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What: “SportsCentury: Reggie Jackson”

Where: ESPN Classic, today, 5 p.m.

It’s October, it’s World Series time, so it’s time for a Reggie Jackson profile on ESPN Classic’s outstanding “SportsCentury” series. Coming up the rest of the week are Don Larsen, Mickey Mantle, Curt Flood and Bob Gibson.

Jackson isn’t easy to capture, but the producers here seem to have done it. Maybe the best description comes from Bay Area sports columnist Dave Newhouse: “I think of the three faces of Eve. I think of the nine faces of Reggie. He’s like those game shows where you’ve got six doors and there are six different things behind every door. . . . And you don’t know what’s back there. That’s like Reggie. He was like all those doors in one. You know, you’d open it up, and you never know what would come out.”

You’ll learn things you may not know, such as that, during Jackson’s formative years, his father spent six months in prison for moonshining. Jackson was one of six children of African American and Latino descent, and early in his childhood his parents divorced. His mother selected three children to go with her to Baltimore; the other three, including Reggie, went with the father to Cheltenham, Pa., near Philadelphia.

After his sophomore year at Arizona State in 1966, Jackson signed with the Kansas City Athletics for an $85,000 bonus. He was called up in 1967. The A’s were a wild bunch, although maybe not as wild as their reputation indicated. Says former A’s announcer Monte Moore: “We had guys come to our ballclub late in the season from other teams and they’d be there for two or three days and you’d say, ‘How do you like it here?’ And they’d say, ‘I expected to see blood in the clubhouse.’ ”

In late 1976, after one season in Baltimore, Jackson signed as a free agent with the Yankees and got a five-year, $3-million contract. His battles with Billy Martin are well-chronicled, as is Jackson’s three-homer game in the 1977 World Series against the Dodgers.

Says New York sports columnist Mike Lupica: “Whether you love him or not, hate him or not, he won. He’d always say, ‘It’s in the books. You can look it up.’ Sports is about memory and imagination. Who gave you more memories than this guy. Nobody did?”

Even though he could be rude and standoffish at times, reporters generally liked Jackson because he was usually good for a quote.

At the end of the one-hour profile, Jackson says: “I’ve always been able to hear and read what I say before I say it. That’s why I’m a good quote, a good interview. If I say something that’s uncomfortable for someone’s ears, it’s going to be the truth. I just happen to voice it, but it’s the truth. It’s not my opinion.”