Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  There was so much inner strife on the team, with the situation with myself, with Billy pinch-hitting for Bucky Dent all the time. Other players were grumbling, and cliques were forming. We did not have a good social atmosphere.

  I still didn’t realize how much it was going to be about the money. Late April, we went down to Baltimore for the first time, and there was a really bad reaction from the fans. Throwing darts at me out in right field, throwing containers of ice cream, anything else they could find.

  They even hanged me in effigy out in right field, which has some racial overtones when you’re talking about a black ballplayer playing below the Mason-Dixon Line. Who would let fans do something like that today? No way. It was tasteless, beyond anything that was called for.

  The fans didn’t get to hear that I offered to stay in Baltimore for about half the money the Yankees offered me. You know, I had played there all of five months. It wasn’t like I came up through their system and played for the Orioles for years and now they were heartbroken I was gone. They acquired me knowing I could be a free agent, knowing they could lose me. But somehow, I had done something wrong to them.

  I was a black man, but I didn’t do what or go where I was told. I included my own desires in what I wanted to do. I went against the grain at the time and wound up the highest-paid player in the game. That was unacceptable.

  I hadn’t gone to New York for the money. I turned down a bigger offer from Montreal, from San Diego. I never even had a conversation with the Dodgers about their offer. The Orioles turned down my offer. It’s a little like LeBron James today. He turned down more money to play with his friends. What was wrong with that?

  LeBron has been a model citizen who has done nothing but enhance the brand of the NBA. He just moved on from the attacks. I think Tiger Woods was unfairly attacked. No doubt, he was 100 percent wrong. But the level of criticism he got was beyond all proportion. His beat down, to me, was partially okay—but I think the continuance of it, and the unrelenting nature of it, had to do with the color of his skin.

  I think Tiger does have the chance to become as loved and admired as he’s ever been. That is one thing about this country: It can be very forgiving. The perfect example is Magic Johnson, who has become a noble presence, almost regal. I think the person I have the most respect for as a minority is Rachel Robinson, with the presence and the immense dignity with which she carries herself—for America.

  It’s possible for people like her, like Jackie Robinson, like Muhammad Ali, who were once looked down on, to become models of dignity for our country. Ali’s become someone all of America is proud of; he’s transcended color. He’s become a part of American folklore.

  The tragic part is that leading African American athletes, leading African Americans of all kinds, have to run these gauntlets of criticism. You see it with President Obama. Whenever it’s convenient for his critics, he has to endure unfair attacks. When you look at the shape the economy and the financial system were in, he inherited a waste pit. But as soon as he got in, it was all his fault: “Well, I told you. You give ’em something, and they don’t know what to do with it.” This is who we are.

  Meanwhile, Billy kept trying to show me up any way he could. He benched me against Milwaukee in one game when he told the press my arm was hurting too bad for me to play. He could’ve pinch-hit me on two at-bats in that game. We were down three runs, we got men on first and second in the eighth and ninth innings, but no pinch-hit appearance for me.

  Instead, he hit Jimmy Wynn, who was in a terrible slump, and then Fran Healy, who was the third-string catcher behind Thurman and Elrod Hendricks—and who, by the way, had a neck injury. They both made out, and we lost the game. Billy never even asked if I thought I could hit. Later, he told the press he was protecting me, because he was afraid I’d say I could hit even if I couldn’t. “Billy just didn’t want me to hurt myself.” What he really wanted was just to win without me!

  I didn’t say anything. I just told the media, “No comment.” I told them I accepted what Martin had to say.

  But it never stopped. A little later, we were up a run or two in the ninth, and he had Mickey Rivers try to steal third and get thrown out when I was at the plate. You don’t run somebody from second in that situation. But everything had to be a little demonstration that Billy was in charge, that he was going to play his kind of ball—and that he couldn’t count on me to come through.

  There were some teammates I had trouble with, too. Graig Nettles had a very witty sense of humor, but it often had a very negative slant to it. He always thought I said too much, was too full of myself. He was always saying things like, “With Reggie here, we don’t have to do interviews.” He liked to say, “The best thing about playing for the Yankees is you get to see Reggie Jackson play every day. The worst thing about playing for the Yankees is you get to see Reggie Jackson play every day.”

  You had to give it to him, though. He was witty. I didn’t like the quote, but it was a good one!

  There were some guys who just followed the manager’s lead in disliking me. I was disappointed that they didn’t think enough for themselves.

  Then there was a group of guys who were close to Thurman. He had a faction that supported him because he was a very likable guy, he was their leader and our captain, and he was the guy who had been there and done it all. At the same time, I think Thurman was very angry about his contract situation. I think he felt violated. I think he felt that George went back on his word not keeping him the highest-paid player on the team. I don’t think he got bitter, exactly, but I think he was hurt because he didn’t get the deferred money I got and because he thought George had given me a $63,000 Rolls-Royce.

  Most people thought I had too big an ego. Thought I wasn’t a team guy, thought I was a self-promoter.

  Nobody—nobody—really wanted to locker next to me. And I don’t mean just the group of guys who were close to Thurman. We must’ve had at least six, seven other guys who were black, and they didn’t want to locker near me, either.

