Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (31 page)

On Opening Day at the Stadium, we came off the road just 1–4, but it was one big celebration. They had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris on hand to put up the world championship banner—first World Series title the Yankees had won since they were both in their prime, back in 1962.

Roger was there to throw out the first pitch. Both Mickey and Roger were always great to me. I remember Roger Maris came over to me when I was having a tough time once, laid a hand on my shoulder, and said, “Don’t worry about it, Reg. You’re all right. You’re a great player. You’ll come through the mess.”

Just a very personal, confident conversation. I needed to hear that kind of stuff. Roger knew what he was talking about. He was a great player who got booed the year he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, just because some fans thought he didn’t deserve to set the record. Now he’d come through it, and on Opening Day he got a huge hand. I could relate to what he was saying, to how hard it is to live up to the expectations some people might have for you.

Mantle was the same way. He was someone else who had been booed at Yankee Stadium just because people decided he wasn’t what they thought he could be. Mickey was a Hall of Famer who won three MVP awards and led his team to twelve pennants and seven World Series titles, but some people felt he hadn’t lived up to his potential. Yet these were two guys who were so gentlemanly. They were just good people, and all the stories you ever heard about their generosity were true. They appreciated the opportunity to play alongside each other and for a great franchise.

Everyone gets this chance at being booed in New York. You just need to play there. Save for Mariano the Great.

You know, for all the talk from people like Martin and some of the press about how I wasn’t “a real Yankee,” I always found the old Yankees from Billy’s time very friendly, very welcoming. They couldn’t have been more appreciative of my play. There was no feeling of “You’re a hot dog or a showman.”

I’ve got pictures hanging in my home of Joe D., with this inscription: “We’re all so proud of what you did with the Yankees.” Mickey Mantle would come and take me out to dinner—he came to my Hall of Fame dinner in 1993. I’ll never forget the friendly blue eyes of Bobby Richardson. The welcome from Whitey, Yogi, Elston, Moose Skowron.

Through it all, I was still a fan. Still am to this day. I feel lucky to have been part of Yankees history. To have left a mark at the old Yankee Stadium. To have a plaque in Monument Park and my number still hanging on the wall, with all the other retired numbers. To have worked there and been able to watch, up close and personal, the greatness of the team from 1993 to this day. To have seen those Joe Torre and Joe Girardi teams, Posada, Pettitte. I saw Derek Jeter’s first game in the big leagues, and I’ll see his last. And to see maybe the greatest clutch performer in the history of sports, watching the great Mariano. I still get excited, ’cause I’m still a fan.

It’s all fun, and all done with arguably the most recognizable franchise in history. That old, eccentric friend of mine, Gary Walker, was right after all about coming to New York.

When I was still playing in Baltimore in 1976, I said, “If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.” I said it as a joke. That same year, I was in Milwaukee, and I said, “I can’t come here. There are only two newspapers, and I don’t drink.” All in the spirit of fun.

When I went to New York, all summer Matt Merola kept calling every candy company he knew, asking, “Do you want to do a Reggie bar?” He called every company, and the last one he called was Standard Brands—and they took the bait! I got $250,000 a year for five years and a furnished apartment at Seventy-ninth and Fifth.

The Reggie! bar was a little less than two ounces of chocolate, peanuts, and caramel, I think. A little square in an orange wrapping, with a picture of me swinging a bat on top. A bargain at just twenty-five cents.

Opening Day 1978, Standard Brands hired a bunch of models and
stewardesses to pass out seventy-two thousand bars to everyone coming to the game. Seventy-two thousand. We had about forty-five thousand people in the stands that day, so I guess some people got two.

After all the ceremonies, and Roger and Mickey raising the world championship banner, I came up to bat in the first inning with Mickey Rivers on second and Willie Randolph on first. Wilbur Wood was pitching for the White Sox. He was a very good pitcher but another knuckleballer, which was trouble for the White Sox. I took the first two pitches for balls, then hit the next one deep into the stands in right-center over the 408-foot sign. That put us up, 3–0—and counting the World Series from the year before, that made four consecutive swings at Yankee Stadium, four home runs. Nice.

