Reggie Jackson

Reginald Martinez Jackson (born May 18, 1946) is an American former professional baseball right fielder who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Kansas City / Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, and California Angels. Jackson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993 in his first year of eligibility.

Jackson was nicknamed "Mr. October" for his clutch hitting in the postseason with the Athletics and the Yankees. He helped Oakland win five consecutive American League West divisional titles, three straight American League pennants and three consecutive World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. Jackson helped New York win four American League East divisional pennants, three American League pennants and back-to-back World Series titles, in 1977 and 1978. He also helped the California Angels win two AL West divisional titles in 1982 and 1986. Jackson hit three consecutive home runs at Yankee Stadium in the clinching game six of the 1977 World Series.

Jackson hit 563 career home runs and was an American League (AL) All-Star for 14 seasons. He won two Silver Slugger Awards, the AL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award in 1973, two World Series MVP Awards and the Babe Ruth Award in 1977. Jackson additionally holds the record for most career strikeouts by a batter. The Yankees retired his uniform number in 1993, and the Athletics retired it in 2004. Jackson currently serves as a special advisor to the Houston Astros, and a sixth championship associated with Jackson came with Houston's win in the 2022 World Series.

Jackson led his teams to first place eleven times over his 21-year baseball career and had only two losing seasons.

Reginald Martinez Jackson was born on May 18, 1946, in the Wyncote neighborhood of Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia. His father, Martinez Jackson, who was half Puerto Rican, worked as a tailor and was a former second baseman with the Newark Eagles of Negro league baseball. He was the youngest of his mother Clara's four children. He also had two half-siblings from his father's first marriage. His parents divorced when he was six; his mother took three of his siblings with her, while his father took two of Jackson's siblings from his first marriage, though one sibling later returned to Wyncote. Martinez Jackson was a single father, and theirs was one of the few Black families in Wyncote.

Jackson graduated from Cheltenham High School in 1964, where he excelled in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. A tailback in football, he injured his knee in an early season game in his junior year in the fall of 1962. He was told by the doctors he was never to play football again, but Jackson returned for the final game of the season. In that game, Jackson fractured five cervical vertebrae, which caused him to spend six weeks in the hospital and another month in a neck cast. Doctors told Jackson that he might never walk again, let alone play football, but Jackson defied the odds again. On the baseball team, he batted .550 and threw several no-hitters. In the middle of Jackson's senior year, his father was arrested for bootlegging and was sentenced to six months in jail.

For football, Jackson was recruited by Alabama, Georgia, and Oklahoma, all of whom were willing to break the color barrier just for him. (Oklahoma had black football players before 1964, including Prentice Gautt, a star running back recruited in 1957, who played in the NFL). Jackson declined Alabama and Georgia because he was fearful of the South at the time, and declined Oklahoma because they told him to stop dating white girls. For baseball, Jackson was scouted by Hans Lobert of the San Francisco Giants who was desperate to sign him. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins also made offers, and the hometown Philadelphia Phillies gave him a tryout but declined because of his "hitting skills".

His father wanted him to go to college, where Jackson wanted to play both football and baseball. He accepted a football scholarship from Arizona State University in Tempe; his high school football coach knew ASU's head football coach Frank Kush, and they discussed the possibility of his playing both sports. After a recruiting trip, Kush decided that Jackson had the ability and willingness to work to join the squad.