Reggie Jackson reminds us of hard truths on historic night

MLB at Rickwood Field on Thursday night was, as one would have anticipated, the best night of baseball all season. The showcase of America’s oldest professional ballpark, the stirring pregame tribute to the Negro Leagues and many living players, the appropriateness of Alabama native Brendan Donovan coming through for the victorious Cardinals and, of course, the memorialization of Willie Mays, whose death earlier in the week imbued the event with even deeper importance and poignancy.

But one of the night’s most powerful moments was unscripted, unrehearsed, unplanned and uninhibited.

It happened when Reggie Jackson reminded us of the hard truths about our country’s past and present.

The setting was FOX’s pregame show, when Alex Rodriguez teed Reggie up with an obvious question about the emotion of returning to Rickwood, which had served as Jackson’s home park when he was coming up with Double-A Birmingham in the A’s farm system in 1967.

I implore you to watch the full clip of Jackson’s comments before reading any further. Jackson spoke in detail about specific instances of harsh racism he experienced, times when he was called the n-word and refused service in restaurants.

“The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled, fortunately I had a manager and players on the team that helped me go through it,” said Jackson. “But I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

Jackson told stark stories from 1967, three years after the passing of a landmark Civil Rights Act that prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin and sex.

And in 2024, though the experiences may not always be as stark as what the great Reggie Jackson went through in Alabama in the 1960s, there should be no mistaking the fact that our non-white friends and neighbors are still treated as “other,” be it through explicit or implicit biases, in so many elements of American society.

But beyond the sharing of those stories of the racism he faced, two elements to Jackson’s response on set deserve our attention.

The first is Jackson expressing his raw reaction to racism, his natural desire to respond with violence.

“Had it not been for my white friends, had it not been for a white manager [John McNamara] and [Joe] Rudi, [Rollie] Fingers and [Dave] Duncan and Lee Meyers, I would have never made it,” said Jackson. “I was too physically violent, I was ready to physically fight someone. I would have gotten killed here, because I would have beat someone’s ass and you would have saw me in an oak tree somewhere.”

I can tell you I am one of the many who have glorified Jackie Robinson for the way he “turned the other cheek” during his 1947 rookie year, when he faced documented, disgusting hatred from fellow players and fans but was nevertheless able to perform on the field and not lash out.

We don’t often hear the stories of those who did not respond in such a way, because they did not live to tell the tale. There were 4,743 documented lynchings in the U.S. from 1882 to 1968.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

That’s the story Billie Holliday was telling in “Strange Fruit,” her famous 1939 recording penned by Abel Meeropol. And that’s the story Reggie Jackson was telling Thursday night. The scars of that story still remain. That’s why it’s important to discuss Jackie Robinson not just for the way he “turned the other cheek” but for the many ways he fought back.

The other important element of Jackson’s response was what he said about the white teammates, coaches and team owner (Charlie Finley), who stood up for him, empathized with him, tried to understand what he was going through.

His words reminded me of a story we did recently on Larry Doby, who broke the American League color barrier in 1947, and Steve Gromek, Doby’s white Cleveland Indians teammate who enthusiastically embraced Doby in the aftermath of a 1948 World Series game.

Allyship is every bit as important today as it was in Alabama in 1967. It can be uncomfortable to call out racism for what it is, to tell a friend or a loved one that something they said or did was untoward, to recognize our own inherent biases and address them. But a lot of us need to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Much credit to Reggie for saying what he said. Here’s hoping people listened.