Baseball needling, then and now

There may no crying in baseball, but that doesn’t mean there’s no whining. Recently, Tim Anderson, the outstanding shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, whined about needling he received from Josh Donaldson, a longtime star who currently plays third base for the New York Yankees. There has always been needling in baseball.

Donaldson needled Anderson, who is black, by calling him “Jackie,” a reference to the great Jackie Robinson. In a game between the Yankees and the White Sox, Donaldson greeted Anderson by saying, “what’s up, Jackie?”

After the game, Anderson complained about this remark. MLB suspended Donaldson for one game and fined him an undisclosed amount.

Donaldson says the “Jackie” reference harked back to a 2019 Sport Illustrated article in which Anderson called himself “today’s Jackie Robinson.” Donaldson claims he and Anderson had joked about the comment before. Anderson agrees that Donaldson had uttered similar comments in the past but says he objected at the time.

Who’s telling the truth? It doesn’t matter. Anderson’s self-comparison to Robinson is fair grounds for being needled.

Anderson is an excellent, dynamic player, but he’s no Jackie and it was self-aggrandizing for him to suggest otherwise. (Let’s distinguish Donaldson’s needling from the kind of ugly racial taunting to which Robinson constantly was subjected.) If Donaldson’s comment got under Anderson’s skin, it might be because Anderson is embarrassed at having compared himself to the legend.

Robinson’s race and status as a civil rights icon don’t justify punishing Donaldson. If anything, by reminding Anderson that, in effect, “you’re no Jackie Robinson,” Donaldson was affirming Jackie’s greatness as a player and pioneer.

Punishing Donaldson was ridiculous. But what can you expect from MLB? This is the outfit that took the all-star game away from Atlanta last year as punishment for Georgia’s voting law, which expanded voting opportunities and helped produce record turnout in this year’s primaries

When a player needles an opponent, the purpose is to get under his skin and, with luck, throw him off his game. I suspect, however, that most baseball needling occurs in the clubhouse and is directed at teammates.

Donaldson and Anderson will encounter each other a handful of times per season for a few minutes at most. Teammates are together constantly from February until October. They are bound to get on each others nerves and needle one another for that reason or maybe just out of boredom. Jim Bouton’s kiss-and-tell book Ball Four provides a good sense of this.

Reggie Jackson (the self-proclaimed “straw that stirs the drink”) was notorious for needling his teammates. Around this day 50 years ago, he made the mistake of needling big Mike Epstein.

The Oakland As were in Texas. Epstein, a Jew, had left tickets for four friends of his father — the Berman family. When Jackson saw this, he said, “these are family tickets, and there ain’t no Jews in Texas.” When Epstein reminded Jackson that this was none of his business, Reggie responded, “I’m appointing it my business.” He then began crossing off the four names.

Jackson had gone too far. Epstein, a former fullback for Cal, charged his nemesis, threw him to the floor, and started landing punches. Then he grabbed Jackson by the throat and began choking him.

Gene Tenace, the backup catcher and soon-to-be World Series hero, intervened, but was unable to pull Epstein away. Finally, seeing that Jackson was in serious danger, Tenace wrapped his forearm around Epstein’s windpipe and pulled the slugger back. The two landed on the floor not far from where Jackson was on his back in distress.

At that moment, manager Dick Williams arrived. He concluded that Tenace was the aggressor and started screaming at him. It’s always the scrubs, not the stars, who get blamed first.

Eventually, Williams sorted the matter out. He got Jackson and Epstein to agree they could go on hating each other without fighting. As far as we know, they didn’t fight again (Epstein was traded at the end of the season), but two years later Jackson tangled with another teammate, Billy North.

Jackson continued his needling ways as a New York Yankee. He met his match in Mickey Rivers.

Once, as the team bus rolled through a run down neighborhood, Jackson pointed to a drunk who was stumbling around and said “that’s Mickey in ten years.” Rivers responded, “I might be a bum, but I’ll be a happy bum.” Rivers believed, as others did, that Jackson wasn’t happy in his own skin.

Rivers, an African-American, drove home that thought in the ultimate put down of his teammate:

Reginald Martinez Jackson. You got a white man’s first name, a Spanish man’s middle name, and a black man’s last name.

No wonder you’re so f****d up. You don’t know who you are.

If Rivers made this identity-laced remark today and Jackson complained, there’s a good chance “Mick the Quick” would be punished. But I doubt Jackson would complain. F****d up Reggie might have been, but he wasn’t that fragile.