Here's a great card I wish Topps rolled out with their 1970 set: a
highlight card for Reggie Jacksons 10-R.B.I. game on June 14th of 1969!
Take a look:
In a game where the Oakland A's stomped the Boston Red Sox 21-7,
Reggie led the way by going 5 for 6 at the plate with two homers, a
double and two singles.
While he "only" scored two runs, he drove in ten, becoming the
first player to drive in that many in a single game since Norm Zauchin
of the Red Sox did it on May 27th, 1955 against the Washington Senators.
Reggie was on his way to his first power-house season, slamming 47
homers while driving in 118 runs, scoring a league-leading 123, and
hitting at a .275 clip.
Those numbers would get him his first all-star berth, as well as a fifth-place finish in M.V.P. voting.
The Oakland dynasty of the mid-70's was starting to brew in 1969,
as players like Reggie, Sal Bando, Vida Blue, Jim Hunter and Rollie
Fingers were starting to ramp up their Major League careers.
They'd be joined by other future stars in Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace,
and an already established "veteran" (compared to these young studs)
Bert Campaneris.
Before anyone knew it, the A's would reel-off three straight World
Championships before flamboyant owner Charlie Finley raped his team and
got rid of all his star players either by trade or free agency.
By the end of the 1970's they'd be a last-place team, far from the juggernaut everyone witnessed just a few years earlier.
But on this day in 1969, Reggie reigned supreme!
It wouldn't be until Fred Lynn burst on to the baseball scene in
1975 that another Major Leaguer would drive in 10 or more runs in a
game, (June 18th, 1975) and then another 18-years until someone ELSE did
it, when Mark Whiten had a game of a lifetime,
hitting four homers while driving in 12 runs (tying the MLB record that
still stands), on September 7th of 1993.
