Maybe you didn’t want to hear Reggie Jackson tell his truths about Birmingham during the MLB at Rickwood pregame. Imagine how much Jackson didn’t want to live it at 20 going on 21.
This was Mr. October, the straw that stirred the drink, the five-time World Series champion and Hall of Fame slugger with 563 career homers, who struck out more than anyone and lashed out at a record pace as well at teammates, opponents, umpires and one equally combative manager.His coming of age season in the Magic City
included some particularly personal and painful memories. They hit close to home around here when Jackson shared them Thursday afternoon during what may have been the most riveting three minutes on a sports pregame show ever. Among the long line of living baseball legends that paraded through Birmingham last week, someone had to tell the rest of the story. Otherwise this well-intended and well-done celebration of the dearly departed Willie Mays and other pioneers of color and character at America’s Oldest Ballpark was in danger of becoming just another Field of Dreams production with railroad tracks subbing for the cornfield.
FOX Sports, to its credit, gave the 78-year-old Jackson a microphone during the pregame show and let him go. Back, back, back, all the way to 1967, when the No. 2 overall pick in the previous year’s MLB Draft started and finished his second and final minor league season in a place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had called “the most segregated city in America.”
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