On October 18, 1977, Reggie Jackson hit three home runs on three consecutive first pitches, off three different pitchers, and the Yankees won their first World Series in 15 years. It remains the greatest single-game October performance baseball has ever seen.
DID YOU KNOW?
All three of Jackson's homers came on the first pitch of the at-bat, off three different Dodgers - Burt Hooton, Elias Sosa and Charlie Hough. Counting his final swing of Game 5, Jackson homered on four consecutive swings of the bat. His five home runs in that Series are still the record.
The 1977 Yankees had spent the summer tearing themselves apart. Jackson had declared himself "the straw that stirs the drink" in a magazine interview, infuriating Thurman Munson. Billy Martin tried to bench him in Boston, and the two nearly came to blows in the Fenway dugout on national television. If you have read about the Bronx Zoo, you know the circus. Game 6 of the World Series is where the circus became a coronation.
The Night
The Dodgers actually led 3-2 after three innings at Yankee Stadium, 56,407 fans getting restless. Then the fourth inning came, and with it the moment everything about that fractured season flipped.
Jackson had walked on four pitches in the second. In the fourth, he turned on Burt Hooton's first pitch - a two-run homer to right, and the Yankees led 4-3. In the fifth, he hit Elias Sosa's first pitch into the right-field seats for two more. And in the eighth, with the outcome settled but history waiting, he hit Charlie Hough's first pitch - a knuckleball - on a line into the center-field bleachers, the longest shot of the three.
Three swings. Three pitchers. Nine total bases. The Yankees won 8-4 and were world champions for the first time since 1962.
What It Ended
The drought had real weight. Fifteen years without a title for the franchise of Ruth and Gehrig, an eternity by Yankees standards - and the club Steinbrenner had bought in 1973 had been built, loudly and expensively, to end it. Jackson was the Boss's signature free agent, signed to be exactly this. On the biggest night of the season, he was exactly this.
The performance also settled accounts inside the clubhouse. Martin, who had tried to bench him, hugged him. Munson, who had feuded with him all summer, tipped his cap. "For one night," the New York Times wrote the next morning, "all those family feuds were swept under the rug."
Mr. October
Jackson was the Series MVP, naturally - the nickname "Mr. October" stuck for good that night, though Munson had coined it earlier in the season as a jab. It stopped being a jab at about 11:15 PM on October 18, 1977.
Babe Ruth had hit three homers in a World Series game twice. Jackson matched him, and did it on first pitches, with a season of public warfare on his shoulders. Fifty years later, nobody has done it again. October has had bigger stages since - but it has never had a bigger night.
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Sources: Baseball-Reference.com (1977 World Series Game 6 box score) · MLB.com (1977 World Series recap) · SABR Games Project (October 18, 1977) · New York Times (October 19, 1977)
Photo: [Jim Accordino](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reggie_Jackson_bats_at_Yankee_Stadium.jpg) via Wikimedia Commons, [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en).
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