Jackson Says Players Need to Wake Up : Baseball: Hall of Famer warns of game’s vulnerability and tells those in it to appreciate what they have.

Mr. October tried to provide owners and players with some thoughts for all seasons Sunday as he was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame.

“We’re just caretakers, links in the chain of baseball tradition,” Reggie Jackson said during a 24-minute speech many felt was among the most meaningful ever here.

“So, if your name is Peter O’Malley or George Steinbrenner or Ted Turner,” he said, “or if your name is Kirby, Roger, Barry or Cal, if the game is lost to the economic forces that drive it, then we’ve lost the uniqueness of the game.

“Let’s remember the people who paved the way and be mindful of the game’s vulnerability. We need to humanize it, not exploit it to a point where future generations won’t be able to afford the bill when it comes due.”

Jackson said later he didn’t mean to anoint himself the head caretaker, but “I wanted to leave a footprint, a handprint. I wanted to say (to players, particularly) these are words you should . . . hear.”

He said that, “on a whole,” he doesn’t believe the current players appreciate the past, understand the link and are too wrapped up in their expensive toys to say “thank you,” to be grateful.

“They need to wake up, get a grip and realize what they have,” he said.

Would he be interested in spreading the message as commissioner, Jackson was asked during a news conference.

“I’d be interested, but I’d have to have a job description,” he said, adding it would take a considerable salary to get him to New York full time, and that he would only do it with the blessing of the Yankees and Upper Deck, the organizations he serves as assistant to the president.

Commissioner Jackson? He clearly took it seriously and thoughtfully.

It was that kind of day for the only inductee of 1993, who called it his top thrill.

Borrowing from Lou Gehrig, Jackson’s voice cracked near the end of his speech as he called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

“I had a dream, and I was lucky enough to have lived it--and still am (living it),” he said.

Jackson said later he was disappointed Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and Joe DiMaggio hadn’t accepted his invitations because they were links in his own chain and vital “to perpetuating the feeling that is so needed, but I also have to think how I’ll be when I’m 75 and inundated by requests.”

As the crowd chanted his name at times, Jackson said his five years as a player with the Yankees represented an “incredible ride,” and to owner George Steinbrenner, in attendance, he added, “thanks for the pinstripes, George.”

Jackson also thanked his father for stressing education and teaching him how to “climb the ladder of equality with dignity.”

He thanked John McNamara, who managed Jackson at Birmingham in the old Kansas City Athletics system in 1967 and was here Sunday at his invitation, for teaching him about “friendship, sensitivity and caring” by pulling the team out of restaurants that wouldn’t serve Jackson on the road.

“We ate a lot of cold sandwiches on the bus, but I’ll always remember John for stepping up at a time when very few did,” Jackson said.

He thanked former Arizona State football coach Frank Kush for instilling toughness--”he was as tough as Charlie Finley (the former A’s owner) and George Steinbrenner rolled into one”--and he thanked owner Gene Autry for giving him the opportunity to spend five years with the Angels, reaching the playoffs for the 10th and 11th times in his career and hitting his 500th homer against the A’s at Anaheim on Sept. 17, 1984.

“It was 17 years to the day after I hit my first homer for the A’s against the Angels in the same stadium,” he recalled, amid other thanks and a message that went beyond thanks.