Reggie’s Three-Homer Night a Real Hall of Fame Moment

Now that he has been admitted to baseball’s Hall of Fame, it’s worth recalling Reggie Jackson’s greatest day in baseball.

It was Tuesday night, Oct. 18, 1977, in Yankee Stadium.

On a night the New York Yankees wrapped up a six-game World Series victory over the Dodgers, Jackson hit home runs in the fourth, fifth and eighth innings--all on the first pitch. It gave him four consecutive, first-pitch home runs in official at-bats, because he had homered in his last at-bat in Game 5, two days earlier.

In Game 6, he walked on four pitches in the second, then homered twice to right field. In the eighth, he finished with a flourish. He hit a 450-footer to center.

Jackson’s ’77 World Series:

--Hit five home runs in six games.

--Set a record with 10 runs scored in a World Series.

--Set a record with 25 total bases.

--Tied a record with 12 total bases in one game.

--Tied a record by scoring four runs in one game.

--Hit .450, had eight runs batted in and had a 25% home run percentage. His three Game 6 home runs came against Burt Hooton, Elias Sosa and Charlie Hough.

Said Hough afterward: “I thought the wind blew mine out.”

Add Jackson: Reggie isn’t alone with three homers in a World Series game. Babe Ruth did it twice, in 1926 and 1928.

Trivia time: What major league baseball manager has the most 100-victory seasons?

He wants Joe: Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon, after writing he wants Joe Montana, not Steve Young, to start at quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday:

“If at the end of their careers, somebody said you could see Joe DiMaggio or Jim Brown play one more time, would you say no? Of course not.

“More than a dozen teams in the NFL don’t have one reliable quarterback. . . . The 49ers, meanwhile, have three. The Man, Young, and recently demoted Steve Bono (who could beat out the incumbent at 15 or more of the 28 teams in the league.)

“This is what Steve Young is living with at the moment. I know Joe Montana, young man, and you, sir, are no Joe Montana.”

Not perfectly clear: Golfer Jerry Pate once asked USGA official Sandy Tatum for a ruling during a tournament.

Tatum: “Jerry, if we were to grant you relief, it would alter the configuration of your shot.”

Pate: “What does that mean in English? I went to Alabama, not Harvard.”

More Most: Former Celtic player and coach Tom Heinsohn recalled recently a conversation with Celtic radio announcer Johnny Most, who died Sunday.

Heinsohn said he asked Most for advice when he was breaking into the Celtics’ TV broadcast team, in an era when most of New England’s Celtic fans turned down their TV volume and turned up Most’s radio broadcasts.

“He told me: ‘Tommy, try to be emotional. But don’t worry. Nobody’s listening to you anyway.’ ”

Trivia answer: Joe McCarthy. His New York Yankees teams won 100 or more six times--in 1932, 1936, 1937, 1939, 1941 and 1942. Second place: Connie Mack, five.

Quotebook: Baseball scout Buck O’Neil, 78, talking in 1990 about Bo Jackson in his first year in pro baseball: “To look at an extraordinary athlete, ain’t nothing better. I’m going to compare it to sex, to a beautiful woman, to music--the young Louis Armstrong, or Stravinsky. Being with a woman you want to be with. Or a woman that I think is too good for me.”