The One People Describe With Their Hands

Reggie Jackson's power was never a projection. It was not something scouts squinted at and imagined five years down the road. It was there the first time anybody handed him a bat, and it was there on the biggest stage in the sport before he turned 26.

July 13, 1971. Tiger Stadium. He was not even supposed to be in the game. He got added late when Tony Oliva went down, and Jackson showed up with a strained hamstring of his own. Earl Weaver sent him up to pinch-hit for Vida Blue in the bottom of the third with the American League down 3-0 and Aparicio standing on first.

Dock Ellis threw one pitch he would spend the rest of his life answering questions about.

The ball went up into the right-field night and hit the light tower on the roof, then dropped back down onto the field. Estimates put it somewhere past 520 feet, but the number was never the point. The point was that everyone in that ballpark understood, in real time, that the only thing between that baseball and the streets of Detroit was a piece of steel nobody thought was within reach.

Six home runs were hit that night. Every one of them by a future Hall of Famer. Bench, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Killebrew, Clemente, Jackson. Fifty-five years later, only one of them is the home run people describe with their hands instead of numbers.