  I had this little corner to myself, which was weird. The craziest thing, I found out later from Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse man who had been with the Yankees since 1927, was that the locker had been Lou Gehrig’s.

  I was honored by that—by chance, I later became the honorary chairman for the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, the group leading the fight against Lou Gehrig’s disease. But honored or not, I was on my own. The locker on one side of me was empty, and the locker on the other side was supposed to go to Ron Blomberg, but he tore up his knee and was out all year. After that, the next locker was Elrod Hendricks, but he was really more a coach than a player, and he wasn’t there most of the time. I was really alone.

  The one exception was Willie Randolph, who was at the very end of the row of lockers where I was. Thank goodness he was very friendly, or I would’ve been all alone there.

  The rest of them? They wanted me on the team, but I wasn’t a teammate.

  By the end of May, I was doing a little better with the guys, getting along with Thurman better. When you’re winning, a lot of things, including animosity, disappear in a clubhouse. If we could’ve just got a little streak going, I think it could’ve been all right. I thought it was maybe about to be all right.

  Then that Sport magazine piece came out. Oh, my goodness!

  9

  THE ARTICLE

  I NEVER WANTED to talk to Robert Ward. Absolutely not!

  I had enough going on in spring training as it was. I remember that I didn’t want to do the interview with him, but he hung around and hung around until I talked to him. He was a young guy, trying to do a piece for Sport magazine. I had compassion for him. He had a job to do, and I wanted to help. Oh, boy.

  I don’t know if he caught me on a good day or a bad day, an up day or a down day. But my whole time in New York really turned on that one interview, that one piece.

  And it never happened. At least not like he said it did.

 
Later, he turned it into part of a book: Reggie Jackson Wanted to Kill Me. I never read it. Last I heard it was remaindered at Walmart. Well, I never wanted to kill him. But I can’t say I feel bad his book got remaindered at Walmart.

  The way I remember it was Robert Ward finally got to interview me at a bar called the Banana Boat Lounge, in Fort Lauderdale, after a game that day. At the time, we still needed a shortstop. Our shortstop just then was Fred Stanley, and the team wanted to trade for another, so we were talking about that.

  I remember he kept trying to goad me into a quote. He kept saying, “Well, what do you like about this team?” Just seemed the conversation we were having wasn’t what he was after. Just regular conversation about the team, our chances, other teams in the division, and how we compared. What was different this year, our competition—Boston, Baltimore. Our change of a few players. “We got there last year, what is different this year …”

  That wasn’t his interest.

  And I said, “The team is all there. They got to the World Series, but they lost four in a row there, and so there was something missing. It looks like I could be one of the last ingredients. We still need a shortstop.” Or maybe, “I’ll have the chance to be the last ingredient that’s necessary for the mix.”

  At the time, I was sitting there stirring around a mai tai, or iced tea. And he comes up with the quote, he said something like “You would be the straw that stirs this drink,” or “You mean, you’d be like the straw that stirs the drink.”

  And I said, “Not really, more like the last ingredient.” And he said, “Well, it just seems like you’re here to stir it up and get things going, and help them, you know.”

  And I said, “Well, if that’s the way you want to say it. But I would think I’m hopefully going to be the final piece that’s necessary to win the championship. The ’76 Yanks have a couple more big pieces, Don Gullett and me.”

  The whole time, he was trying to feed me that quote, but I know I never said it. However, somehow when his piece came out in Sport, there it was, along with a whole lot of other crap. Page after page of it that he attributed to me: “You know, this team, it all flows from me … I’ve got to keep it all going. I’m the straw that stirs the drink. It all comes back to me. Maybe I should say me and Munson … but really, he doesn’t enter into it. He’s being so damned insecure about the whole thing.”

  And then later: “Munson thinks he can be the straw that stirs the drink, but he can only stir it bad.”

  No way.

  There’s no way I’d be that dumb, to knock the captain of the team—and, by the way, the guy who told George Steinbrenner to go get me on the free-agent market. I was Thurman’s recommendation, when Billy wanted Joe Rudi or Grich. It was Thurman who said, “Go get Reggie Jackson.” George told me that, and so had Thurman himself.

  Why would I knock him in an article for a major sports publication?

  To this day, I don’t know how Robert Ward got that out of what I said. I’d be interested to know if he had a tape recorder, or just a pad. I would love to hear that tape if he has one. Because I know I didn’t say anything like that.

  I’ve tried to get Ward to sit down with me and talk about it, but he won’t do it. I’ve heard he’s afraid of how I would react. I’d love to hear his version of that whole day at the Banana Boat.

  I didn’t think he had any malicious intent. But why would he put that out there? I don’t think he was there to hurt me. I wish I knew what he was doing. It came out so bad. It came off as negative, egotistical, because he wanted something to sound sensational. Obviously, it came off as a disparagement of the captain, Thurman Munson.

  It came out with a whole story around it, too. One that got repeated and repeated until everyone thought it was true. All about how while Robert Ward was interviewing me, Billy Martin came in with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, and they started playing backgammon and having a few.

