WARNING: SPOILERS

Someday I’d like a real documentary on Reggie Jackson.

Early on in this one, sitting on a stool and talking directly to the camera, Reggie says he’s uncomfortable with the doc because he’s not in control of it, but I’m curious how much of it he controlled. He tells the viewer, “The reason you’re uncomfortable with me is because I’m the truth,” except so much of what he says, or what is said about him, feels false. It’s not Reggie as we remember him but maybe the Reggie as he was in his head? Or as he wishes he’d been?

It’s Reggie redrawn as athlete-activist in the tradition of Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Henry Aaron, and I’m like: “I thought the point of Reggie was Reggie.” Hot dog. Not enough mustard. Straw that stirs the drink. Superduperstar. In a ’70s-era clip, a reporter asks him what thoughts were going through his head after some superduper feat and he responds, “The magnitude of me.” That feels closer to it. And sure, that line could’ve come from Ali—both were mouths that roared—but Ali did everything else: “What’s my name?,” “No Vietcong called me nigger.” He sacrificed his title and his livelihood for a principle and changed the laws of the nation. I’m not remembering any activism from Reggie and the doc doesn’t help. He just kind of gloms onto these guys.

Until, in one instance, he doesn’t. Until he shockingly throws one of them under the bus. 

Jackie’s anger
A lot of the doc is Reggie visiting with other athletes, some now deceased (Aaron, Vida Blue), and I’m sorry but lord these guys can be boring. Particularly the recent ones. I like Aaron Judge but here he sounds like the PR rep for Aaron Judge, Inc. Just stop already, guys. Be people. Reggie’s contemporaries are a bit more fun but they’re oddly segregated. He talks with Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers in one stadium, and Vida Blue and Dave Stewart in another. Stewart has the best story. In the early ’70s, he was an Oakland kid who hung out at the ballpark and Reggie befriended him. Stewart says the way Jackson treated him taught him how to treat kids when he became a professional. That’s nice. I wanted more of that.

Instead, Reggie visits Julius Erving, the great Dr. J., and the doc goes off the rails.

They’re talking about the fact that they, two Black men, were the preeminent athletes of the 1970s. Then Erving says this:

In terms of heroes and role models, they showed The Jackie Robinson Story in my school, and, you know, my mouth dropped. But for me, Jim Brown was hugely impactful in my life. With Jackie Robinson, it was turn the other cheek. And with Jim Brown, it was, “You need to get out of my face.”

And I’m like: Wait, what? Yes, for his first two seasons, Jackie had to turn the other cheek. That was part of the deal with Branch Rickey to change the sport and the culture and the country. It was nonviolent resistance before nonviolent resistance. But after that, Rickey let him loose. And Jackie let loose. Both barrels. Don’t these guys know that?

But Dr. J admits he doesn’t know baseball so I’m sure Reggie will correct him. No. He actually makes it worse:

I admire Jackie Robinson, but I wasn’t Jackie Robinson. I was Jim Brown. I was angry.

Wait, WHAT!?!

They didn’t think Jackie Robinson was angry? Did they think “The Jackie Robinson Story” truly reflected what was going on in his head and heart? He was furious. The true power of him turning the other cheek for two years was that he was never the guy to turn the other cheek. You don’t even have to read to know this, just watch Ken Burns “Baseball,” or the doc he did on Jackie Robinson. It’s all there. “Without that anger, you don’t get Jackie Robinson,” Howard Bryant says in the latter. “Do you want to know Jackie Robinson or don’t you?”

Seriously, I can’t believe they left that conversation in. Makes both men look really, really bad.

Filmmaker Alex Stapleton (“Corman’s World”) also screws up the chronology—like everyone these days. Reggie talks about playing minor league ball in Birmingham in 1967 and she shows us clips of firehoses and Bull Connor, and I’m like “That’s 1963.” I’m sure Birmingham ’67 wasn’t good for a Black kid from Philly but it was already a different era. A year later, Reggie makes the Majors and goes to Oakland, home of the Black Panther Party, and it’s like five years of American history truncated into one.

I like the early Oakland A’s clips. I could’ve used more of them. I could’ve used a shot of him hitting the top of the scoreboard at Met Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota in 1969—a 500+ foot shot. He had a first-half for the ages in 1969 when he was a real threat to Roger Maris’ homerun record. On July 29, he hit his 40th but couldn’t keep the pace: five in August, two in September, 47 for the year. He didn’t even win the HR title—Harmon Killebrew did with 49—but it’s the most homeruns Jackson ever hit in a season. The doc mentions none of this.

The doc doesn’t mention a lot. How did Reggie feel when Thurman Munson died in a plane crash in the middle of the 1979 season? That might’ve been worth probing. We get a lot of Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner, of course, but I think the doc is too kind to the latter and problematic with the former. It implies Billy was racist—a designation Rod Carew and Rickey Henderson would probably dispute. I think Billy just didn’t like Reggie. You could say he didn’t like the challenge of Reggie. Reggie could be challenging. He challenged Munson as team leader and challenged Billy as manager, and not necessarily in good ways. But the doc ignores the not-good ways. It tells Reggie’s side of things.

Take the “straw that stirs the drink” line. This is the quote as it appeared in the NY press in 1977:

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. … Munson thinks he can be the straw that stirs the drink, but he can only stir it bad.

In the doc, the full quote is barely visible, and then we get Reggie on his stool saying, “I had no idea it was going to get twisted like that.” Uhh … twisted like what? Into an insult? Not much twisting necessary there. Back then Reggie claimed he’d been misquoted, which led to this classic rejoinder from Munson: “For three thousand fucking words?” 

