Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) Read Free Page B

you. He signed Willie Stargell a few years ago, and he’s gonna recommend that the A’s draft you with their first pick.”
    The A’s had that pick because they’d been the last-place team in the American League in 1965. The next year, the last-place team in the league was the Yankees, and they had the very first pick in the draft. I knew that Tom Greenwade, the great scout who signed Mickey Mantle and Bobby Murcer and a lot of other players for the Yankees, was looking at me, and he liked what he saw. Never mind the Mets. Who knows, if I’d stayed in college another year, I might’ve come to the
Yankees
ten years before I did.
    But whoever drafted me, Bobby Winkles told me, “I’d recommend that you sign and leave college. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. And the money, Reggie, I’m sure will help your family.”
    Which was a very fatherly thing for him to do. His teams were always contenders for the national title. He won the title in 1965, 1967, and 1969 as it was, and who knows, if I’d stayed, maybe he would’ve won five in a row. But he was looking out for me first!
    I went ahead and signed with the Kansas City Athletics. Or rather, I signed with Charlie Finley, the A’s owner. That was the best part of all.
    He was a special character. I flew into Chicago with my dad (alsomy agent!), and we went directly to Mr. Finley’s office there, at the insurance company he had on Michigan Avenue. I can still remember the address: 310 South Michigan Avenue.
    Finley could be a funny-looking guy, with those little Bear Bryant hats and those loud jackets he always wore. (He was from Birmingham.) But he was very impressive when I first saw him, sitting at a big desk in his big, mahogany office. The biggest office I’d ever been in before was the principal’s office. You could look out the window from the twenty-something floor, and you could see out over Lake Michigan. To me, it felt like I could see the North Pole, or maybe California.
    Finley sent his secretary, Rebecca, who was very nice as well as very attractive, out for lunch, and she brought back this amazing meal, oysters, and shrimp, and crabs. I remember he cleared his desk of all its papers and put the seafood right on it, in a very large plate. Then he mixed up this sauce himself, Tabasco sauce with ketchup and vinegar, touch of mayonnaise, and we ate the cracked crabs, and the oysters, and the shrimp right there with his special sauce. We drank whatever we wanted, water, soda, tea, lemonade. Charlie rolled up his sleeves and ate with us. My dad and I were in heaven.
    He was a hard man to figure sometimes, Charlie Finley. Thinking about it now, quite frankly he might’ve had us eat like that in his office because he didn’t know of a good restaurant that would seat my dad and me. This was still 1966, after all. Or maybe he just wanted to put on a show, which he always liked to do. We had a great time.
    We were in his office for three or four hours, talking about baseball and about finishing my college education. He volunteered to manage my signing bonus and guaranteed to make me money, and he was true to his word. He invested $37,500 of my bonus, and he got it all back to me, with profit. He also put aside $12,000 for me to go back to college. I did for a couple of semesters, even though I never quite graduated, ending up twelve to fifteen hours short of graduation. I was an education major, with a minor in biology. I was a good student, sat up front, never missed class. It got to be too much once I became a professional ballplayer.
    I should have taken the few remaining courses and graduated. Ihave since connected with Arizona State University to finish the remaining courses I need online. Once I do, I’m going to finally go to graduation.
    After the meeting in his office, Charlie flew us over to his house, in La Porte, Indiana. We flew across Lake Michigan in a private plane. I thought, “Wow!” I had never been in anyone’s private plane before. He had