Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (11 page)

I do wish, too, that I had been more forthcoming and better able to explain the double standard that I felt I saw here. It was
all
of our
responsibility to do something about it, and I blame myself as well for not finding a way to get across what I knew.

Part of the problem, I think, was that they didn’t want to hear it from me. I was always good for a quote, but they didn’t want to hear anything from me that didn’t fit in with some preconceived image.

I was raised to be honest; I was raised to be straightforward. I was too straightforward. You couldn’t be direct with the writers in New York. No one ever spoke their feelings—especially if they were black. It didn’t matter. You didn’t count. We were supposed to be glad we were allowed to play—period.

It was a touchy social time. It was 1977; there were very few black players who spoke out. Muhammad Ali. Henry Aaron, Kareem, Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, who said what they thought. Jim Brown spoke out, and he was considered a militant. You were labeled a clubhouse lawyer if you spoke up. You were a troublemaker. You were considered unappreciative if you had any comment that didn’t fit in with a “good ol’ boy” way of thinking.

Henry Aaron was not considered the social giant that he is now when he was breaking the record. He was a colored man who shouldn’t have been breaking a white man’s record. He was supposed to feel lucky to be here.

Your great black athletes at the time were considered “gifted athletes.” However, if a white athlete was a great athlete, he was “a general on the floor.” He was “a coach on the floor” or in the clubhouse. He was bright, analytical, and calculating. Rather than the black athlete just being physically talented. Thank goodness for Branch Rickey, Walter O’Malley, Red Auerbach, Vince Lombardi, Jerry Buss, Phil Jackson, and other white coaches, owners, and general managers in sports who were able to see beyond these stereotypes.

Nonetheless, it went on for a long time. Magic Johnson was just “gifted.” Jordan was “gifted.” It wasn’t that he had great leadership skills or great communication skills or a superior philosophy. He was just gifted.

That’s where we were, socially, as a nation at the time—that’s
where we still are, sometimes. So any comment from me about what I thought was right or wrong came off as “Yeah, who’s this colored kid, colored man, black man,” whatever you want to call it, “who is
he
to be making a comment about what is right or wrong?”

And so I became “arrogant” and “egotistical,” rather than “sensitive” or “bright” or anything that was complimentary. I was tooting my own horn or trying to sound smarter than I was.

If I ever took out my billfold and counted how much I had left in it, I was “flashy.” There was a company in New York that gave me a couple of fur coats—I didn’t even wear ’em. They gave them to me; I still have them in storage. But I was “flaunting a fur coat.” Joe Namath was “cool” when he had his.

I felt the connotation at the time was, “What’s this black guy doing with all this money? What’s this black guy doing in a fur coat?”

On anything that had to do with color, or a different viewpoint in the game of baseball, or a different view about society—if a black person spoke out and said something truthful, he was either a loudmouth or trying to cause trouble. It always had to be about “Here’s a black man speaking.” It was always, “Where’s he going with that? He should just be glad to be here.”

I was just supposed to shut up and play ball. When you were born in this country in that era, you were black first, a boy or a girl second.

The frustrations I had came from the things I saw happening in the clubhouse, the things I saw happening in the game of baseball at the time. They were legitimate frustrations. I saw all this blatant prejudice in this city that was supposedly the great melting pot of the world. But it was always
my
problem—not anyone else’s problem, telling Jew jokes around the batting cage.

I had another disappointment. It was with many of the black players on the team who sided against me.

I had some friends on the team. Ken Holtzman. Catfish Hunter. Lou Piniella was always good; Ron Guidry was a great friend. Fran Healy became my best friend on the team when he came over from Kansas City. Mike Torrez. But Willie Randolph was the lone black
player who reached out to me. He was a good friend from the first day I was there.

The rest … I felt they were always supporting the other side. I couldn’t understand it. Mickey Rivers was always in the middle, Roy White and Oscar Gamble were somewhat friendly, but always managed to stay in the middle.