  Ward wrote that I sent a round of drinks over to them, and he said that Whitey told the waitress he’d rather have the Superstars T-shirt I was wearing—from that TV show. According to what Ward wrote, I took it off and went over and gave it to Whitey right there, running bare-chested across the bar. And then Whitey laughed and gave me this sweater he was wearing in exchange, and I acted thrilled to have it. Ward had me “looking down lovingly” at a pink cashmere sweater.

  The way he wrote it, I went over and watched the three of them play backgammon and drink for a while, and they were supposedly laughing at me and kind of ignoring me. And then I went back to talk to Ward and started saying bad things about Thurman Munson, because I was that insecure or felt that insulted.

  It never happened. I don’t remember any of that happening, I don’t know where that came from. I draw a complete blank to that. Taking off my shirt and giving it to a superstar like Whitey Ford?

  I was never in there with Billy Martin.

  I was in that bar with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford maybe a few times. They liked to go there for casual drinks in the afternoon, and I did as well. They sat in their usual place, I sat in my place with my friends, and we did our own thing. They never said anything embarrassing to anybody, not just me. It just wasn’t in their makeup. Mickey and Whitey were about a good time, enjoying their friendship with each other. If I was a fellow Yankee, they rooted for me. No matter who I was, or what color I was, or how good or bad I was.

  They were a welcoming presence, all the time, to any- and everybody. Mickey and I became good friends. He was always friendly, and he came to my Hall of Fame party in New York in January 1993 at McMullen’s restaurant. Whitey to this day is always friendly and respectful and playful. True Yankee class.

  I was never in the Banana Boat with Billy Martin in there. There were rules. It’s one of the oldest rules: You don’t drink in the same place the manager drinks. If I’d seen Billy come in there, I would’ve left.

  In those days, I was a young kid who was half-crazy. I wasn’t hanging out with Billy Martin. Just wouldn’t do it. Whether we liked each other or not, he was still the manager.

  I traveled alone then. Almost all the time. I still enjoy traveling alone today.

  No, I don’t think of Robert Ward as a bad guy. But I sure would love to see what he thought about the article and how he heard our conversations.

  Things do happen with writers. So I can tell one and tell all: If you’re ever talking to a writer, make sure you’re reading what you’re saying as you’re saying it. Most writers will take the liberty of using their variation of what you’re saying. They only need to change one word …

  I think what Robert Ward did was to take the opportunity to make things sound the way he wanted them to sound, not as I said them. For me to say, “Thurman Munson can only stir it bad”? Anyone who knows me, knows I might say, “I’m the straw that stirs the drink”—which I did not say. But with all the ego I’ve got, or whatever I had then, I’m not going to come out and say, “Munson can only stir it bad.”

  I’m not that dumb. This guy just came off an MVP year. That’s not a statement that would make sense. If you look at my history to that time, I might say something flamboyant, I might say something egotistical, I might say something self-promoting. But I’m not going to say something stupid.

  I just don’t think Robert Ward knew that much about baseball or that much about me. One of the other things he wrote in that article was that I was envying the kind of relationship Billy and Mickey and Whitey had.

  Ward wrote, “Mantle, Ford, and Martin have a kind of loyalty and street-gang friendship that today’s transient players don’t have time to develop.”

  I don’t think he knew what he was talking about. Because players weren’t any more or less transient in my day than they were before. I played for years with all those guys on the A’s. We were close as family. If you want to describe any team as close as a street gang, that’s what the Oakland A’s were in the ’70s.

  That wasn’t these New York Yankees.

  I
had thought I was alone before that article came out. I found out what alone meant.

  I remember when that issue of Sport went on sale. The June 1977 issue: “Reggie Jackson in No-Man’s Land.” Came out in late May.

  The night it did, my teammates already had a few copies going around the locker room. They were just waiting for me to come into the clubhouse, to see what I was going to do or say.

  There I was at my locker, all by myself, and there were these little groups of players huddled around the magazine, staring over at me and muttering imprecations. I didn’t know what was going on. I hadn’t read the article. I didn’t pay any attention to it. It wasn’t until Fran Healy came over and said, “Read this.”

  And I started reading it, and I said to Healy, who was the go-between by then with me and the rest of the team, “Oh, my God. This is sickening. All of it. What am I going to do?”

  Fran said, “Reggie, I don’t know.” I told him I was misquoted. So he went to Thurman, because he was friends with both of us, and he told him, “Well, Reggie says he was misquoted.”

  And I have to say Thurman had the best quote I’ve ever heard. He said, “For three thousand f—in’ words?”

  I just laughed when I heard that. Bad as I felt, I had no comeback for that. That was a pretty good line.

  That night, I got dressed and got out on the field as quick as I could. I heard later that a few guys went by my locker first and made sure to give my shoes and my equipment bag a good kick. I don’t know, I didn’t see it. It couldn’t have happened with me there. But if it did happen, because I was lockering by myself in one corner of the clubhouse, they would have had to go out of their way to kick anything belonging to me.

  Nobody knew if I’d said what Ward had me saying in the article or not. Nobody asked me for my side of it. Nobody came over and asked me about it, except for Fran Healy. Thurman never came over.