Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Reg-gie...Reg-gie...Reg-gie !!!

With weather more suited for football than baseball, the 56,407 at Yankee Stadium assembled for World Series Game 6 were shivering in their seats on the night of October 18, 1977 as Reggie Jackson came to the plate in the 4th inning with the Yankees trailing the Dodgers 3-2...

Reggie who walked in his first at-bat on 4 straight pitches faced Burt Hooten with a runner at first base. Jackson didn't waste any time, swinging at the first pitch and lining a drive into the right field seats for a 4-3 lead that chased Hooten from the game. On Reggie's next at-bat in the 5th inning, this time facing Elias Sosa with a runner at first, one pitch, another home run in the right field seats to put the Yankees comfortably ahead of the Dodgers 7-2. With chants of "Reg-gie, Reg-gie, Reg-gie" filling the stands, Reggie Jackson was one home run away from baseball immortality. Knuckleballer Charlie Hough now pitching in the 8th. Hough floated a slow knuckler up to the plate and Reggie deposited it 450 feet away into the black seats in the bleachers in deep center field. Reggie became "Mr. October" with those 3 home runs, each hit on the first pitch offered...

The Yankees won Game 6, beating the Dodgers 8-4 and won the World Series 4 games to 2. But it was Reggie Jackson who was the big story of this fall classic as he accomplished the impossible, hitting 3 home runs in 1 game, 5 overall. No one, including the great Babe Ruth, ever achieved what Reggie did that night in the Bronx. 3 home runs in one game and 5 overall are World Series records...

To no one's surprise, Reggie Jackson was voted the Most Valuable Player in the 1977 World Series...

More October 18 Memories...

1954) WNBC Radio changes call letters to WRCA...

1957) Paul McCartney debuts with the Quarry Men in Liverpool...

1964) The Animals begin their first U.S. tour...

1968) The U.S. Olympic Committee suspends Tommie Smith and John Carlos for giving a black power salute as a protest during a victory ceremony in Mexico City...

1969) Rod Stewart joins Small Faces...

1969) The Jackson Five make their first TV appearance on ABC-TV's "Hollywood Palace"...

1969) The government bans artificial sweetners known as cyclamates because of evidence they cause cancer in laboratory rats...

1971) After 34 years, the final issue of "Look" magazine is published...

1974) A female companion throws a pot of boiling grits at Al Green and then commits suicide...

1975) Simon & Garfunkel reunite on 'Saturday Night Live'...

1976) Chicago tops the charts with "If You Leave Me Now". It's the group's 11th top 10 hit but their first #1 hit...

1977) Reggie Jackson makes World Series history (feature story)...

Happy Birthday To...

1921) Jesse Helms...

1926) Chuck Berry...

1928) Keith Jackson...

1933) Peter Boyle...

1939) Mike Ditka...

1956) Martina Navratilova...

1958) Thomas "Hitman" Hearns...

Commentary...

My first personal Reggie Jackson memory concerns my son Rob, a pre-teen at the time who sent one of Reggie's Topps baseball cards to his apartment in Manhattan hoping for an autograph. Months went by, no autograph, no valuable baseball card. Then one day it happened, Rob's self-addressed envelope was in the mailbox and yes you could tell there was something in it. Inside the envelope was the Topps card with Reggie's famous autograph...

Memory #2 is from the interview of Yogi Berra I did in the Yankee dugout prior to a game in 1980. The interview was for a Watermark "Soundtrack of the Sixties" show. Former Yankee batboy and friend Joe D'Ambrosio set that interview up for me, thank you Joe. When I got through with the interview, I asked Reggie if I could ask him a few questions, which he declined to do. Reggie didn't want to be an afterthought and asked me why I didn't ask him earlier. Reggie was quite the showman that day. Reggie doesn't really carry on conversations, he holds audiences. He was explaining to any Yankee who would listen, why he used a black bat instead of a white one. The explanation centered around being harder for position players to see a white ball against a black bat after it comes off the bat. It didn't make sense to me or probably to the assembled Yankees but it did make sense to Reggie and who could argue with the player who on the night of October 18, 1977 became "Mr. October" forever ???