Your version, my version, and the truth

Over the past few years, I have become extremely interested in the subject of memory. There have been many theories about exactly what memory is, but the most prevalent seems to be that it fades over time, and even that the more you try to remember, the less accurate it becomes, like making photo copies of photo copies. Several movies and TV shows have used this as a theme, most recently The Affair, which examined a story from a “he recalls/she recalls” point of view. The truth, “they” say, is somewhere in the middle (is it really? the exact middle?).

Several years ago I did some posts based on Moose Skowron‘s appearance on the NPR show, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (more on that here and here). I have always been fascinated by the ability of athletes to recall minute details about specific games, such as the weather, the pitch, who was playing where, etc. But thanks to sites like Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference, the majority of game information is now documented, making it difficult — if not impossible — to fudge. In many cases, I’m willing to allow that the person telling the story has no evil intentions; it may very well be that that’s the way s/he remembers events.

Why do I bring all this up? I forget. No, just kidding.

I recently read Phil Pepe’s latest release, Yankee Doodles: Inside the Locker Room with Mickey, Yogi, Reggie, and Derek. It’s a sweet little book reminiscing about his years covering the team as a beat writer. The chapter about Reggie Jackson in particular caught my attention.

We have heard several versions of what transpired on June 18, 1977, in a nationally televised game against the Boston Red Sox. Yankees manager Billy Martin, displeased with the way Reggie Jackson went after a soft fly ball in right field, replaced him in the middle of an inning, leading to an altercation between the two in the dugout that was caught on camera. Pepe recounts Martin’s and Jackson’s sides of the proceedings and adds his own reaction. Is anyone lying outright? Or are they just offering their story as they remember it? Jackson wrote about it at length in his most recent memoir, Becoming Mr. October (2013), in which he raises the specter of racism a lot. I find it uncomfortable to challenges his assertions, or anyone who claims discrimination of religion, ethnicity, or other characteristics. That doesn’t mean they might not be hypersensitive, imagining slights when none are intended, or just plain wrong. (That section is available for perusal via a “look inside” on the book’s Amazon page.) Jackson also published a memoir in 1984, but I don’t have that handy nor do I remember (!) what he said about the events in the Boston game in that one.

Of course, Martin died in 1989, so we can’t ask him now what he recalls of that day. NY Times‘ writer Bill Pennington is about to release his major opus, Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius. I looked through the review copy but couldn’t find that much detail about it at first glance (544 pages). It strikes me that such an incident would be a major event in Martin’s managerial career but maybe I’m wrong, in the “grand scale of things.”

Point is, Jackson was there. Martin was there. So were other Yankee players and coaches. Pepe was not; he could only observe from afar and interview afterwards. Participant versus witness.

But even being a participant is no guarantee of being able to offer the “one true” version of events.