I looked for support. However, I never understood the fact that I didn’t get that support! Looking back, I would have tried to be more involved with them. “They aren’t giving, so I’m not giving,” was not the way to do it. I should have still given.

The Yankees at that time probably had more black players than they’ve ever had, before or since. There were other black sports stars in New York at the time, such as Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and Earl Monroe with those great Knicks teams of the era. But I was the first black baseball star in New York who spoke out since Jackie Robinson.

Still, most of the black players on our team did not support me, and that hurt. I must make a note here. How many of us have been in situations where we’ve heard something that was a negative comment, that was contemptuous or even racist, and didn’t say anything? We’ve all been there. We’ve all said to ourselves, “Why didn’t I say something?” Even then, things were volatile, and most of us stayed away from a confrontation.

I don’t know if it was about the money, or them resenting me because they won the year before, or if it was about Billy. Certainly, he did enough to make guys take sides. To test me. To push me to my limit.

That whole spring, he kept putting me in the lineup anywhere from second to sixth. That is, anywhere but fourth. It was prestigious to hit cleanup for the New York Yankees. Almost my whole career, I came to the park knowing I was going to hit fourth. That was where I hit as one of the premier power hitters in the game; that was where it made sense for me to hit. That was where Mr. Steinbrenner wanted me to hit. But Billy was out there telling the writers I struck out too much to hit cleanup, or whatever came to mind that day.

That whole spring, my left elbow, my throwing arm, hurt like crazy. When I reported to camp, it felt great, I was in great shape. Then the elbow. I’d never had arm soreness like that before; every time before
when I had some soreness, it was in my shoulder. At first I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t want it to be a problem. I kept my head down and kept playing.

But the elbow kept getting worse. It got so I couldn’t throw with it, and it bothered my swing. Late in the spring, I hit a ball off the end of the bat, and the pain shot right up my arm to my elbow. It hurt so bad I couldn’t even run; it just took my breath away. But I stayed in the game.

In fact, I was still in that same game in the bottom of the tenth inning, against the Cincinnati Reds. The tenth inning! In a spring training game—and I’m still in the game! As I think about it now, in 2013, I don’t believe I was in there. The score was tied, the ball gets hit out to me in right, on a hop, and they sent the runner from second. I couldn’t even make a throw. I just put the ball in my pocket and ran in.

That was made into a huge deal, that I didn’t make a throw and we lost the game. But I kept playing, pretty much every day. Play all nine innings, play ten innings. Even after I told them about the arm. In those days, they didn’t even take you to the hospital. They just iced it. Ice, ice, ice everything. And put you back out there. That would be unheard of today.

I didn’t get any relief until almost the end of spring training when Gene Monahan, the trainer, diagnosed it as tendinitis and gave me a cortisone shot. After that, it got better. But they kept playing me the whole time. I thought it was that they wanted me on the field, to draw the fans. That’s what I thought—“Play that old horse,” you know?

Late in the spring, Phil Pepe, one of the writers, asked me about it. He said, “What’re you doing, playing every day? What’s the purpose?” And I told him, “Don’t ask me, I don’t know what he’s trying to prove”—talking about Martin.

So he goes back and tells that to Billy, and Martin curses me out to Pepe and says I asked to play. He says I told him at the start of spring training I liked to play a lot of innings to get in shape.

I don’t know where that came from. I didn’t say it. I never told him that.

I was one of the few ballplayers at the time who worked out all year. I would lift weights, work out on those old Nautilus machines we had. I was into maintaining a proper diet, the way guys do today. Most
guys didn’t really start showing up in shape until the 1980s. It was only then that they started paying attention to what they ate, understood diet better, because they could see how that would help. Some started having their food prepared for them.

Then the teams got into it. The Yankees were one of the first teams to be concerned about their diet inside the clubhouse, started eliminating the candy, sugar, and the ice cream. The alcohol went away soon thereafter. Now the Yankees even have a chef, and our front office promotes a better, more healthy environment.

