{"id":531,"date":"2017-10-18T16:22:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T16:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/?p=531"},"modified":"2020-08-28T10:12:15","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T14:12:15","slug":"negrons-impact-mr-october-nobody-does-it-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/negrons-impact-mr-october-nobody-does-it-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Negron\u2019s Impact: Mr. October, Nobody Does It Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

MLB recently announced that the most valuable player award for the World Series would be named the\u00a0Willie Mays Award<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a nice gesture because Mays was a great baseball player, one of the ten greatest of all time. However, when it comes to the World Series, nobody did it better than Mr. October, Reggie Jackson. For that reason I will tell you why this award should have been called the \u201cMr. October Award\u201d! You are talking about a guy (Reggie) that played in six World Series, won five world championships and was the most valuable player in two. You are also talking about a player who saw three pitches in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series and hit three home runs.<\/p>\n

I remember after he hit the first homer, I suggested that he take a curtain call and he said no. After he hit the second homer I asked him again to take a curtain call and again he refused for whatever the reason. I said to him,\u201d If you hit a third you will take one then.\u201d and Reggie said \u2018Man your crazy but I will.\u2019\u201d Wouldn\u2019t you know it but on the first pitch from Charlie Hough, he would hit a knuckleball deep into the black in center field. When he got into the dugout as he started to sit down I went to his ear and said, \u201cYou promised the fans a curtain call.\u201d And then I started to push him out of the dugout\u2013I must add I didn\u2019t have to push hard. That game would become one of the greatest in Yankees history.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest songs of that year (1977) was Carly Simon\u2019s \u201cNobody Does it Better\u201d If you were a television sports producer you couldn\u2019t help but use that song in any report dealing with Reggie. The words to that song symbolized the greatness of what Reggie Jackson accomplished so much so that forty years later I can honestly say that no one has had a better World Series since.<\/p>\n

Ninteen Seventy-Seven was the Summer of Sam, a crazed killer (The Son of Sam as he was known) walked the streets of New York and shot and killed over a dozen innocent young lady\u2019s and you never knew when he would strike again.\u00a0 That same year on August 16, Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll, died.\u00a0 New York City was rocking to Saturday Night Fever and made a mega star out of John Travolta and the city streets were stinking big time because of a garbage strike. In the Bronx, graffiti was all over the place, walls subways etcetera.<\/p>\n

Whatever could happen in the city that year did. Between the tempers in the Yankee clubhouse and the fires all over the Borough, the Bronx was literally \u201cburning.\u201d<\/p>\n

On October 18, during the World Series between the Dodgers and the Yankees, Reggie Jackson arguably put on the greatest show in World Series history and brought a team and a city together.<\/p>\n

I will also never forget that after that game, Reggie and Billy Martin sat in the manager\u2019s office together with their arms around each other and that actually meant a lot to me because Billy always treated me like a son and Reggie has always been a big brother to me however I knew those emotions wouldn\u2019t last, but that\u2019s a story for another day.<\/p>\n

One month after Reggie had hit the three home runs in Game 6 f the 1977 World Series, Reggie and I went jogging in Central Park.<\/p>\n

It was a beautiful brisk day and at this time I could still run really well. Reggie liked running with me because I would make him run harder, I always wanted to beat Mr. October but he was deceptively fast. \u00a0Three quarters of the way to the west side of the park, I noticed two very familiar figures. It was John Lennon and\u00a0Yoko Ono.<\/p>\n

John Lennon noticed Reggie before Reggie noticed Lennon. I screamed to Reggie, \u201cStop Jack!\u00a0 It\u2019s John Lennon.\u201d I was in shock because I had always been a giant Beatle fan.\u00a0 Reggie and Lennon shook hands and then Lennon introduced\u00a0Yoko Ono\u00a0to Reggie.<\/p>\n

Lennon said to Reggie \u201cI don\u2019t know your sport, but I do know that right now you\u2019re bigger than the five Jackson\u2019s put together, referring to Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five.\u201d Reggie laughed at that and I guess you could say that John scored big points with that comment. Lennon told Reggie how much he loved New York and Reggie replied about how intense and crazy the city could be. Yoko never really said much and I was just mesmerized watching two entertainment gods of the era enjoying one another. Years later, I asked Reggie if he ever thought about that time that we met John Lennon and reminded him of what Lennon said that day.\u00a0 Reggie smiled. (You have to remember that Reggie had met all of the greats from the last six decades, stars from film, television, music and sports. We are talking about greats like Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Pele, you name it. I believe that he even met Elvis, but I\u2019m not sure.) Today, Reggie understands the magnitude of\u00a0John Lennon\u00a0and what Lennon meant to the world and he must think to himself, \u201cThat\u2019s pretty neat.\u201d That\u2019s what Reggie\u2019s smile told me.<\/p>\n

That wonderful, crazy 1977 season also brought two people who started out on opposite sides of the clubhouse, together to tell each other how much they appreciated each other. Those two guys were Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson. It was one of the most beautiful moments that I had witnessed in baseball because of the sincerity in their eyes. From that moment on, they never had a cross word with each other and Thurman and Reggie did become true friends. (I remember that Reggie actually flew with Thurman a couple of times and one day Reggie gave Thurman a check for gas but Thurman never cashed the check!)<\/p>\n

I was a kid who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time and I will forever be grateful for the kindness and sincerity of these special people in my life.Today is the fortieth anniversary of George Steinbrenner\u2019s first World Championship and for me the greatest performance in a World Series game by a player and on this day Thurman Munson would give Reggie Jackson the greatest nickname in sports, MR OCTOBER!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MLB recently announced that the most valuable player award for the World Series would be named the\u00a0Willie Mays Award. It\u2019s a nice gesture because Mays was a great baseball player, one of the ten greatest of all time. However, when it comes to the World Series, nobody did it better than Mr. October, Reggie Jackson. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Negron\u2019s Impact: Mr. October, Nobody Does It Better”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ray-negrons-play-ball-weekly-blog","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraynegronstory.com\/columns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}