Three Swings
Most people forget that Reggie Jackson went to Baltimore when he left the A's. In 1976, while second-year Yanks' manager Billy Martin was leading the Bombers to their first World Series in 14 years, Reggie was playing out the string of his contract in Baltimore, traded there with Ken Holtzman for a package that included Mike Torrez and the young Don Baylor. He had a strong season, very Reggie-like - the Orioles didn't get his best baseball by any means, but they had nothing to complain about. Reggie made sure that his year in baseball exile did not dampen his market value one iota. He was granted free agency on November 1, 1976. Before the month was over, he was a Yankee. It was on.
The saga of Reggie and the Yanks in '77 is really one of the great sports stories of our time, and has prompted a glut of starry-eyed, head-shaking reminiscences, the most heavily publicized of which was ESPN's mediocre mini-series, The Bronx Is Burning, based on the Jonathan Mahler book of the same name (ESPN Classic will re-run the entire series today starting at 4 p.m. - for I-berg's review click here and for Large's review of the book click here).
The story would be great no matter what had become of the '77 Yanks, but it's the fact that amidst all of the carnage they still managed to win the World Series, and it's the way that they won it that elevates the saga into the Homeric (and, yes, homer-ic) zone of sagas. And the climactic moment came on this day thirty years ago, Yankees/Dodgers, Game 6 of the World Series, when Reggie Jackson put on what is still without question the greatest display of hitting the Fall Classic has ever known.
In his first-at-bat of the night, leading off the top of the second, Reggie took a walk from L.A. starter Burt Hooton (oh how Little Large HATED Burt Hooton). He soon came home on a Chris Chambliss two-run shot to right that tied the score at two.
His second at-bat also was against Hooton, and this time ole snarky-faced Burt thought he could get away with grooving a fastball on the first pitch to steal that all-important strike one. Reggie promptly sent that shit to the seats in right, a two-run shot that put the Bombers up 4-3 and sent Hooton to the showers.
Reggie would retire Hooton's replacement, Elias Sosa, with the same tactics in the very next inning, launching a rocket to right off Sosa's first-pitch fastball that just cleared the fence. Yanks were now up 7-3. The Stadium was rocking - the barbarians were at the gate. The smell of bad weed and burning flesh abounded in the bleachers. Shit was like Apocalypse Now out there. I remember meeting this guy at Mona's in like, '94, who had been in the bleachers that night, and he was one of those wild-eyed New York pub-crawling maniacs who you just know does not sleep indoors on a regular basis and who does not think that is a very big deal. He was missing teeth and chain-smoking Pall Malls and he smelled like dried urine. I imagine he was standard issue in the Yankee Stadium bleachers that night.
Even if Reggie's run had stopped right there, it would have been enough for immortality. Of course it didn't stop there. The fact that he even got another pitch in the remote territory of the strike zone that night is a head-scratcher until you remember that his third victim was knuckle-baller Charlie Hough. As Tim Wakefield has given us all ample opportunity to observe of late, that knuckleball either knuckles or it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the wolves feed lustily. In the bottom of the eighth, Reggie led off, Hough gave him one of those knuckleballs that does more hanging than knuckling, and, well, you know. Center field, something like 477 feet. Freakin bedlam.
I-berg claims that he could have gone to this game but his pops wouldn't let him go. By my calculation, the I was four in 1977, so that was probably some sound fathering from Big Steve. I'm sure he will log in a bit later with the rest of this story. If you have a hankering today to see game 6 in full, you can check it out on Classic at 2 p.m before the Bronx Is Burning marathon.
The saga of Reggie and the Yanks in '77 is really one of the great sports stories of our time, and has prompted a glut of starry-eyed, head-shaking reminiscences, the most heavily publicized of which was ESPN's mediocre mini-series, The Bronx Is Burning, based on the Jonathan Mahler book of the same name (ESPN Classic will re-run the entire series today starting at 4 p.m. - for I-berg's review click here and for Large's review of the book click here).
The story would be great no matter what had become of the '77 Yanks, but it's the fact that amidst all of the carnage they still managed to win the World Series, and it's the way that they won it that elevates the saga into the Homeric (and, yes, homer-ic) zone of sagas. And the climactic moment came on this day thirty years ago, Yankees/Dodgers, Game 6 of the World Series, when Reggie Jackson put on what is still without question the greatest display of hitting the Fall Classic has ever known.
In his first-at-bat of the night, leading off the top of the second, Reggie took a walk from L.A. starter Burt Hooton (oh how Little Large HATED Burt Hooton). He soon came home on a Chris Chambliss two-run shot to right that tied the score at two.
His second at-bat also was against Hooton, and this time ole snarky-faced Burt thought he could get away with grooving a fastball on the first pitch to steal that all-important strike one. Reggie promptly sent that shit to the seats in right, a two-run shot that put the Bombers up 4-3 and sent Hooton to the showers.Reggie would retire Hooton's replacement, Elias Sosa, with the same tactics in the very next inning, launching a rocket to right off Sosa's first-pitch fastball that just cleared the fence. Yanks were now up 7-3. The Stadium was rocking - the barbarians were at the gate. The smell of bad weed and burning flesh abounded in the bleachers. Shit was like Apocalypse Now out there. I remember meeting this guy at Mona's in like, '94, who had been in the bleachers that night, and he was one of those wild-eyed New York pub-crawling maniacs who you just know does not sleep indoors on a regular basis and who does not think that is a very big deal. He was missing teeth and chain-smoking Pall Malls and he smelled like dried urine. I imagine he was standard issue in the Yankee Stadium bleachers that night.
Even if Reggie's run had stopped right there, it would have been enough for immortality. Of course it didn't stop there. The fact that he even got another pitch in the remote territory of the strike zone that night is a head-scratcher until you remember that his third victim was knuckle-baller Charlie Hough. As Tim Wakefield has given us all ample opportunity to observe of late, that knuckleball either knuckles or it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the wolves feed lustily. In the bottom of the eighth, Reggie led off, Hough gave him one of those knuckleballs that does more hanging than knuckling, and, well, you know. Center field, something like 477 feet. Freakin bedlam.
I-berg claims that he could have gone to this game but his pops wouldn't let him go. By my calculation, the I was four in 1977, so that was probably some sound fathering from Big Steve. I'm sure he will log in a bit later with the rest of this story. If you have a hankering today to see game 6 in full, you can check it out on Classic at 2 p.m before the Bronx Is Burning marathon.
2 Comments:
I can't lay claim to going to any of Reggie's famous games. But I lived in Baltimore from 1975-1978. I went to a lot of Oriole games during this year, so I actually remember seeing Reggie playing at Memorial Stadium. I was more into Tippy Martinez or Al Bumbry.
Al Bumbry. Tippy Martinez. Ken Singleton. Lee May. I hate them motherfuckers. '83 Phils. Fucked me up yo.
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