Personal Life
During his freshman year at Arizona State, he met Jennie Campos, a Mexican-American. Jackson asked Campos on a date, and discovered many similarities, including the ability to speak Spanish, and being raised in a single parent home (Campos's father was killed in the Korean War). An assistant football coach tried to break up the couple because Jackson was black and Campos was considered white. The coach contacted Campos's uncle, a wealthy benefactor of the school, and he warned the couple that their being together was a bad idea. But the relationship held up and she later became his first wife. Jackson has been divorced since 1973. Kimberly, his only child, was born in the 1990s.
During the off-season, though still active in baseball, Jackson worked as a field reporter and color commentator for ABC Sports. Just over a month before signing with the Yankees in fall 1976, Jackson did analysis in the ABC booth with Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell the night his future team won the American League pennant on a homer by Chris Chambliss. During the 1980s (1983, 1985, and 1987 respectively), Jackson was given the task of presiding over the World Series Trophy presentations. In addition, Jackson did color commentary for the 1984 National League Championship Series (alongside Don Drysdale and Earl Weaver). After his retirement as an active player, Jackson returned to his color commentary role covering the 1988 American League Championship Series (alongside Gary Bender and Joe Morgan) for ABC.
He also made appearances in the film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, in which he played the Angels' outfielder diabolically programmed to kill the Queen of England. He also appeared in Richie Rich, BASEketball, Summer of Sam and The Benchwarmers. He played himself in the Archie Bunker's Place episode "Reggie-3 Archie-0" in 1982, a 1990 MacGyver episode, "Squeeze Play", and the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Polly in the Middle", from 2004. Jackson was also considered for the role of Geordi LaForge in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, a role which ultimately went to LeVar Burton. From 1981 to 1982 he hosted for Nickelodeon's Reggie Jackson's Wide World of Sports.
He co-authored a new book in 2010, Sixty-Feet Six-Inches, with fellow Hall of Famer Bob Gibson. The book, whose title refers to the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate, details their careers and approach to the game.
The Sega Master System baseball video game Reggie Jackson Baseball, endorsed by Reggie Jackson, was sold exclusively in the United States. Outside of the U.S., it was released as American Baseball.
Jackson has endured three fires to personal property, including a 1991 fire to his home in Oakland which destroyed his 1973 MVP Award. One of his warehouses holding several of his collectible cars was damaged in a fire, with several of the cars, valued at $3.2 million, ruined.
Jackson called on former San Francisco 49ers head coach and ordained minister Mike Singletary for spiritual guidance. Jackson credits Singletary, stating "he helped me drop that shell I put up."
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Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I went back to my work, but now without enthusiasm. I had looked through an open door that I was not willing to see shut upon me. I began to reflect upon life rather seriously for a girl of twelve or thirteen. What was I here for? What could I make of myself? Must I submit to be carried along with the current, and do just what everybody else did?”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)