Can it really be 20 years ago? It seems as if both more and less should have happened in that time—like George Steinbrenner imploding under the mass of his own bile. It’s hard to believe that, instead, both Thurman Munson and Billy Martin are gone, and the bald spot on Reggie Jackson’s head is growing steadily, like some expanding halo. There’s no getting around it, though: Tomorrow, April 13, 1998marks the 20th anniversary of Reggie! bar day.
It all started with a remark that Reggie Jackson made while he was still an Oakland Athletic. ”If I played in New York,” he said, ”they’d name a candy bar for me.” Reggie had mistaken the origins of the Baby Ruth bar, which had been named for the offspring of President Grover Cleveland and his winsome young wife, Frances. No matter; the good folks at Standard Brands Confectionary were listening, and by the home opener of Reggie’s second season with the Yankees they were ready to pass out some 72,000 free Reggie! bars.
The candy itself wasn’t half bad; a 25-cent concoction of chocolate, peanuts and corn syrup, wrapped in a square, orange little package with a picture of Jackson in mid-swing on the front. Sportswriters had a field day. One wrote that when you open the wrapper, the Reggie! bar told you how good it was. Dave Anderson of The New York Times claimed it was the only candy bar that tasted like a hot dog.
As for the Yankees, they were returning to the stadium in a typical stew of controversy and calculated nostalgia. Before the home opener, the team would honor Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris—the M & M boys, still only 46 and 43, respectively. It was Maris’s first time back in Yankee Stadium since he had been all but booed off the field for not being the new incarnation of Babe Ruth. They were met with a rapturous response from the crowd of 44,667—obstructing the tendrils of smoke emanating ominously from Mount Steinbrenner. The defending world champions had got off to a 1-4 record on the road; part of a slow start that would eventually culminate in all the low drama of that summer—the great bunt controversy, the famous ”one’s a born liar, the other’s convicted” line; the (first) firing of Billy Martin. But this day was Reggie’s. In the first inning, facing the White Sox southpaw Wilbur Wood, with Mickey Rivers and Willie Randolph on base, Jackson took the first two pitches for balls, then pumped a knuckleball that didn’t knuckle over the fence in deep right-center field.
As soon as it was out of the park, while Reggie was still making his way around the bases, the first bars began to come down. They kept coming for the next five minutes; a rain of orange-and-blue squares, covering the grass in right and left fields—while the big crowd stood and roared, and chanted, ”Reggie! Reggie!” The grounds crew had it cleaned up in no time, and the Yanks breezed to a 4-2 triumph, the first of Ron Guidry’s 25 victories on the season. Yet apart from the fans, the general reaction was amazingly churlish. Most of the sportswriters seemed vaguely embarrassed by the whole spectacle. Most of the players professed to be outraged.
”It was just a shame that something like that has to happen,” Wood fumed. ”It’s not called for,” Bob Lemon, the White Sox’ usually imperturbable manager, said, pointing out that someone could have been injured by one of the two-ounce bars. ”Let them throw them when he’s in right field,” Lemon said. ”See how he feels.” He then added, ”People starving all over the world and 30 billion calories are laying on the field.” Well, all right; granting that all the Reggie! bars should have been carefully gathered and shipped to Appalachia—lighten up. I was in the stands that day, and it was like nothing I have ever seen on a ball field, before or since; more like something from a bullfight—and isn’t that why we keep going to the park, in hopes of seeing the rare, unsurpassable moment? Only Reggie, with his usual showman’s eye, took it all in stride.
”I figured they’d be coming out on the field,” he said after the game. ”I just appreciated it. It was a nice gesture.” Has the game seen such a clutch ballplayer since? The season before, Reggie had capped the last game of the World Series with three home runs, on three consecutive swings. With Wood’s first two pitches balls, the home run on opening day in 1978 made four straight home runs on four swings at Yankee Stadium, all under remarkable circumstances.
I suppose it was hard to live with Reggie’s large ego. Yet in the age of Latrell Sprewell and the American Olympic hockey team, Jackson’s sheer ebullience, his eagerness to be on the spot in the big game, seem more refreshing than ever. It is the mark of the true champion, the bond between such disparate performers as Pete Rose and Tara Lipinski.
The game moves on, and the further away its great moments drift the more we appreciate them. Both the men honored at Yankee Stadium that day, Mantle and Maris, are gone now, along with the other two M’s, Munson and Martin. It is a tendency in baseball, especially, to lament the past and bewail the present, but the game seems more beautiful than ever when we realize how fleeting it is; how the heroes of each era blend in our memories—even circling the bases under confetti of fluttering, orange squares.
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