Originally Posted by Amazin69
Reggie Jackson joins the FOX pre-show for the Rickwood Field game. And he's brought along a box of REGGIE! bars!
Man, he must have had a ton of stock returned to him when the product stopped being distributed. Poor Reggie lost all his classic cars in that Oakland Hills fire years ago, but I guess the REGGIE! bars were safe in a storage unit somewhere.
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On a more-serious note, Reggie is also talking about being part of that fantastic Birmingham A's team in 1967 and he makes it very clear that, even 20 years after Jackie, the South was still a living Hell for black players then.
"I would go to a restaurant and they would say 'the [censored] can't eat here'. I would go to a hotel and they would say 'the [censored] can't stay here'."
And yes, Reggie is using the actual word (although he does edit later), which I think is correct. The issue is not the word itself, it's the hate it represents. I think John Lennon's song is one of the most powerful he wrote, because it's about how (as Yoko conceptualized it) all cultures (at least at that time) treated women as blacks were once treated. In In the Heat of the Night (and similar films) it's important that we hear the bigoted characters say the word, so we know exactly how Sidney Poitier (or whoever) is feeling. Euphemisms to hide bigotry do nothing to eradicate it. [/soapbox]
Reggie then goes on to talk about how John McNamara (manager) would refuse to let his team eat at any establishment that wouldn't serve Reggie (and Allan Lewis). He talks about how, since he couldn't rent an apartment at the complex where all the other players lived, he had to couch surf, from McNamara's to Dave Duncan's to Rollie Fingers's to Joe Rudi's, until the fine citizens of Birmingham threatened to burn the entire complex down. I had not known that Birmingham was not in the Southern League in 1966, in part because of racial tensions ginned up by Sheriff Bull Connor.
To sum up, Reggie says he wouldn't wish that experience on anyone. He thanked Rudi, Fingers, and Duncan for holding him back, because otherwise he would have lost his temper and gone to hit someone…and probably gotten literally killed.
Geez.
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After Reggie, there's a filmed piece from Barry Bonds (Willie was his godfather). Barry speaks deeply about how his generation bears the responsibility to "keep that torch alive for the next generation of black players."
Alas, Barry may get his hands burned, given how few black players there are his generation to pass that torch to. Can you believe that there are zero African-Americans on the rosters tonight? We've come a long way…but we've gone back, too.
(The Giants feature Heliot Ramos, who is from Puerto Rico, and Jorge Soler, a black Cuban. The Cardinals don't even have any dark Latinos. The 2024 Cards are as thoroughly white as the 1924 Cards. Holy Rogers Hornsby!)
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