball.

  I flew into Baltimore on May 1, 1976. Held a press conference, suited up, and took batting practice that night. They put the lights on in the stadium for me, and I hit until 11:30 or midnight. Dave Duncan was on the Orioles, too, by then, he gave me his number 9 so I could wear it. That’s the kind of guy he was. Next day, I started the second game of a doubleheader against the A’s, drove in a run, and we won.

  I still felt like I was behind on the season. I just plunged in and kept taking extra batting practice until my hands bled.

  The only thing was, I didn’t understand the consequences of what I had done. I was still twenty-nine years old, and I didn’t pay attention. I thought, “If you’re tough enough to trade me, then I’m tough enough to do this,” and that would be the end of it.

  But there were articles; there was a negative reaction from the fans. Nobody understood how this would work out yet. Nobody understood how baseball was a business, because the owners didn’t want the fans to look at it that way. Nobody published what their revenue was every year—the owners—but they published our salaries, and so
metimes more, to exaggerate. I didn’t know, nobody knew how the fans were going to react to our treating this like a business, too, and getting the money we could.

  After all, the American pastime was a game that we got to play. The focus was on how we got paid to play this game. It wasn’t thought of as our job.

  Once I got to Baltimore, I had a good year. I stole twenty-eight bases, my career high. I knocked in ninety-one runs, hit twenty-seven home runs. I could’ve been a thirty-thirty man—thirty home runs, thirty stolen bases—if I hadn’t missed that first month of the season. Back then, that was something that only three men in baseball history had ever done.

  At the time, numbers like that weren’t emphasized as important. So you didn’t take the chance of getting injured to pad your stats. I remember on two occasions meeting Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays in 1988, when José Canseco became the first “forty-forty” man. Both Mickey and Willie said, “Gee, if I’d ever known it was such a big deal, I’d have done a fifty-fifty season.”

  We came in second, but you knew we were going to get better. I loved playing for Hank Peters, loved playing for Earl Weaver, the Orioles’ manager. Weaver told his front office, “If you sign him, we can win pennants.”

  He was right, too. The next year, Eddie Murray came up to the big leagues with Baltimore. A few years later, Cal Ripken came up, and they were already a contender. They always had good pitching. They had Jim Palmer still, and Mike Flanagan, and Denny Martinez. They would pick up Steve Stone a couple years later, and Scott McGregor and Tippy Martinez came over from the Yankees in 1976—all those arms. That gave you a Hall of Famer for your number one pitcher, in Palmer, and four other number two pitchers behind him, with Flanagan and Denny Martinez probably being number ones on most other teams.