A seminal moment in my life occurred when I was about six years old. As we were walking back to our vehicle in the stifling summer heat after attending a Yankees game in the Bronx, a man asked through the barred windows of the Bronx House of Detention: “What happened in the Yankee game tonight?” And then, for me, the as-important question: “How did Reggie do?”
It is difficult, even to this day, to overstate the importance of this precise moment on my young consciousness. Yes, before you ask, the window had bars but no glass, and the people on different floors could speak or call down to those on the street. What can I say? It was a different time.
I was, in my older brothers’ footsteps, a Yankees fan, and my favorite player was #44, Reginald Martinez Jackson, the brash, some would say arrogant, power hitter who hit fourth in the lineup and who came to the Yankees in 1977, stirred the drink, stirred up a lot of shit and, oh, just so happened to hit home runs on three consecutive pitches to help bring the Yankees back to prominence and glory with a World Series victory in 1977, and another in 1978. He had a candy bar named after him. He was, after Curt Flood courageously helped open up the floodgates to Major League Baseball free agency several years earlier, the most publicized and handsomely compensated of the new free agents in a brand new sports landscape.
But, to be clear: I was young and I didn’t know about any of this stuff. I just knew Reggie hit the long ball. He was Black and proud. (I didn’t know what this meant, necessarily, but I definitely was aware of it on some level.) And, most importantly, he was BAD-ASS.
I caught plenty of grief from my much older, racist cousins, be they Yankees or Mets fans, about who my favorite player was. My much-older cousin, a Yankees fan, roasted me for several years about my love of Reggie (this same cousin basically terrorized me by telling me that spitting was a criminal act, and tried to invoke the fear of God in me every time a cop drove by as he said they were looking for me ‘because you spit that one time’).
But on this night, circa 1980, I found a kindred spirit in the man who inquired about Reggie’s exploits from behind bars. I had no idea why he was locked up that night, or for how long. But I knew that his freedom was circumscribed and mine was not, and that he and I shared a deep appreciation for the home run hitting prowess, the swashbuckling baseball romance, the bad-assery of Reggie Jackson. It is the type of moment that can ruminate in the brain of a child and help make him question everything, if not all at once, then eventually.
A few years after that night, after Reggie had left the Yankees and the drama and the histrionics of their owner, George Steinbrenner, for the California Angels (again as a free agent!), Reggie penned an autobiography, titled Reggie, and someone gave it to me as a gift for a birthday or Christmas. I was nine or ten years old at that point and I ate up every word of the book, reading it several times. I haven’t read the book in nearly 40 years, and I can still remember the chapter titles and extended passages from it.
One section stood out, because it told me about more than just what a great and clutch baseball player Reggie was, but about how courageous he was, and also vulnerable. This was the section about the time he spent in the minor leagues of the then-Kansas City Athletics organization, playing for their farm team in Birmingham, Alabama. I remember a story he told about his team trying to get into a motel late at night and the attendant saying “I cain’t be lettin’ no nigras in heh.” Even though he was a supremely talented baseball player and an incredibly strong human being, in recalling this story Reggie expressed that he was scared traveling around Birmingham and elsewhere in the south in 1966 and ‘67. Reading these passages profoundly affected me.
On Thursday, June 20, Major League Baseball(MLB) had a special game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. The game was supposed to be a celebration of the Negro Leagues, which MLB has finally deigned to recognize in its statistical annals. As it happened, it also was a celebration of the life of Willie Mays, who had died at the age of 93 just two days earlier. Mays, a native son of Birmingham, played for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues before playing for the Giants of the National League after the major leagues had been integrated. For people who care about such things, there is a very strong argument that Mays is the greatest baseball player of all time.
I was watching the broadcast of the game at Rickwood Field, actually the pre-game ceremony, and I saw and heard baseball greats (and some cheats–if only those words rhymed!) such as Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter, David Ortiz and Barry Bonds. These relatively recent retirees were paying tribute to Willie Mays, and fumbling through attempts to honor the greats of the Negro Leagues, also.
Then, I was happy to learn that the Fox broadcast would be welcoming Reggie Jackson onto the set. Reggie, who started his career at the tail end of Willie’s, talked about how he looked up to Willie Mays, how he tried to emulate him, how every player, black or white, tried to be like the ‘Say Hey Kid.’ Then Alex Rodriguez asked Reggie about playing in Birmingham in the ‘60s. And the stories came pouring out of Reggie’s mouth, a mouth that many, including teammates, used to say was too big for its own good. The stories came out better than I remember them in the autobiography I read so long ago. He used language–and by that I mean the N-word–that Fox probably wasn’t anticipating and surely made their executives cringe. Twice he said something along the lines of, ‘‘and they said ‘the nigger can’t come in here’.”
I don’t think Reggie’s ever been afraid of rocking the boat, but it was as if, at age 78, he simply did not give a shit anymore. What, are you going to bleep me out, MLB on Fox, when you’re pretending to celebrate Juneteenth and Willie Mays and the Negro Leagues?
He was going to tell it like it was, like it is, and no one was going to stop him. It was funny, though. He’s 78, and though he still has the clear outlines of muscles on his arms, he looked considerably smaller than the other, more recently retired baseball players on the set. His voice was sort of high-pitched. He was almost shrunken. He didn’t look or sound like the barrel-chested athletic Adonis or hero that he used to be.
Yet the truth he spoke–and an important part of that truth was about the tremendous solidarity demonstrated by his white teammates on the A’s, such as Sal Bando, Dave Duncan, Rollie Fingers, and his manager, John McNamara–was more powerful than anything that Bonds or Jeter had to say about Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell “paving the way” for them to make millions. Reggie expressed being fearful, but also being full of rage for this treatment more than 50 years ago. He said his teammates helped save him from himself, because he was ready to try to beat these people’s asses. I felt like I was 9 years old again, or 6, and wearing a pinstriped jersey with the number 44 on my back.
And as I watched the end of the segment, I could hear the man ask through the barred window of the Bronx House of Detention, “How did Reggie do tonight?”
He did great. As good as in the ‘77 World Series. Actually, better.