Reggie

Fastball is without a doubt the best best Baseball documentary if not the best documentary ever made. Facing Nolan becomes a great companion to that title for reason I won't get into here.

Reggie was a personal hero of mine growing up and his jersey was the first I ever wore as a child. I thought I was familiar with his story, but learned a lot here.

I found this piece to be moving, informative and enlightening, however, I also found it somewhat depressing. It certainly paint a picture and drive home a message that it was a difficult time for black athletes. At the same time, the absence of laughter just left me with a burden I didn't plan to carry. Maybe we needed stories from Reggie's kids, or lighthearted interviews from his glory days. Seeing people like Dr. J, added a human element, but I needed more of that. Would have been nice to see a Ken Griffey as well, assuming there is a relationship there.

I saw what the film maker tried to do, but their was no joy in this movie and no matter what the struggle way, it appeared to me, Mr. Jackson had plenty to celebrate.

At the start of this documentary a calm, conversational Reggie Jackson says he's nervous about the film because he has no control over it. He needn't have worried. It's more a story about his career-long pursuit of diversity in baseball, all the way to the ownership level, than about his good guy/ bad guy reputation as a player. He's surrounded in this effort by friends, including Henry Aaron, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and Julius Erving. No contemporaries from his Bronx Zoo Yankee years are interviewed, so we don't get differing points of view about Reggie's clashes with Thurman Munson, Billy Martin, Mickey Rivers and others.

Reggie credits several players on the Oakland Athletics for helping him withstand mid-70s racism, but fails to mention coaches, veteran players or mentors who improved his game other than Joe DiMaggio. The facts about slow acceptance of Black players, managers, coaches and executives are true. It's also fair to say that Reggie confessed to being too aggressive at times in the media. Still, the lack of critics in this two-hour project unfortunately make it more boring than it should be.

A cool documentary of the professional life and career of Reggie Jackson through his words and eyes. This is an interesting look at the evolution of Jackson's career in respect to role and life of blacks in baseball and the civil rights moment in the United States. Jackson was a controversial player and still a controversial figure, but a colorful one, no doubt. If you were a lover of the Oakland A's of the early 1970's, or the New York Yankees of the 2nd half of that decade, then this is an extra special look at the man. The filmmaking is not great but the subject matter makes it worth watching.

This documentary is a mix of Reggie Jackson's impactful playing career, with his experiences with race relations in baseball both on the field as well as in management, which extends into him working to improve civil rights. To the baseball portion, it is a good overview of his career and his larger-than-life personality at least compared with someone less brash like Jackie Robinson. I never knew he was the highest paid player when he signed with the Yankees, after a short stint with the Baltimore Orioles (shout out to my team!). If you know a moderate amount about baseball, you'll know the Reggie swung so hard he twisted himself up lick a corkscrew, so he was a power hitter that helped his teams win multiple World Series. He takes that experience today to help more black youths get into the sport as well as increase the percent of black ownership of MLB teams. Overall, this was entertaining and informative.

Reggie Jackson is one of the most iconic athletes in the 20th Century. He was self anointed as the "straw that stirs the drink." Well the fizz is nowhere to be found in this flat and monotonous monolog on race and how Reggie was done wrong.

The early sequences of him in Birmingham were quite eye opening and shed some light on the times and even his future team as he came up with guys like Rudi and Fingers in Birmingham, both of whom are in the doc.

But it didn't stop there. For a guy that made hundreds of millions and sported one of the greatest, private car collections, you'd think Jackson was a victim of indentured servitude.

I'm sure Reggie has some great stories but for someone baring it all, they're conspicuously absent.

For someone so dynamic and exciting, Reggie comes across bitter and dare I say, a bit of a bore.