August 12, 1977 – Yankees 10-9, Angels 1-3
- Sal Maiorana
- Aug 12, 2017
- 3 min read
NEW YORK – This is why Reggie Jackson should have been batting cleanup all season.
He was an egomaniac, to be sure; no one would ever deny that, and even Reggie would probably admit it. But in 1977, at a time in baseball before Sabermetrics had gained a foothold, a team’s best power hitter almost automatically was placed in the No. 4 spot in the batting order.
Reggie had been there his whole career, for good reason, but in the three-plus months he’d been a Yankee, Billy Martin too often felt it was more important to cut down Jackson’s oversized opinion of himself rather than put the slugger where he belonged in the lineup.
Martin, though, was finally coming around. For the third straight game Jackson batted cleanup, and he torched the Angels in a doubleheader annihilation as he totaled four hits (a double, a triple and two home runs), drew two walks, drove in five runs, and even threw a runner out at the plate.
It was the kind of performance George Steinbrenner was paying him $3 million for, yet Martin still couldn’t bring himself to praise Jackson, saying, “I don’t think it’s a one-man show. If we all play our game, we’ll catch the Red Sox. We’ve just got to keep winning and not look at the scoreboard.”
The man could be such a rock head.
Just as newsworthy as the Yankees’ offensive explosion – 19 runs on 25 hits in the two games – was the pair of complete-game gems thrown by Catfish Hunter and Ed Figueroa. Hunter gave up just one run on six hits, while Figueroa allowed three runs on six hits in his first distance-going outing in more than two months.
The second batter of the first game, Jerry Remy, hit a solo homer off Hunter and it looked like it might be yet another rough one for the wily veteran. Instead, he proceeded to blank the Angels the rest of the way as only three other batters reached scoring position. A Chris Chambliss homer in the second tied it, and Jackson’s RBI double in the fourth gave the Yankees the lead for good. Jackson later hit a two-run triple in the sixth and Chambliss hit his second home run, a two-run blast in the eighth.
In the nightcap, the Angels again struck first as three hits and a walk off Figueroa resulted in two runs. But Jackson’s leadoff walk in the second started what became a three-run go-ahead burst, and after California pulled even in the third, Jackson’s solo homer in the sixth started a four-run rally that put the Yankees in front to stay. Jackson later hit a solo shot in the seventh, his 21st of the year.
“We don’t have room for too many mistakes,” said Jackson. “I’m trying to show people that the Yankees are not going to succumb to pressure, that we are capable of returning the confidence that George Steinbrenner, Gabe Paul and Billy Martin have put into us. They assembled a great ballclub.”
The man could be such a kiss ass.
They hadn’t been all that “great” but the Yankees were starting to make headway. With their fifth straight victory, they moved a season-best 15 games over .500 and pulled within 3.5 games of the Red Sox.
It finally seemed like Jackson’s upside-down world was starting to level off and he was finding his bearings in New York. He admitted that if he could start his tenure with the Bombers over, he would have done two things. “I’d be very, very quiet in spring training, and I would have shaken everybody’s hand after that home run,” he said. “Those are the only two things I would have done differently.”
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