I wasn’t thinking much about that, though. I was just doing my job, rounding the bases—when all of a sudden I saw these little orange squares start to come out of the stands.

They said there was just one at first. It came out of the stands and landed near home plate. Then another, and another. Reggie! bars. You could really wing those things, the way they were packed into those tight little squares. More started to rain down, until, as Sparky Lyle put it, the fans realized “the beauty of the act.”

Then it was a shower. A deluge. Little orange squares raining down all over the field before I could finish running around the bases. Thousands and thousands of Reggie! bars, fluttering down onto the field. Kids jumping down to help the grounds crew clean it up, stuffing the bars in their pockets.

I didn’t know what was going on. I was worried. I thought they didn’t like ’em.

Really, I was nervous. I didn’t know it was a tribute. I didn’t understand it at the time. I think the media did, and the PR people from Standard Brands. Afterward, it was in the news all over the nation. It was a tremendous coup. Standard Brands called me and told me how happy they were, what a success it was.

I didn’t know. I was just glad I hit the ball out, glad we hung on and won the game. Afterward, the White Sox seemed pretty angry about it. I think they felt it showed them up.

I just told the press, “I figured they’d be coming out on the
field”—which I admit wasn’t true. Who could figure that? It never happened before. “I just appreciated it. It was a nice gesture,” I said, which
was
true, although not an opinion widely shared.

“It was just a shame that something like that has to happen,” Wilbur Wood said after the game. Bob Lemon, who was managing Chicago, said, “They should advertise it as the candy bar made to throw.” He was pretty upset, saying, “It’s not called for,” and claiming somebody could have got hurt.

“Let them throw them when he’s in right field, see how he feels,” he told the writers. “People starving all over the world and thirty billion calories are lying on the field.”

Until then, I had no idea we could solve world hunger with Reggie! bars. Even Catfish got on that, saying, “The people must have a lot of money here, to throw away all that food.”

Catfish was just poking me, like a lot of guys. He had, I think, the best line about the candy bar: “The Reggie! bar. It’s the candy bar that when you unwrap it, it tells you how good it is.”

That’s pretty good, I thought.

Yogi Berra said, “They wouldn’t be throwing Yoo-hoo like that,” which was also a pretty good line. Lou Piniella was waiting in the on-deck circle while they cleaned up all the bars. He picked up a couple and tried to hit them. Afterward, he told the press, “Hitting a Reggie! bar is very difficult. The flat bottom side makes it tough, and even if you’d meet one square, I don’t think you’d drive it very far.”

That was pretty funny, too. In fact, the whole thing was pretty danged funny. And, you know—really cool.

I never minded guys making fun of me like that. I always appreciated that line I think Darold Knowles had about me, back in Oakland: “They call Reggie a hot dog. There’s not enough mustard in the whole world to cover that.”

I could always take that sort of ribbing. That’s one of the great things about playing major-league baseball, spending so much time with guys who could tease you like that, guys you got close to and who soon became family.

I could understand the White Sox being sore. They’d never seen anything like it. I’d never seen anything like it.

But when you thought about it, it was kind of fun … Like something out of, I don’t know, a bullfight, more than baseball.

Isn’t that why people come to the ballpark, to see something they’ve never seen before? There were a lot of new things going in baseball just then. Players having a little power, getting to play where they wanted to play. People changing teams, owners taking risks … and some great ball being played.

Wasn’t it a pretty good time? Weren’t we all having fun?

T
HE REALITY IS
teams that win have fun. Teams that don’t … don’t.

We were playing pretty well once Goose got straightened out like we knew he would. Just like the year before, we turned it around. Near the end of May, I remember, Andy Messersmith and Rawly Eastwick combined to pitch a one-hitter against the Indians, and we won, 2–0. We were 29–15 after that and playing well. Messersmith hadn’t allowed an earned run yet; Eastwick had a 1.56 ERA.

