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Doubleday
October 2013
On Sale: October 8, 2013
304 pages
ISBN: 038553311X
EAN: 9780385533119
Kindle: B00CCPIKRG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A soul-baring, brutally candid, and richly eventful
memoir of the two years—1977 and 1978—when
Reggie Jackson went from outcast to Yankee legend In the spring of 1977 Reggie Jackson should have been on top
of the world. The best player of the Oakland A's dynasty,
which won three straight World Series, he was the first
big-money free agent, wooed and flattered by George
Steinbrenner into coming to the New York Yankees, which
hadn't won a World Series since 1962. But Reggie was about
to learn, as he writes in this vivid and surprising memoir,
that until his initial experience on the Yankees "I didn't
know what alone meant." His manager, the mercurial,
alcoholic, and pugilistic Billy Martin, never wanted him on
the team and let Reggie—and the rest of the
team—know it. Most of his new teammates, resentful of
his contract, were aloof at best and hostile at worst. Brash
and outspoken, but unused to the ferocity of New York's
tabloid culture, Reggie hadn't realized how rumor and
offhand remarks can turn into screaming negative
headlines—especially for a black athlete with a
multimillion-dollar contract. Sickened by Martin's
anti-Semitism, his rages, and his quite public disparagement
of his new star, ostracized by his teammates, and despairing
of how he was stereotyped in the press, Reggie had long
talks with his father about quitting. Things hit bottom when
Martin plotted to humiliate him during a nationally
televised game against the Red Sox. It seemed as if a
glorious career had been derailed. But then: Reggie vowed to
persevere; his pride, work ethic, and talent would overcome
Martin's nearly sociopathic hatred. Gradually, he would win
over the fans, then his teammates, as the Yankees surged to
the pennant. And one magical autumn evening, he became "Mr.
October" in a World Series performance for the ages. He
thought his travails were over—until the next season
when the insanity began again. Becoming Mr. October is a
revelatory self-portrait of a baseball icon at the height of
his public fame and private anguish. Filled with revealing
anecdotes about the notorious "Bronx Zoo" Yankees of the
late 1970s and bluntly honest portrayals of his teammates
and competitors, this is eye-opening baseball history as can
be told only by the man who lived it.
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