A baseball great contemplates his legacy in Prime Video’s ‘Reggie’
To baseball fans of a certain age, Reggie Jackson was perhaps the premier slugger of his generation, a Hall-of-fame clutch hitter with five World Series titles, an MVP award and numerous other laurels to his credit. But at 74, he’s also a man in search of his legacy, which is detailed in a documentary coming to Prime Video.
In “Reggie,” which begins streaming Friday, March 24, we meet Jackson at his home in Monterey, Calif., where he’s considering his legacy as a trailblazing Black athlete fighting for dignity, respect and a place at the table.
During his life and career – which spanned 1967-87 with the Oakland A’s, Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees and California Angels – Jackson witnessed a dramatic shift in race relations in this country, from the beginning of his playing days in Birmingham, Ala., at the height of the civil rights movement; to Oakland and the rise of the Black Panthers; and to New York as baseball’s highest player in the poverty-stricken Bronx.
The film features interviews with a very candid and at times raw Jackson as well as with former A’s teammates Joe Rudi, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers. He also sits down with fellow legends Julius Erving, Hank Aaron, Derek Jeter and others to discuss their own experiences, how far Black athletes have really come and the leagues they want to leave behind for future generations.
The film is directed by Alex Stapleton (“Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea”), who came at this not as a baseball fan but as somewhat of an outsider, which she thinks gave Jackson a level of comfort that enabled him to be open.
“I think what I was so excited about with Reggie,” she explains, “is he’s very authentic and he doesn’t really hide who he is. And I think that in a world today where there’s so many docs being made about athletes ... I think Reggie’s story is a little bit of fresh air in that environment (where athletes are very media-savvy) in a way because I think that even to this day he’s very honest about his feelings and the mistakes that he made and maybe how it could have been different.