Billy wasn’t happy with it. He wasn’t happy those two guys were on the team. He used to call them “George’s guys” all the time. The fact that they were doing well didn’t matter. It was the same thing with me from the year before: He hadn’t been consulted about signing them, and as a result he didn’t want them. It seemed he had to find something to chew on.

Then we started to lose again, and that brought on stress. Billy didn’t do stress.

Unlike the year before, the reason we went on the slide again was pretty evident. Our pitching broke down. It quickly became clear that Catfish still wasn’t right. He said his arm felt better, but he was diagnosed with diabetes, and he still struggled. He just wasn’t himself and went on the disabled list.

Andy Messersmith had that good game for us, but he’d separated his shoulder in spring training that year, and he was never the same. He went on the DL as well and never pitched for us again. Don Gullett’s arm hurt so bad he had had two cortisone shots by June. After that, he just tried to gut it out and pitch through the pain. He won
his first four decisions. Then he lost two games, went on the DL, and never pitched for us again. Never pitched for
anybody
again. That was it, his career done at twenty-seven.

Dick Tidrow tried to pick up the slack the way he had the year before when Billy put him in the rotation, but he jammed his thumb. We still had Kenny Holtzman, and he had a couple good starts early. But he was still in Billy’s doghouse. Billy wanted to put him on the disabled list, too, but Kenny said loud and long there was nothing wrong with him, so Billy just kept him on the bench until he could trade him. Kenny just needed to pitch.

That was embarrassing for the whole organization, but nothing was done about it. It wasn’t just me. Roger Kahn had the guts to write about it in the paper. Graig Nettles said right out about Kenny: “It must be something that’s not happening on the field. Because he should be pitching.”

As the season went on, the rest of us started to get dinged up, too. Willie Randolph tore up the cartilage in his right knee. He played through it pretty well, stole thirty-six bases, but he missed twenty-eight games that year. Bucky Dent had a bad hammy all season; he missed thirty-nine games and had to go down and rehab in Florida.

And Thurman was finally wearing down. He’d caught more than a thousand big-league games by then, which is a lot for any man. His right knee was very painful all year. He couldn’t hit for as much power; his arm was bothering him. Even so, he made adjustments and played through it. He still threw out almost half the guys who tried to run on him, even though he had to throw the ball to second almost sidearm. Still only missed eight games. It wasn’t his best season, but it might have been his gutsiest, and he set an example for all of us.

What we missed most of all, though, was Mickey Rivers. He’d been such a catalyst for us the year before, getting us everything we needed, when we needed it—a stolen base, a home run, whatever. But in the first part of 1978 he was just
absent
a lot—for whatever reason, we were never sure. I know his hammies were bothering him some, his
legs were achy. He had a hand fracture as well. But it seemed to be more than that.

Mick was always hard to figure out. He would kind of go on these little sit-down strikes when he thought he wasn’t being treated right or when he needed an advance on his salary. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t.

He had a great outlook on life most of the time. He used to say something like, “I don’t worry about the things I can’t do anything about, because I can’t do anything about them. And I don’t worry about the things I can do something about, because I can do something about them.”

That’s almost Zen—or Yogi. When you think about it, that’s sort of beautiful. That was Mickey to a T. That’s the way he lived his life.

I thought most of the players made fun of Mickey. They made out like they were laughing with him, but really I thought they were laughing at him. He had some problems with betting on the horses, some problems with a few different wives.

At one point, I believe he was married to two or three women at the same time. Down in Florida, he used to go by the Latino version of his name, Miguel Rivera, and he married a woman I think under that name while he had a wife in New Jersey.

She caught up to him finally. He was sitting in the parking lot in Yankee Stadium before a game with his Florida wife, in his Cadillac Coupe de Ville. His other wife came driving up in his other car, a Mercedes 450 SL, and she ran it right into him. Then she backed it up and ran it into his Caddy again. And again, and again, and again. Put it in drive, back to reverse. In drive, back to reverse, in drive, back to reverse. Incredible … I was parking my car at the same time, and it was painful to watch. Funny at the same time.