In the '77 World Series, Reggie questioned starting Catfish Hunter in Game 2. He was probably right—Catfish got shelled—but it wasn’t smart to say. In the doc, he also complains about being platooned with Paul Blair, which isn’t quite accurate. Blair was a late-inning defensive replacement for Reggie, not a platoon. Even in those first World Series games.

Actually, that’s kind of fascinating. In ’77, Reggie had a Series for the ages, a Series that led to him being forever known as “Mr. October.” But it didn’t start out well. And it’s because it didn’t start out well that Thurman called him “Mr. October.” Initially, it was meant sarcastically. 

The forgotten Mr. October
Let’s break it down.

In Game 1, Reggie went 1-2 with a single, a walk and HBP, and in the 9th inning, with the Yanks up by 1, Paul Blair replaced him in right field. The Dodgers tied the game so it went to extras, but the move didn’t hurt Billy’s rep: Blair drove in the winning run in the 12th.

In Game 2, Reggie went 0-4 with two Ks and a GDP as the Dodgers won 6-1. That’s when Reggie questioned Billy’s managerial acumen: “What’s he doing starting Catfish? He hasn’t pitched since Sept. 10. It’s not fair to the Cat and it’s not fair to us.” To which Billy replied: “If he wants to second-guess me, he can kiss my Dago butt.” Reggie also questioned being replaced defensively. 

So of course in the next game (when Reggie went 1-3 with a single), Billy replaced him in the 7th inning. Did that light a fire? Because in Game 4, Reggie went 2-4 with a double and a homer—though Blair still came in in the 9th. It wasn’t until Game 5 (2-4, HR, 2 runs) that Jackson played the whole game. And in Game 6 (three homeruns on three swings, BB, 4 runs scored, 5 RBIs), yeah, no one’s pulling him, not even Billy Martin. World Series MVP. Legend. Mr. October.

Right. About that…

In the doc, Reggie says Thurman started the nickname after Reggie hit his 30th homerun in Detroit:

The press came in to talk to him and Thurman said, ‘I don’t feel like talking. I don’t want to talk. I’m hurt and I’m sore and I got to get my shoulder done and my knee wrapped in ice. Go talk to Mr. October, he’ll talk to you.’ And he just kind of threw it out there, you know, in sarcasm, annoyance, or whatever. And that kind of picked itself up from there.

That would’ve been Sept. 18.

The oddity is I can’t find any reference to it in any of the press from the period. Not in The New York Times, not the Daily News, not anywhere on newspapers.com.

In fact, the first reference to “Mr. October” that year wasn’t to Reggie Jackson. It was to Catfish Hunter. On Oct. 6, the Daily News teased a Mike Lupica column on the injured ace with this header:

The Daily News teaser during the '77 ALCS, before Reggie was ever referenced in the press as Mr. October.

So was Catfish the original Mr. October? Or does “the forgotten …” imply there’s one who isn’t forgotten? Either way, the first time the term is used for Reggie, and reported in the press, yes, it comes from Munson, but it comes after Game 2 when Reggie was 1-6 for the Series. And it’s not a compliment:

I wouldn’t be second-guessing the manager. I think it’s just a little heated argument. You know Reggie has not been doing all that well. He has been doing OK, but not all that well … and he wants to. I guess Billy just doesn’t realize that Reggie is ‘Mr. October.’

In one publication, Munson follows it up with “I read that somewhere.” In another, he says, “That’s what Reggie called himself, wasn’t it? ‘Mr. October’?”

So did Munson bestow the nickname ironically? Or was it a sarcastic reference to something Jackson already called himself? Even after Game 6, the press disagreed on its provenance. In one report, it was something his teammates called him; in another, teammate Mike Torrez exclaims, “Now I know why he calls himself Mr. October.” [Emphasis mine.]

Either way, what began as an insult became an honorific. Jackson turned it into an honorific. He willed it. That’s the amazing thing, and it should be the story, but it’s not the story. Not here anyway. The story here is much more ho-hum.

When Reggie was 1-6 for the Series.

No. 20
What is the story here? That Reggie is an activist (vaguely), that he’s suffered from a lot of racism (definitely at times, just maybe other times), that even after his playing days, when he tried to buy ball clubs, they didn’t want him around. Not because he’s Reggie but because he’s Black. That’s what he keeps implying. He put together an ownership group to buy the Dodgers in ’98 but Rupert Murdoch got it instead. Because Rupert is part of the “boys club”? Or because he offered more? Who knows? But the doc doesn’t question Reggie’s POV. It also doesn’t bring up the fact that the Dodgers are now co-owned by Magic Johnson.

Meanwhile, Reggie tries to stay in the game. He tries to stay relevant in the game. And that’s why he winds up leaving the Yankees organization for the Astros. He felt a figurehead with the Yankees but felt utilized by the Astros. Sure. The doc shows him giving batting advice to Jose Altuve, a batting champion who seems confused about why he’s being given batting advice, and who then goes and hits a home run. “Reggie” implies the homer is because of Reggie.

Again, the doc gives us some great ’70s footage, where he’s shockingly polite around reporters. We also see his first spring training with the Yankees in ’77 when he’s wearing No. 20. That stunned me. Numbers matter so much in the sport. Reggie was No. 9 for both the A’s and O’s but that was Graig Nettles’ number with the Yanks, so I guess Jackson went with Frank Robinson’s number? Then why 44? I’m guessing because Terry Whitfield was wearing it, he got traded in March, so Reggie jumped to Henry Aaron’s number. The doc doesn’t mention any of this—I don’t blame it, it’s a little insidery—but the baseball nerd in me wants to know.

Anyway, I hope someday we get a real documentary on Reggie Jackson. I wouldn’t be surprised if, by cutting deeper, he’ll come across not only more fascinating but more sympathetic.