Jackson Has Another Altercation; Man Arrested on Assault Charge

Only 10 days after a parking-lot altercation with a heckler following an exhibition game at Tucson, Reggie Jackson was involved in another incident Saturday. This time, he said, he had to wrestle a tire iron away from a man who had raised it as if to strike him.

Tim Williams, 20, of Glendora, was booked by Palm Springs police on a felony charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Bail was set at $10,000.

A friend of Williams’, Arthur Duim, 23, of Temple City, was charged with disturbing the peace. He was released on a promise to appear when called.

“What’s new?” Jackson, 38, said regretfully as he stood at his locker in the Angel clubhouse here. “Just another day in the life of. . . “

The incident, Jackson said, began at about 7:20 Saturday morning as he left his bungalow in the rear of the Gene Autry Hotel.

Jackson said he was walking toward the hotel restaurant to have breakfast when he became aware of a Volkswagen being driven recklessly across the lawns and pedestrian paths.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Jackson said. “I was still half asleep. I remember thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ”

Jackson said there were two men in the car drinking beer.

He said they recognized him and yelled, “Hey, Reggie, where’s the strip?”

Jackson said he warned them to leave before they got in trouble and told them he would call the police. He said they asked him when he was going to stop hitting .200 but that he continued to walk away until one of the men said:

“Hey, you bleeping nigger, when are you going to stop hitting .200?”

Jackson said he walked back to the car, where one of the men asked him how much money he had.

“I took about $4,000 out of my pocket,” Jackson. “I took my watch off and set it and the money on the ground.

“I said, ‘Here it is, come get it.’ The one guy said, ‘No, I want you to hit me so I can sue.’ They started to drive away, and I ran behind the car to get the license plate.”

Jackson said he then called the police and went to breakfast. It had yet to be served when Jackson was told two men wanted to see him at the front of the hotel.

“It was the same guys,” he said. “I told them they were already in enough trouble, that I had called the police.

“The one guy said he was going to kick my butt first. I took my watch off again. I told him to take a swing and that his buddy could help him. I grabbed the one guy, but I saw the other guy take a tire iron from behind his back and raise it over his head.

“I started toward him. He turned to run but ran straight into a (parked) car. I jumped on him, wrestled him to the ground and took the tire iron away. I told him, ‘I should make you eat this.’ ”

Instead, Jackson said, he handed it to Angel executive Red Patterson, who had witnessed the scene, and told Patterson: “Hold this, it might be evidence.”

It was at this point, Jackson said, that the police arrived and asked him if he wanted to make a citizen’s arrest. “I ended up having breakfast with two police officers as they took my report,” Jackson said.

Asked if the tire iron had been swung at Jackson, Police Lt. George Neesan said: ‘It’s my understanding that it wasn’t, but that it was exhibited in a dangerous manner.” Neesan said the two men were not intoxicated but “displayed some of the visual symptoms of having been drinking.”

Angel General Manager Mike Port, who encountered Jackson and the police moments after the incident ended, said he was satisfied that “our man wasn’t to blame.”