Three Pitches: The Night Mr. October Was Born
I’m a lifelong, die-hard Yankees fan. When they’re up, I’m up, and when they’re down, I’m down too. During the baseball offseason, without the daily drama of a Yankees game, everything flattens out just a bit. There’s a void. That’s how much the Yanks and the game of baseball mean to me. For almost forty years both have sustained me, a lifetime of memories, our histories intertwined. Through heartbreak and triumph, through good and bad — my first true love, Yankees baseball.
In a sport and a franchise rich with history there’s one moment that I always come back to, especially this time of year. One single game that includes an individual accomplishment etched deep in my mind and firmly in the legacy of the most storied franchise in sports. To this day, 40 years later, it’s still hard to fathom. A supernatural quality to it because it just couldn’t be possible. I want to say it’s my earliest memory as a Yankees fan and the reason it’s stuck with me for so long, but I was only three years old and the game went well into the night. I couldn’t have been watching, and even if I was, would I have remembered at such an early age? But this single-game performance was so remarkable that it must have lingered with fans in late-70’s Brooklyn, been talked about long after, slowly drilled into my psyche as I turned four and five and six…
A game I do remember clearly is the final game of the 1981 World Series, when my beloved Yanks lost Game 6 and the series at home to the Dodgers — our big free-agent signing that offseason, Dave Winfield, went 1–22 in the Series and earned the unwelcome moniker “Mr. May”— and as I cried myself to sleep that night on the top bunk in our modest Brooklyn apartment, my mother told me it would be okay, “they will win next year.” She kissed me goodnight and “next year” would come 15 long years later in the 1996 Series, when the Derek Jeter-led Yanks came back from a 2–0 deficit to beat the Atlanta Braves in 6 games. I cried that night too, but those were different tears, tears of joy for love requited, finally. But as much as the image of Charlie Hayes clutching that final out in foul territory near third base will stay with me forever, there was a time and a place and a moment in Yankees history so great that anything held up against it pales in comparison.
Summer, 1977. New York was a city on the brink, in the midst of a fiscal crisis. Jonathan Mahler, author of The Bronx Is Burning, wrote “The clinical term for it, fiscal crisis, didn’t approach the raw reality. Spiritual crisis was more like it.”(1) David Berkowitz, aka the Son of Sam, murdered six people from 1976–77 before being apprehended in August of ’77. At the height of this wild (and hot) summer, and with a serial murderer on the loose, the city experienced a blackout. “The Blackout” in July of ’77 lasted 25 anxious hours. The mass looting that ensued remains the only civil disturbance in the history of the city to encompass all five boroughs simultaneously. There were 3,776 arrests. Put it all together and many believed New York City was in irreversible decline. By the end of the 1970s, nearly a million people had left, a population loss that would not be recouped for another twenty years.(2) In this precarious period in New York history, the city needed something to hold onto, to stay afloat in the rough tides. A sign of hope, even a glimmer. And it would find it where it often had, in one of the city’s most dangerous and impoverished sections, the South Bronx — the home of Yankee Stadium.
Front and center in the narrative that is New York’s Summer of ’77 were the Yankees. Red Smith of the New York Times called their tumultuous season “a summer-long soap opera,”(3) its leading actor the Yankees superstar slugger Reggie Jackson. Jackson signed with the Yanks before the ’77 season (by way of Baltimore, after a prolific tenure with the Oakland A’s) for a whopping 5 years, $3 million, the huge contract one of the first “big free agent” signings of its kind. Legend has it Jackson signed on a napkin only after the late George Steinbrenner agreed to throw in a Rolls Royce valued at $63,000, itself about $11,500 more than the average baseball salary in 1977.(4) You could imagine that kind of money (plus the car) did not endear Jackson to his new teammates, or his volatile manager, Billy Martin. His famous quote — “I’m the straw the stirs the drink” — given to Robert Ward in his June ’77 Sport magazine article (Reggie Jackson In No-Man’s-Land) — also did little to gain allies in the clubhouse. Jackson was Public Enemy №1 and his fractured relationship with Martin and teammates threatened to derail the championship hopes of a franchise built to win after a World Series loss the season before to the Cincinnati Reds. But a late surge — led by an embattled but torrid hitting Jackson — lifted the Yankees to the playoffs where they defeated the Royals in the ALCS, setting up a date with the Dodgers in the World Series.
