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An assurance of fame is not the pressing problem of Reggie Jackson, having seen to that before anything else. Baseball's Muhammad Ali, Jackson announced his greatness during eight seasons in Oakland before achieving it over five years in New York. But as skilled as he is in public relations ("Need any words?" Jackson calls out to the writers), his main ability lies in melodrama and real drama. The most beguiling baseball statistic at the moment is that, since 1970, no American League team has won a World Series without the services of Jackson, though, technically, he missed the 1972 Series, when the A's beat the Reds.
That year, Jackson wrecked a hamstring scoring the run that tied the last playoff game and delivered the A's to the edge of three straight championships. He was on crutches. The World Series of his dreams—for all he knew, his last—was going on without him. His marriage was ruined too. Like the man who throws himself on a hand grenade for his fellows, he had earned the right to feel sorry for himself. "What good is it to make $100,000 a year," he said, "if there's no one to leave a ticket for?" By the next October, Jackson forgot he had said that. He always seemed to be saying pretty things and forgetting them. And he always , seemed to be talking in October, and hitting home runs three at a time.
Jackson has 478 home runs, and will have more than 500 before he is stuffed and mounted, though some voters might recall what an indifferent outfielder he was and how frequently, yet sensationally, he struck out (2,078). While Cooperstown was not meant to be a Hall of Celebrities or Controversies (if so, heaven forbid, George Steinbrenner would get in), it is strange to think of a baseball museum without Leo Durocher or Billy Martin, and impossible to exclude Reggie Jackson. "Am I one of the greatest?" he asks, not quite as sure as Ali at that. For the great occasions, he has been. The trouble now in California may be that there is no trouble. Angel Centerfielder Fred Lynn and Third Baseman Doug DeCinces do not need anyone to be the straw that stirs their hot tubs. Prematurely, at 37, Jackson could be dying of boredom.
To Rod Carew, 37, Anaheim may seem to be bustling. He did twelve years' hard time in Minnesota before joining the Angels in 1979. Geography retarded his celebrity, but looking back, seven batting titles later, Carew is grateful. "Minnesota gave me perspective, peace of mind, really," he says. "Tony Oliva taught me. Harmon Killebrew showed me. Here was this big mammoth guy—they called him 'Killer.' So gentle, though. Whether he hit two homers or struck out three times, he handled himself the same way afterward. The only time I think about the Hall of Fame is to think that Harmon Killebrew isn't in it." (With 573 homers, the most of any righthanded hitter in the history of the American League, Killebrew at last appears to be on deck.)
"I would like to be remembered for consistency," Carew says, "and for doing the little things, moving the runner along.