Ex-Yankees aid Jackson in homer quest
By MILTON RICHMAN UPI Sports Writer
NEW YORK—Any day now somebody is sure to buttonhole Roger Maris, jump the gun a little, and ask him whether he thinks fence-wrecking Reggie Jackson can break his home run record.
"Sure, why not?" Roger Maris will say. "Records were meant to be broken."
Reggie Jackson, who could turn out to be baseball's newest superstar and the first one the Oakland A's ever had, isn't so sure about that.
Although the season isn't half over yet, Jackson already is beginning to hear the Maris-Ruth talk and because it is so early, he's trying to block it out the
same way Maris tried during the first half of 1961, the year he hit 61 homers to pass Ruth's 60.
"Sixty homers is a tremendous feat to me," says Oakland's 23-year-old powerhouse, "and it's something I'm not capable of right now."
Three persons are responsible for Jackson's overnight emergence as the major leagues' No. 1 seat-buster. The first two are a pair of ex-Yankees, Hank Bauer, who manages the A's, and Joe DiMaggio, who coaches them while the third is Richie Allen, who is having a spot of difficulty with the Phillies at the moment.
Bauer's role in Jackson's home run output is the most intriguing. He merely tells his young right-fielder to go up there and hit one
out and Jackson does. It sounds like a gag but it really isn't.
"If we're in a close game or need a run," Jackson says, "I'll look at Hank and say, 'any way on base,' which means does he want me to bunt, push or do something like that, and he'll say, 'heck no, hit the ball outta the park.' This has a bearing on what I do up there at the plate, like what I'm gonna look for or what I'm gonna try to do."
Jackson also has been getting considerable help from DiMaggio, who did a little hitting himself in his day.
"Joe and I have been very close on the field and when we're traveling on the plane," Jackson says, "We're talking and conversing baseball all the time. Back in spring training Joe and I worked about an hour, an hour and a half a day on just making contact with the ball. I went to a heavier bat, up to 37 ounces, and I asked Joe if he thought it was too much for me to handle. He said no."
Even before coming to spring training, Jackson had this idea in his head of trying a heavier bat, so he got in touch with the fellow who swings the biggest one around, Richie Allen. He used a 40-ouncer.
"Richie was very helpful, too," Jackson points out. "Swinging a heavier bat makes me more aware of what I have in my hands. I really can't go for a bad pitch with a bat of this weight and by being conscious of what I have, it makes me bear down and try to pick out a good pitch."
little use for the Yankees generally and for that matter, he may feel the same way now, although he hasn't said one way or the other lately.
What he has been saying is that the A's won't draw their full potential of customers until they come up with a legitimate super-star. Reggie Jackson could be it and wouldn't be be a touch of irony if two former players from the club Finley always knocked had a hand in the whole thing?
Meanwhile, Jackson goes his own sweet way hitting baseballs over the fence. He hit 29 homers last season, his first full one with the A's.
Oakland fans are supposed to be hard to impress but they gave Jackson a standing ovation when he hammered his last homer over the wall.
"It touched me," he says about the reception he got. "Made me have a nice feeling."
Quotes -
SAIGON—Spec. 5 Washington Clemons, 21, one of the first 814 U.S. soldiers leaving South Vietnam:
"I didn't really get the feeling in my heart that we were leaving until we got to the airport."
FAYETTE, Miss. — Mayor Charles Evers, at his inauguration ceremonies;
"Men have gone and given their lives that all men—black men, white men, rich men, poor men—can live on this God's earth and enjoy the things God put here for us without being hated and without being discriminated against."
"This debate will affect us and in a large measure determine our national security for years to come."
WASHINGTON—Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, attacking New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller's mission to Latin America:
"The truth is that our relations with Latin America are in disarray. The Nixon administration has yet to devise a policy to deal with the deterioration; Rockefeller's odyssey was hit upon as a diversionary tactic."
WASHINGTON - Sen. John C.
Stennis, D-Miss., looking ahead
to the Senate debate on the anti-
ballistic missile system:
CAPE KENNEDY—Apollo 11 launch Director Rocco A. Petrone addressing his staff as plans for the moontrip enter their final stages:
"This is the big one we've been working on for eight or nine years. We're going into it with good posture. Let's keep everything moving."
10 KANSAN Jly. 15 1969
ATLANTA—Gov. Lester Maddox, commenting on television on the Justice Department's suggestions for immediate integration in Georgia's public schools:
There was a time when Charlie Finley, the A's owner, had
"So far as I'm concerned, they can take their ultimatum and ram it in their satchels—or suitcases if they want to, and phoey on the whole crowd."
LONDON — Elizabeth Taylor announcing she is considering retiring from her acting career:
"Unless something comes along that absolutely captivates me, the life of leisure—if you can call being married to Richard Burton and the mother of four children leisure—is for me."
CHICAGO — A police officer replying to a service. station attendant wanting to know how to give water to two African lions, a mountain lion, a black bear, and a hyena-stranded animals on a disabled flat-bed truck:
"Cautiously."
YALTA, USSR—American astronaut Frank Borman, thanking Russian teen-agers for their hospitality at a youth camp near here:
"We came as friends and we will leave as closer friends."
MONROE, Ga. — A Federal Aviation Agency investigator at the scene of the crash of a small airliner which killed 14 passengers:
"It's torn up about as bad as anything I've ever seen."
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Astronauts will leave moon plaque
WASHINGTON (UPI) — The Appollo 11 astronauts will leave a metal plaque behind when they depart from the moon later this month. Here is its message:
here men from the planet Earth First set foot upon the moon. July 1969 AD We came in peace for all mankind. Neil A. Armstrong Edwin E. Aldrin Michael Collins. Richard Nixon, President, United States of America"
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the White House passed on and edited the inscription and it considers the choice of words to be those of the President. Etched on top will be two circles symbolizing the two hemispheres, with a dot in one to signify Cape Kennedy, where the mission began.
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