Reggie Jackson Gave the Best Live Television Interview of 2024
Major League Baseball laid exhaustive groundwork for the first-ever regular season game between two National League teams at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama to be a success. The former home to the Birmingham Black Barons and the site of the 1948 Negro League World Series proved a remarkable setting for a Thursday game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals.
Read more: Why is MLB Staging a Baseball Game in Birmingham, Alabama?
More than that, it was an opportunity to tell the story of the field and the men who played there while the American and National Leagues erected an artificial “color barrier” against non-white players.
While Fox‘s broadcast did its best to sprinkle important history lessons into a nine-inning game, Reggie Jackson’s response to a simple question from Alex Rodriguez during Fox’s pregame presentation stole the show.
Jackson, 78, hit 563 home runs in a Hall of Fame career with the Oakland A’s, New York Yankees, and California Angels from 1967-87. He spent most of the 1967 season with the Birmingham A’s of the Southern League before making his debut. He remembered the experience well — and not fondly.
Alex Rodriguez asked a question. Reggie Jackson answered it.
(Shouts to the producer and rest of the desk for staying out of Reggie’s way and just letting him talk. I doubt they expected this answer. But it’s a great few minutes of television.)pic.twitter.com/7WqjlppvF8
— Gary Parrish (@GaryParrishCBS) June 21, 2024
“Coming back (to Birmingham) is not easy. The racism that I (faced) here when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places that we traveled … fortunately I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it. But I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
“People said to me today and I spoke on it: ‘Do you think you’re a better person, do you think you won, when you played here…’ And I said, you know, I would never want to do it again. I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say ‘The n***** can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say ‘The n***** can’t stay here.’ We went to [A’s owner] Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome home dinner, and they pointed me out with the N-word, ‘He can’t come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out. Finally they let me in. He had said ‘We’re gonna go to a diner, and eat hamburgers, we’ll go where we’re wanted.’
“Fortunately, I had a manager, Johnny McNamara, that if I couldn’t eat in a place, nobody could eat. We’d get food to travel. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they’d drive to the next hotel and find a place where I can stay. If it had not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudy, I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
Focus on Sport/Getty Images
Monday, one day before he passed away at age 93, Willie Mays released a statement in which he expressed gratitude to MLB for returning to Birmingham. Having the blessing of arguably the greatest player in Negro League or National League history — and an Alabama native who faced the same racist behavior as Jackson — carried with it the potential for MLB to gloss over the ugly parts of baseball history.
Jackson wouldn’t allow it, and the television audience was richer for his honesty.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
