Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (26 page)

And I was there. I was settling into that groove.

Game 4 of the World Series, I led off the second inning and hit a low line drive to left for a double off Doug Rau. Just stayed with the ball, hit down the left-field foul line. Piniella drove me in with a single, Chambliss had a double, and Bucky hit a single. We were up 3–0 real quick again.

Ron Guidry pitched another beautiful game. He gave up a two-run homer to Davey Lopes, but he was never in trouble, struck out seven, gave up four hits, and pitched a complete game.

Sixth inning, I took Rick Rhoden, who was pitching by then, deep to left-center. A good sign. This meant I was staying behind the ball. Drove it out there for my first World Series home run as a Yankee. Top of the ninth, I hit another ball to the same area, almost as deep. It was caught, but I had it now. I had dynamite in the barrel.

It was around this time that Thurman Munson started calling me Mr. October. It was after the second game of the Series, and he was sticking up for Martin against me. He told the media, “Billy probably just doesn’t realize Reggie is Mr. October.”

Thurman had called me that back in Detroit. He meant it sarcastically. He was referring to the nickname I first got when Joe Garagiola called me “the autumn child, Reggie Jackson,” during the 1973 postseason. Earl Weaver called me that down the stretch in 1976, but Earl meant it for real. He said I was a terror down the stretch. I’d already had some pretty good postseasons. But I was just getting warmed up.

Game 5 of the World Series, Billy pitched Gullett again, but this time his arm really was done. We were down 5–0 before Martin pulled him in the fifth inning.

Don tried to come back the next year, but he broke down early again and was out of baseball by the end of that season. Funny thing, of all the pitchers Billy and Art Fowler handled in those years, so many of them—Catfish, Kenny Holtzman, Don Gullett, Ed Figueroa—were done by the time they left; they never had another good year again. Guys like Mike Torrez, Sparky Lyle, Dick Tidrow, they were only shadows of their former selves. Hmm …

Just like with Dave Boswell, when he pitched for Billy in Minnesota. Or Joe Coleman when he pitched for Billy in Detroit, or Fergie Jenkins after he pitched for Billy in Texas, or all those young arms—Mike Norris, Matt Keough, Rick Langford, Steve McCatty, Brian Kingman—he ruined out in Oakland. They combined to throw the most complete games of any staff in almost thirty-five years—and then they were all done.

Maybe somebody should’ve said something to him a long time before. I said something—and got forced to read an apology for the cameras.

By the seventh inning, we were down 10–0, but I was just getting untracked in Dodger Stadium. I hit a single and scored that inning, then in the eighth I hit a long home run down the right-field line off Don Sutton. Matter of fact, Thurman and I hit back-to-back home runs that inning.

I remember Sutton was friends with Munson, and when Thurman hit his ball out, Don was joking with him all the way around the bases. He talked to the media about that—but of course Sutton also needed to get in that he didn’t approve of my home run.

He said, “I didn’t like it when Jackson followed with his home run. I object to guys who trot the bases like they had saved the world from utter chaos.”

Thing was, Don Sutton didn’t live in my world. My world
was
utter chaos.

I didn’t know what to say to that. How was I supposed to run around the bases? With my head down? If Sutton had pitched the next Tuesday, he could’ve been part of history.

We had to fly back to New York for Game 6 of the Series, but that was all right. It gave the media another day to drum up more stuff.

First,
Time
magazine came out that Monday, our off day, with a big story. It was all about that episode with Lou and Thurman going up
to Steinbrenner’s suite and having to hide in the bathroom. Though, of course, it had to involve me, too—some quote from an unnamed source saying I wouldn’t play another year for Martin.

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.

M
Y 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.