A New Fan of Reggie!

All I knew is that he was one of the bad guys.

It was the fall of 1981.

I was a little kid, just 8 years old, barely grasping the gravity of it all, but I desperately wanted our beloved Dodgers to win the World Series.

Fernandomania had set my soul on fire, and I took great pride in the hometown of my first favorite Dodger, Steve Garvey, who was from Lindsay, California, where I also happened to be born during the year my parents lived there for Dad's first preaching job. (A big deal for a little Dodger fan!)

I loved Pedro Guerrero, Dusty Baker, Rick Monday, Mike Scioscia, Kenny Landreaux, and of course, the famous infield of Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey.

Tommy Lasorda felt like another grandfather to me, and Vin Scully's voice was a presence in my life as consistent and comforting as any preacher I grew up hearing on Sunday.

Most of this world, of course, sailed over my little head, with glimpses sticking here and there in bits and pieces of childhood perception. My memories of this time are just specks, most probably manufactured from the You Tube videos I can see now of games I know I must have watched at the time, but don't really remember.

But one of those glimpses that stuck in my head was a moment of relief and elation, when, in what I knew even then was a lucky fluke for us, Yankees' right fielder Reggie Jackson misplayed a fly ball, which bounced off his chest and fell to the grass, allowing the Dodgers to score and break open a rally.

This moment was such a shock, but in a good way!

If this could happen, maybe there was hope for us after all. 

Maybe there was hope for good in the world!

At this time, my little 8 year-old self had no idea who the Yankees really were, probably didn't yet fully understand that my beloved LA Dodgers were only mine because they had done the unthinkable and left Brooklyn behind after decades of rivalry with these same dreaded Bronx Bombers. 

(And the San Francisco Giants were also from New York? Far too much for this little California kid at that point...)

And I didn't even know that these same Dodgers and Yankees had just recently met in the World Series in '77 and '78, with the Yankees taking both titles, pretty much just like old times. And, of course, I was still a baby when the Dodgers lost the '74 World Series to the Oakland A's and this same slugger named Reggie Jackson.

I had no memory or awareness of any of this. It was as though the world of baseball dawned for me right then during that 1981 season, and all I knew of Reggie was that he was on the other side, and that side was pretty scary.

They had this mean-looking pitcher with a big mustache (Goose Gossage).

They had this hotshot infielder who smiled in victory as he rounded the bases after a homerun early in the series, prompting me to jump up and turn off the TV, unable to even watch it. (Willie Randolph).

They had this guy on third base who clearly wasn't afraid of anything, and dove to stop a Dodger line drive from going down the left field line. (Craig Nettles).

And yes, they had this really confident slugger with swagger, and glasses, and a mustache of his own, who seemed to be bigger than everyone else, and who you somehow knew could hit it a mile if he got the barrel on the ball. I didn't even know that he had hit three consecutive homeruns off my Dodgers in the '77 World Series, yet I somehow knew that he could do us in all by himself.

And I knew he wasn't the least bit afraid of my little old Dodgers.

None of them were afraid of us, but I was definitely afraid of them.

Fortunes favored us that time, with the Dodgers winning that World Series, and Reggie fading from my awareness, as that version of the Dodgers and Yankees never made it back to the Fall Classic.

As time went on, I know I saw the Reggie! candy bar in the stores, but I never had one. 

Why not? 

Obviously, because he was one of the bad guys.

I regret that my devotion to the Dodgers led me, unnecessarily, to ignore the cross-town California Angels, who I never understood until years later had actually been the Los Angeles Angels of the old Pacific Coast League, long before the Dodgers ever came to town. 

But back in the 80's, I totally blew off the Angels.

Somewhere in the jumble of my awareness, I knew Reggie had played with the Angels after his time with the Yankees, but I paid no attention, as he didn't cross the Dodgers' path again.

Another random moment sticks in my mind, at some point seeing the movie The Naked Gun, which featured Reggie on the Angels, but playing a game in Dodger Stadium (which bugged me).

And that's about it, for what amounts to about a ten-year span of my awareness of Reggie, from childhood through late adolescence, with "awareness" being the key and limiting word, as I never invested any attention in coming to any kind of understanding of him, as I, of course, would have done if he had played for the Dodgers.

Amazing then, just this week, when I caught an interview with Reggie, who attended a special event, with a Major League Baseball game being played at an old minor league stadium in Birmingham, Alabama.

Much to my surprise, Reggie had played minor league baseball there in the mid-1960's, and commented at length about the racism he experienced during that time.

The interview is powerful, and Reggie's description is vivid and haunting.

Everyone should watch this interview and listen carefully.

But beyond the obvious pain of these hateful experiences, what struck me the most was that this wasn't very long ago at all.

As a Dodger fan, even as a kid, I took pride in the fact that it was my team that broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. But with that pride came an assumption that the color barrier was something from the distant past, that Jackie Robinson's generation had overcome for all time.

As a kid, I had read about Jackie Robinson, and noted that he died in 1972, the year before I was born, and I found it sad that his lifetime and mine had not overlapped. I knew his playing career had been long before my time, but we didn't even share the planet at the same time.

And now here was Reggie, one of the bad guys, whom I had watched play against my Dodgers, who had brought me such joy when he misplayed that fly ball, and whose candy bar I would not eat, and it turns out that he personally endured the same hatred that Jackie Robinson had overcome.

And of course it's ridiculous that this came as a surprise to me, because we all know this wasn't very long ago, and we all know that hatred toward black people in America was not vanquished by the signing of Jackie Robinson, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the election of President Obama, the Emancipation Proclamation, or any of the victorious moments that can become opportunities to relax and assume everything has been made right, and everyone just needs to move on.

But no matter how much we might think we don't need to be reminded, we do.

We need to be reminded of exactly what happened to so many, what continues to happen to so many, how little has ever been done to make any of it right and root it out, and how deeply so many want to hold onto a notion that if it wasn't me personally, then I have no connection to it, should bear no burden for it, and don't want to keep hearing about it.

But this story is about all of us, and we are all in it together.

In my childhood, I remember singing a hymn at church called, "I Love to Tell the Story", which proclaimed that the gospel story needed to be told, and told, and told again, from here to eternity, as hearing the story would never become old or unnecessary.

And it's the same with stories from our shared past in America.

Along with all the good in our history, these stories of hatred, racism, and injustice must be told, and told, and told again, from here to eternity, so they cannot be forgotten, no matter how much so many want them to be forgotten, because we all know that if these stories are ever forgotten, powerful people might have the opportunity to repeat them.

And yes, there are people who want to repeat them.

So, thank you, Reggie Jackson, for sharing your story.

And my apologies to you, Mr. October, for my ignorance.

No, you weren't a Dodger, but this lifelong Dodger is a brand new fan.