The ‘77 World Series would be another opportunity for the Yankees (after losing in ’76) to end the 2nd longest World Championship drought in franchise history. They had last won in 1962, defeating the San Francisco Giants in 7 games. The longest drought in Yankees history spanned the period of 1903–1923, finally ending with the rise of Babe Ruth. (Years later my ’96 Yanks would take 2nd position from the ’77 Yanks, ending an 18-year WC drought, which spanned ’78-’96). In short, the Yanks and the city needed a win, bad. After splitting Games 1 and 2 at the Stadium, the series moved to Los Angeles where the Yankees took Games 3 and 4, giving them a commanding 3–1 series lead. After the Dodgers salvaged Game 5 at home, the series moved back to the Bronx for Game 6, setting the stage for one of the great individual game performances in baseball history — the one that still holds prime position in my baseball psyche.
Some more context going into Game 6. Things got so bad for Jackson during the ’77 season that he was quoted as saying, “I should’ve signed with the Padres. Or the Dodgers. I would have been happy there.”(5) The Padres?! The height of Jackson’s misery occurred in a June day game at Fenway Park, Jackson failing to hustle to retrieve a base hit, turning a Jim Rice single into a double. Martin subsequently yanked Jackson from right-field during a pitching change, sending Paul Blair out in his place, a rare sight in an American League game where the double-switch is almost non-existent. Jackson was rightfully pissed and when Martin returned to the dugout the two went at each other, having to be restrained by players and coaches. The ugly scene played out on national TV and symbolized the rift between manager and player, further painting Jackson in a negative light, a prima donna with a toxic ego. But this tempestuous personality also had immense talent — the double-edged sword that was Reggie Jackson was the greatest hope for the Yankees season.
Jackson knew in batting practice before Game 6 that it was going to be a special night. “I must have hit 35–40 balls into the right-field bleachers. When I got done with BP, I got a standing ovation. I knew I had it all working.”(6) As those who attended BP looked on in awe, including the Dodgers who were sitting along the third-base line, teammate Willie Randolph shouted at Jackson, “Hey, would you maybe save a little of that for the game.” Jackson nodded and said, “I’m feeling good. I mean, I’m feeling great.”(7) What Jackson was about to do that night was more than great. It was literally unbelievable. I still believe there’s a chance it actually didn’t happen. Believe half of what you see… A thousand years from now it will no doubt be treated as myth and nothing more. But it did happen (I think). And Jackson’s BP display was only a prelim of what was to come.
After a walk in his first plate appearance, after which he scored on a Chris Chambliss home run, Jackson stepped to the plate in the 4th inning with the Yankees trailing 3–2 and Thurman Munson on first base. On the mound for the Dodgers was Burt Hooton, and the scouting reports told Jackson the Dodgers were going to pitch him inside. The reports were right and Jackson jumped on the first pitch, an inside knuckle-curve that he sent soaring into the right-field bleachers, giving the Yankees a lead they would not relinquish. Jackson again stepped to the plate in the 5th, this time against hard-throwing right hander Elias Sosa. He too tried to bust Jackson inside, and again Jackson turned on it, lining this one just over the wall in right field, another two-run homer (Mickey Rivers was on base after a single) and the Yanks now had a 7–3 lead. Jackson had seen exactly two pitches from two different pitchers and deposited both into the stands. The Stadium was shaking. The rabid, salivating fans could taste their long-awaited title. Legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell was shouting over the loud Bronx crowd as Jackson rounded the bases. “Despite all of the clamor about his discontent with Billy Martin, his third home run of the series” (Jackson had homered in his last at-bat of Game 5).
