Race and Reggie

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

That Murikami appearance was pretty crazy. Controversy eventually arose as to who "owned" Murikami's rights, with his Japanese employers prevailing even though they could be shown to have been in the wrong, at least according to Robert Whiting. The bad blood around that kept Japanese ballplayers out of MLB for 30+ years.

[G-Fafif]

From Dana Brand's The Last Days of Shea:

It's been a deep, dark secret, but I've always liked Reggie Jackson. I like ballplayers who are great and who get pleasure from the fact that they are great. We watched him come closer and then we saw him stop and look carefully at the big poster blow-up of the cover of my book that I had set up in front of me. "Mets Fan," he proclaimed. He looked at us. "You folks are Mets fans?" He stared at us and then asked, with a perfect sense of timing and emphasis, "WHAT HAPPENED?" We laughed as his entourage waited patiently for him to have the moment he had chosen to address people he didn't need to address. We scrambled in our minds for something to say to him in response. But we didn't need to do this. He had something to say and he wanted to say it. "What was it, they only needed to win one more game?" "Something like that," we ruefully mumbled. "You know," he said as if he was giving us the benefit of hard-earned wisdom, "people used to call me egotistical, but I will tell you, if I had been playing for them, I would have won that one game, even if I had to do it all by myself."

[batmagadanleadoff]

[batmagadanleadoff]

Confession: I loved Reggie Bars.

[G-Fafif]

Confession: I loved Reggie Bars.

They were quite tasty, which annoyed the Met-lovin' crap out of me. Gave me a surge of tooth pain once, which I decided served me right.

[G-Fafif]

batmagadanleadoff wrote:

Never saw those East Meets West cards. Are those f'reals or an online mashup? Either way, nice job.

Though it does remind me those BP caps with the skyline logo on the side were just giving up.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

I think the part where he called Reggie "classy" exposes the original writer of being clueless -- or it was ghostwritten by Reggie. Think of the top 1,000 adjectives to describe Reggie, and "classy" never makes my list. Heck, I'm making up words before I get to classy.

[Frayed Knot]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: I remember reading a magazine article from 1969 featuring Reggie Jackson. 1969 was Reggie's breakout superstar season. Reggie seemed very humble with his relatively new fame and wanted to deflect the attention he was attracting towards Cleon Jones, who, said Reggie, was baseball's real new black superstar.

False humility has long been one of Reggie's go-to moves.
Maybe back then there was some actual humility in whatever he was saying, although I tend to doubt it.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Zvon wrote: If we got Reggie then we never would have gotten Rusty and I don't want to live in a Met world without Rusty Staub. I think an honest analysis would suggest the Rusty Staub trade wasn't a very good one.

Mickey Lolich was done, and didn't want to be here.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Both directions.

[dinosaur jesus]

From Dana Brand's The Last Days of Shea: "You know," he said as if he was giving us the benefit of hard-earned wisdom, "people used to call me egotistical, but I will tell you, if I had been playing for them, I would have won that one game, even if I had to do it all by myself."

Like he did in this game? http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA198110280.shtml

Or this one? http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL198210100.shtml

Or these? (A game and half out with eight to play, four games against the division leaders, and Reggie goes 1 for 16 with two runs scored.)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198409241.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198409242.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198409250.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198409260.shtml

Or these? (Tied with six games to play, four games against the co-division leaders, and Reggie goes 0 for 8 with no runs or rbis.)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198509300.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198510010.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198510020.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA198510030.shtml

Or this one? http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CAL/CAL198610120.shtml

I'm cherry-picking, obviously. These are all from late in his career. But he has to know he's talking bullshit, right?

[G-Fafif]

dinosaur jesus wrote: These are all from late in his career. But he has to know he's talking bullshit, right?

Reggie was 61 when he said he would've that one game by himself. By then, his latter-day failures had never occurred.

[Frayed Knot]

I'm cherry-picking, obviously.

But no more so than those who cherry-pick good outings and cite those as proof of Reggie's magical abilities in crucial spots.
Or of Jeter's (just to pick one name off the top of my head)

[batmagadanleadoff]

Never saw those East Meets West cards. Are those f'reals or an online mashup? Either way, nice job. Though it does remind me those BP caps with the skyline logo on the side were just giving up.

They're real Topps cards --- 2002's.

http://www.comc.com/Cards,so,=murakami+east

[batmagadanleadoff]

Frayed Knot wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: I remember reading a magazine article from 1969 featuring Reggie Jackson. 1969 was Reggie's breakout superstar season. Reggie seemed very humble with his relatively new fame and wanted to deflect the attention he was attracting towards Cleon Jones, who, said Reggie, was baseball's real new black superstar. False humility has long been one of Reggie's go-to moves. Maybe back then there was some actual humility in whatever he was saying, although I tend to doubt it.

Or maybe Reggie really did have a thing for the Mets of his early-stage MLB career.

[Frayed Knot]

Maybe he did have a thing for the Mets - even though there was that piece in his earlier auto-biography about him swearing to root against them forever on account of the draft day 'snub'. And then the excepts from this book have him pining for a Dodgers uniform, and then somebody else's uniform (always teams that happened to be at or near the top at the time).

So we're left with deciding whether to believe that he truly wanted to be apart of the blue and orange (despite earlier claims) or that he's engaging in opportunistic bullshit that just happens to place himself at the center of the action.
Tough choice but I'm going with option B

[Edgy MD]

He played for two of the great dynasties of his lifetime. He was on five world champs which is about five more than most players get to be a part of, so he could not have had a more professionally rewarding career.

What he's going for is the love and adulation of everybody. He's a romantic celebrity in a mid-century woman's magazine talking about what he looks for in a woman --- or a Tiger Beat teen idol talking about his ideal girlfriend --- vaguely describing a woman/girl not all that different from the reader. Swoon!

[dinosaur jesus]

"Let me tell you a story about a ballplayer I knew who used to buzz off five, six, seven times a day. And his teammates, they made fun of him, they razzed him all the time. And he was ashamed, and it was affecting all aspects of his game. He had trouble throwing, fielding, hitting with power, running the base. And then one day he just accepted the fact that he was a chronic buzzoff. And once he accepted that fact, he became a great ballplayer, and he went on to hit three home runs in the last game of the 1977 World Series!"

[Frayed Knot]

Reggie's been making various media stops to promote this book.
While on HBO's 'Real Sports' he told host-interviewer Bryant Gumbel about how he won't deal with ESPN because he didn't like the way he was portrayed in their in-house production of 'The Bronx is Burning'

The following day he was on ESPN's 'Mike & Mike'

[Fman99]

I could totally beat Reggie in a race.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Yes, but if you met him, could you praise him before he starts to feel neglected? Bet you couldn't, Running Fella.