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Unlike many professional baseball players who spend years in the minors before being promoted to the parent club, Reggie Jackson (son of Negro League player Martinez Jackson) wasted no time making a name for himself in the big leagues.
Jackson, an outstanding football and baseball player at Arizona State, was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics in 1966. He was on the Athletic’s roster in 1967, a rising superstar when the team moved to Oakland in 1968 (29
HR, 74 RBI), and a full-fledged superstar in 1969, leading the American League with a .608 slugging percentage and 123 runs scored.
From 1971 - 1975, Jackson led the A’s to five straight Western Division titles, including three consecutive World Series wins from 1972 - 1974. He hit 32 homeruns in 1971, and matched that total in 1973, the year he won the American League’s Most Valuable Player award.
In 1976, when the team was broken up due to free agency, Jackson signed with Baltimore. After one season, he moved onto the New York Yankees where he earned the nickname “Mr. October,” hitting three homeruns in game six of the 1977 World Series. While he often clashed with manager Billy Martin and owner George Steinbrenner,
Jackson remained in New York for five seasons before moving onto California, helping the Angels to two Western Division titles in 1982 and 1986.
Jackson played a total of 21 seasons, winning four American League homerun titles, and finishing with a total of 563 homeruns. Jackson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993.
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