Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, better known as Mr. October due to historic playoff performances, accuses former Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig of frustrating his plans to acquire the Oakland Athletics in the early 2000s.
With rumors of the A’s moving to Las Vegas growing more and more persistent, the subject remains relevant.
Jackson is a legend in Oakland. He won the World Series five times, including three times in an A’s uniform. He also shone in a Yankees uniform despite a strained relationship with controversial manager Billy Martin. He finally ended his stellar career by returning to Oakland in 1987.
In a recent interview, Jackson claims to have offered then-owner Ken Hoffman $25 million more than any offers Hoffman had received. This is when Time Commissioner Bud Selig allegedly used his influence and caused the team to be sold to his time friend from college, Lew Wolff, for $180 million in 2005. .
By this time, Jackson had assembled a group of investors that included Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. According to the former power hitter, this group would have allowed him to buy the entire National League.
The influential Bud Selig had decided otherwise and Reggie Jackson came out bitter from this adventure, so much that he thought of taking legal action to assert his rights. Friends close to him and with a connection to baseball wisely dissuaded him from taking action so as not to tarnish his image.
In the wake of rumors of the franchise moving to the Nevada desert, wouldn’t it have been favorable if Jackson could fulfill his dream and own the franchise then? Despite a few surprising seasons in the field, the A’s accumulate failures at the box office and do not have the means to realize their ambitions to build a new stadium in Oakland.
The fact that a former A’s would have been at the head of the team would certainly have given a sense of pride and belonging to the thousands of supporters who were just waiting for it. On the contrary, the concession has only stalled since and risks changing state shortly.
Reggie Jackson is pretty vocal these days. Paying the price for a documentary summarizing his career, Jackson explains why he left the Yankees organization after 30 years of loyal service to the Steinbrenner father and son.
Now a member of the Houston Astros organization, Jackson says he feels more useful there, he who felt like he had become a green plant in the offices of his former employer. Comments that have enough to revive a rather stormy passage as a player in New York.