But when I was coming up, there was nothing like that. Spring training was usually where you got yourself in shape. There were a few guys, men like Willie Mays, who would just come to camp with great bodies. (Mays always took care of himself, never drank or smoked.)

In the off-season, I would run Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland three or four days a week; a little over three miles around. I’d run it once around, until the last week before spring training, when I’d run it twice. I did sprints there as well. I truly enjoyed it. I was young, energetic. I came to camp in shape my entire career. I could have played a game a couple days after being in camp.

But whatever I told Billy, I didn’t tell him I wanted to keep playing until my arm fell off. I didn’t tell him I wanted to keep playing in the field and play all the innings when I couldn’t even make a throw. My first year there with the Yankees, I played every spring training game. I played every spring game all five years I was with the Yanks, until the last year, when I got hurt and missed a couple games.

The way things would go, it was easy to get paranoid. I mean, you never knew just what was going on beneath the surface. Was Billy putting me out there hurt to show me up? Did he just misunderstand? Was he lying to Pepe because it was really the front office who told him to put me out there and Billy didn’t want it to seem like he wasn’t in charge? What?

I thought, I’m playing hard for you, why don’t you like me?

The wheels just went round and round. And nothing ever stayed in the clubhouse. It always leaked to the media in some way.

When I think back on that time, that’s what went on in my head. Now I understand that it was Billy showing me he was the boss—and showing me up.

Back in Oakland, in Baltimore, I never paid attention to the media and what they might do. I never worried about remembering what I said or didn’t say. Trying to outwit someone. I just tried to speak the truth and be honest.

But in New York, people went to the press with everything. Billy told us to stop talking to the media. Then, just before Opening Day, he holds a team meeting, and afterward he goes and tells a writer, Milt Richman, that I said in my twelve years in baseball, it was the best meeting I—Reggie—had ever been in. What was that?

Nothing was ever confidential. You had to learn to speak in riddles. You had to tell the press something. But the truth? Let’s see, the whole truth? The partial truth? Some of the truth? This was a crazy movie.

I had to just let it go. You can’t get into a contest of wits with the media. Just tell the truth, let the chips fall. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to worry about remembering anything.

I couldn’t take it any further than that, because after a while it just became decay. There was no upside to it. You harbor resentments and you get miserable, and where are you going to go with what’s eating you?

You feel that. And you don’t let it penetrate. You don’t let it get to you. All the racism, the anti-Semitism that was around then, I didn’t really want to get involved in that. But how does anyone stay away from that. All the stories about what I said to Martin, or Thurman, or whoever … it just kept going on and on.

I never put myself in the class of a Mantle, an Aaron, a Mays, a Clemente—any of the greats. But I hit cleanup for a world championship team for three years in Oakland. And it was too hard to do what I was doing—to try to drive in runs, try to help win a game, try to hit the ball out of the park—it was too hard to do that and care or worry about whatever kind of nonsense was going on or to try to discern the truth. I couldn’t understand why people spent so much time on the negatives. Lies, stories, trying to one-up people all the time …

I know I was very religious that year. I first became a Christian in 1974 with Oakland. I didn’t live like it yet. But I accepted Christ as my Savior, through our chapel service, in Oakland.

Being a Christian is not easy; it’s hard work. But the benefits are remarkable.

Baseball still has a great chapel service going on every Sunday, in every ballpark, home and on the road. There are two services, one in Spanish and one in English, and I enjoy going to both. I’ve enjoyed playing with and watching so many other players, like Sal Bando and Joe Rudi, men like Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Dave Robertson, Mark Teixeira, and many more—a long list of great people—walk the walk, with Christ. The Yanks have great attendance every service.

I don’t think ballplayers are more religious than other people. With some of the teams I’ve been with, there is a lot of participation in chapel. With the Yankees, it was as much as 50 percent. Oppression and difficulty in life bring you closer to God. The church gives you something to hold on to when you have nothing. It gives you a closer attachment with God. That has been my experience with people of color.