Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) by Kevin Reggie; Baker Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t able to hang on to his team—and it still didn’t make me feel any better.
    I wasn’t an old man yet. I wasn’t thirty-five or forty, I was still twenty-nine, and I thought, “What’s the matter with you, trading me away?” I drove over to my agent’s office, Gary Walker, who was also one of my best friends at the time and still today, and we just sat and talked. I didn’t know what to do. I’d been with the A’s since I wastwenty years old. I had played together with all those guys, and now we were all leaving. And I was going first.
    I was so upset that I just went and hid out for a while. I went to Hawaii, stayed at this hotel I liked on Waikiki, the Rainbow Hilton, where I used to go and do the commentary for the old
Superstars
sports shows they used to have. I wanted to get away, and I didn’t want to go back. Nothing against Baltimore, it was just that the A’s were the only team I ever played for. I knew nothing else. I was depressed or in shock, take your pick!
    And it was there that I figured, “Well, if that’s how it’s going to be, that’s how it’s going to be.” I knew then that I had them in a bind. They had just traded two pretty good players for Kenny Holtzman and me. And I took a cold, calculated attitude, just as I felt their attitude had been toward me.
    Charlie Finley got some good young players instead of just losing us to free agency. The Orioles got Kenny and me to help them make a pennant run. It worked out all around, and everybody’s happy—except for the players. Nobody asked us what
we
wanted. So I just felt, “Okay, you’re gonna trade me and not tell me about it beforehand, and do whatever you feel like doing? I’m good with that. If you’re going to do it this way, here’s how I’m going to do it. I’m gonna stay out here in Hawaii until you feel like doing what I want to do. Now we all good!!” I was okay with that.
    The Orioles wanted me to report right away, but I drew a line in the sand. I told them right up front I wanted the money I lost in arbitration. And more. I wanted a contract for $200,000. I knew that was what Dick Allen was making with the White Sox. He was the highest-paid player in the game at the time. I felt I deserved the same. I was going to either make that or sit out. Gary Walker listened to what I wanted, and he said I could get it. It would take time. But I could get what I wanted if I held out. He said to just stay out of the papers.
    So he started talking to Hank Peters, who was the Orioles’ general manager at the time. He was a good man—and if I had talked to him, I would probably have given in. But Gary kept me away, and kept the pressure on him, and kept me informed.
    I hung out in Hawaii, and Gary negotiated. They had never dealt with a player this way before. Nobody had in baseball, at least notsince Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale held out together on the Dodgers, back in the mid-1960s.
    I came back from Hawaii, stayed around the neighborhood where I was living in Berkeley. Worked out, stayed in shape, made a couple of trips down to Arizona to talk to Gary there. He kept negotiating with Hank Peters, who was a wonderful man, and in the end they got the deal done. I got the $200,000, minus the time I missed. That came out to $190,000, so I was the second-highest-paid player in baseball.
    I flew into Baltimore on May 1, 1976. Held a press conference, suited up, and took batting practice that night. They put the lights on in the stadium for me, and I hit until 11:30 or midnight. Dave Duncan was on the Orioles, too, by then, he gave me his number 9 so I could wear it. That’s the kind of guy he was. Next day, I started the second game of a doubleheader against the A’s, drove in a run, and we won.
    I still felt like I was behind on the season. I just plunged in and kept taking extra batting practice until my hands bled.
    The only thing was, I didn’t understand the consequences of what I had done. I was still twenty-nine