But if you can believe it, Jackson wasn’t done. As he stepped to the plate in the 8th inning to a standing ovation, and with the Yankees comfortably in control of the game, Jackson knew he had nothing to lose. “All I had to was show up at the plate. They were going to cheer me even if I struck out.”(8) Only one other man in the history of baseball had hit 3 home runs in a World Series game — Babe Ruth. Ruth did it twice, in 1926 and 1928. On the mound was yet another pitcher, this time the knuckleballer Charlie Hough. Jackson liked to hit knuckleballs, so much so that he jumped on Hough’s first offering and sent it far into the night, deep to center field, into “the black” as it was called at the old Stadium, 450 feet from home plate. Another home run. If the Stadium had a roof, it would have blown off after Jackson’s third dinger, a moonshot. Cossell was losing it, as well, caught up in the moment, screaming through TV sets across the country, “Oh, what a blow. Forget about who the Most Valuable Player is in the World Series. How this man has responded to pressure. Oh, what a beam on his face. How could you blame him. He’s answered the whole world.” He continued, “What are they all thinking now? After all the furor, after all the hassling, it came down to this!” Jackson, after one of the most emotional receptions you will ever see in a baseball dugout, stood alone now at the opposite end, turned to the camera that was fixed on him the whole time, “Thank you. Thank you, world,” he said before taking a seat and looking up at the graphic flashing on the scoreboard, showing he tied Babe Ruth’s record. Jackson mouthed to himself in disbelief, “Babe Ruth.” In the record books with “The Babe.” Baseball immortality? Check. Think about this: Jackson saw just one pitch in each of his last three at-bats and hit all of them for home runs. Three pitches. Three home runs. On the biggest stage in the baseball world. Mind-boggling, freakish, ridiculous. You will never see it again. Ever.
The Yankees were champions once again and “Mr. October” was born. Jackson — the Series MVP — sat at his locker for hours after the game, drinking champagne and chatting with anyone and everyone in his vicinity. When one reporter told Jackson his last blast was measured at “about 450” Jackson had a suggestion. “Make it 475, it sounds better.”(9) Jackson left the Stadium somewhere around 2 am, “buzzed off the champagne,” and drove his Volkswagen down 2nd avenue (pre-Uber and private cars, I guess). He was headed to his usual hangout, King Arthur’s Court on the Upper East Side, but he never showed. On his drive down “he observed the Honorable Hugh Carey, governor of New York, emerging from a place at 74th Street. Jackson stopped to chat, and they agreed to continue their discourse at the Jim McMullen bar two blocks away. ‘We talked till five in the morning,’ said Jackson, unimpressed by this revel with the state’s chief executive. ‘Mostly about kids.’”(10) What a night to be Reggie Jackson. Carey may have been Governor, but Mr. October was without question the King of New York.
Jackson’s Game 6 showing was the exclamation point on the Summer of ’77. You could argue that his performance on that October night went a long way in lifting the city out of its doldrums. A few weeks after the Series, New York City rallied to elect a new Mayor, a fiscal conservative, Ed Koch. Koch, along with Governor Carey, ushered in an era of hope, and improved the economic outlook of the city. By 1978 the city had eliminated its short-term debt and was well on the road to recovery. To say the Yankees championship attributed to the recovery might be a reach, but if Jonathan Mahler was right in saying the fiscal crisis was in reality “a spiritual crisis,” the effect of lifting a city’s spirits through sports must quantify in some measure as a contributing factor in helping to end said crisis. I believe the Yankees were absolutely integral to New York City’s changing fortunes and Reggie Jackson was as much a hero as anyone in its history, willing the city out of its darkest time with three consecutive swings of his magical bat.
Though I was too young to see the performance, I will never forget it. No Yankees fan will. We will always remember three pitches, three home runs, one man rising to the moment of all moments — in a zone like no one before or after. Another World Championship for our great franchise and city, and a truly special one — it brought us Mr. October, born on this day, 40 years ago. And we’ll likely recall this one another forty years from now, even a hundred years from now. Heck, a thousand years from now, someone, somewhere, will tell the story of Jackson’s incredible Game 6 and I’m certain the person listening will need some serious convincing. It’s a myth, they’ll say. Even given the evidence, they likely won’t believe it. How could they?
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References
(1) Jonathan Mahler, The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, 2006
(2) Unknown, The History of New York (1946–1977), Wikipedia
(3) Red Smith, Hemingway Wouldn’t Have Dared, New York Times, Oct 21, 1977
(4) Bob Nightengale, The Day MLB Changed Forever: When Reggie Jackson Struck It Rich, USA Today, Nov 29, 2016
(5) Dave Anderson, The Two Seasons of Reggie Jackson, NYT, Oct 20, 1977
(6) George A. King III, The Homers That Made Reggie “Mr. October” — The Jackson 3, New York Post, Nov 19, 2004
(7) Scott Ferkovich, October 18, 1977: Reggie Jackson Becomes Mr. October with 3 Home Runs in the World Series, Society For American Baseball Research, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-18-1977-reggie-becomes-mr-october-3-home-runs-world-series
(8) Ron Fimrite, Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Reg-gie!, Sports Illustrated, Oct 31, 1977
(9) The Two Seasons of Reggie Jackson
(10) Fimrite, Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Reg-gie!, 1977
