(5 of 8)
Jackson has not always been a leader. When he began playing with the A's full time in 1968, he was an angry and confused young man. When he struck out, as he did often enough to lead the league for four consecutive years, he would toss his bat to the ground or slam his batting helmet onto the dugout bench. His morale was not helped by a bitter feud that quickly developed with Finley. This dispute, which began over salary and spread in 1970 to Jackson's quality of play, reached a peak late that summer. While crossing the plate after hitting a grand-slam home run, he saluted Finley with an obscene gesture. Finley demanded, and got, a written apology; but the incident plunged Jackson into a foul mood—to say nothing of a slump that ended the team's chances for a pennant that year. Today the two have, at best, a cool relationship. "I respect Finley for his business knowledge," says Jackson, "and I think he's made some needed innovations in baseball. But unless we have to talk business, I keep clear of the ole man."
Jackson knows how to keep clear of all of baseball when he wishes. In fact, his life is so busy off the field that he says, only half in jest, "I play baseball as a sideline." A typical day off begins in midmorning when Jackson climbs out of bed in his penthouse apartment overlooking downtown Oakland. (Later this year he will move into an $85,000 condominium in the Berkeley Hills.) Once he has selected the day's outfit from three oversized closets that contain 100 shirts and pairs of pants, twelve leather jackets ("I've got every color") and a dozen hats, he heads to a diner called Lois the Pie Queen for brunch.
Lois's is an Oakland institution. Straddling the racially mixed and often explosive border with Berkeley, the simple restaurant is one of the few places where black and white comfortably coexist. Jackson, a regular customer, gives Lois a friendly pat on the backside and helps himself to biscuits and milk as he waits for his usual order of pork chops, rice and scrambled eggs.
Jackson's next stop is 15 miles and seemingly 15 light-years away. It is Del Rio Customs, a garage that equips cars with elaborate racing stripes and mag wheels. The place gives a visitor the feeling that two dozen Hell's Angels are about to wheel in looking for some feral fun. When anonymous death threats were made against Jackson before last year's World Series, he hired beefy Proprietor Tony Del Rio as his temporary bodyguard.
Gleaming Speedster. "I can let my hair down at Del Rio's," Jackson says. "The place is like an amusement park." When he is not speeding off on one of Del Rio's roaring motorcycles or playing pinch and tickle with a girl in the middle of a stack of tires, Jackson exchanges stories with Tony and the boys or busies himself rebuilding the motor on his 1940 Chevrolet.
The 1940 Chevy is only one of four show and racing cars Jackson owns. "I've loved tinkering with cars since I was a kid," he says. His pride at the moment is a 1927 Ford roadster that holds the world record for quarter-mile drag racing in its class. Whenever he gets the chance, Jackson climbs behind the wheel of the gleaming yellow speedster for a few unofficial runs.