Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (13 page)

After that, we played better. We got up maybe five or six games over .500. Going into May, we moved into first place for a little while. It was already obvious it was going to be a three-way race between us, the Red Sox, and the Orioles. We split a couple short series with the Sox, won a game in Fenway when Mickey Rivers made a great throw to the plate in the ninth and Munson just hunkered down and flipped Butch Hobson right over him in the collision at home plate.

We knew we could play with anybody. We all knew it. But we were still treading water. I don’t know how much it had to do with how we were playing, but there was a bad atmosphere around the club still. From how anxious Billy was, from all the fights in spring training. This was the feeling around the league. Even other teams could feel it.

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!

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.