The amazing numbers of 'Mr. October'

Reggie Jackson doesn't hold the all-time home run record. He doesn't own the most World Series rings. But few players in baseball history are more closely associated with both the long ball and with clutch hitting under the brightest lights than "Mr. October."

Jackson simultaneously boasted one of the sport's largest personalities and most impressive resumes as the "straw that stirred the drink" across more than two decades in the big leagues. He swung for the fences and often succeeded, content to live with the prolific strikeout totals that accompanied the taters that made him an all-time fan favorite. And he'll always be remembered for backing up his big talk with even bigger hits, delivering time and time again on the big stage under the closest scrutiny of the New York media market.

For his birthday, here is a look back at some incredible statistics and stories from one of the titans of modern baseball.

• Jackson could have just as easily starred in football. His dreams were pointed that way when he was a junior at Cheltenham (Pa.) High School, but he twisted his knee and snapped his neck in separate football incidents within the same season. Jackson fractured five cervical vertebrae, and doctors warned him that he might not walk again. Instead, Jackson returned to both football and baseball way ahead of schedule.

Courted by several major universities for football, Jackson ultimately chose Arizona State University because the school allowed him to remain a two-sport athlete. He tried out for ASU’s baseball team wearing his football pants and cleats and still homered four times off one of the team’s varsity pitchers. He set a single-season school record as a sophomore in 1966 with 15 home runs.

• 10 more who picked the diamond over the gridiron

• The A’s selected Jackson with the second overall pick in the second MLB Draft in 1966, two years before the franchise moved from Kansas City to Oakland. The Mets’ first overall pick in that year’s draft was catcher Steven Chilcott, one of only four No. 1 picks that never made it to the Major Leagues. Meanwhile, Jackson is probably the greatest No. 2 overall pick in Draft history.

• Jackson burst onto the big league scene less than three years after he was drafted, blasting an incredible 37 homers in 91 games before the 1969 All-Star Game. After more than 50 years, that total is still the AL record (tied with Chris Davis, 2013) for most homers before the All-Star break, and it's two shy of Barry Bonds’ AL/NL record 39 first-half dingers set during his all-time record 73-homer 2001 campaign. Mark McGwire also belted 37 first-half taters for the Cardinals on his way to 70 in ‘98.

• That 1969 season marked the first of 16 years in which Jackson bopped at least 20 home runs, a total that is still tied with Eddie Murray, Alex Rodriguez, Babe Ruth, Jim Thome and Ted Williams for the sixth-most 20-homer seasons in AL/NL history. The only legends with more are Hank Aaron (20), Barry Bonds (19), Willie Mays (17), Albert Pujols (17) and Frank Robinson (17).

• Of course, as fans who watched Jackson can tell you, all those homers did come with a prodigious amount of strikeouts. Jackson’s 2,597 strikeouts are the all-time AL/NL record, though Jim Thome came very close by retiring with 2,548. Jackson and Thome combined for nearly 1,200 career home runs and they are both Hall of Famers, of course, so their teams lived with all the whiffs.

Jackson struck out at least 100 times in 18 of his 21 big league seasons, four more than any other hitter in AL/NL history.

• Even though strikeouts are vastly more prevalent in today’s game than when Jackson played, he was still head and shoulders above his peers when it came to punching out. FanGraphs’ era-adjusted stats list Jackson’s strikeout rate at 74% above the league average across his playing career, tied for the 11th-highest K%+ total (min. 3,000 plate appearances) since Jackie Robinson broke the AL/NL color barrier in 1947.

But, again, Jackson swung big for a reason. His era-adjusted isolated slugging (ISO) -- which gives added weight to extra-base hits -- was 80% better than his peers, also a top-20 mark within the Integration Era.

• Jackson’s second All-Star Game appearance in 1971 was his most memorable. He pinch-hit for teammate Vida Blue in the third inning against Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis and walloped arguably the most famous homer in All-Star Game history off the light tower on top of the right-field grandstand at Tiger Stadium. Coming decades before Statcast, we might never know for sure how long Jackson’s moonshot went (500 feet? 550? 650, as a group of Wayne State University physicists estimated?), but that has only added to the mystique surrounding that dinger.

• Fully formed as a Major League superstar, Jackson made five consecutive All-Star teams from 1971-75 while helping the A’s become only the second franchise to capture three straight World Series championships from ‘72-74. Jackson, however, did not get to play in the ‘72 Series against the Reds; he tore his hamstring while successfully stealing home as part of a double steal in the decisive Game 5 of the ALCS.

Earlier that year, Jackson told an interviewer, “I want to make me $100,000,” a top-of-the-line salary at that point in time. “I want to be hitting .300 and some change, hitting 35-40 homers, and driving in 100-110 runs.”

A motivated Jackson did just that in 1973. He rebounded from the sting of the previous October with one of his greatest seasons, leading the AL in homers (32), RBIs (117), runs (99), slugging (.531) and OPS (.914) to claim the league’s MVP Award by unanimous vote. In October, he batted .310 with six RBIs to take home World Series MVP honors in Oakland’s seven-game triumph over the Mets. That play netted Jackson the $125,000 salary he sought for ‘74.

• Many longtime baseball fans can instantly recognize Hall of Fame reliever Rollie Fingers’ mustache, but did you know Jackson was instrumental in Fingers’ decision to grow it? Jackson showed up to A’s Spring Training in 1972 with a mustache, and his teammates wanted him to get rid of it. Four teammates, including Fingers, grew mustaches hoping that manager Dick Williams would order everyone on the team -- including Jackson -- to shave.

Instead, A’s owner Charlie Finley liked the mustaches so much that he offered $300 to every player that grew one. Fingers grew to like his ‘stache so much that he chose to retire instead of play for the Reds in 1986 after Cincinnati told him to shave.

''The mustache is my trademark, and it has been for 15 years,” Fingers told the Reds. “I am not about to shave it off just to play baseball.''

• Jackson won the second of his four career home run titles in 1975, but it would be his last campaign in Oakland as Finley dismantled the A’s dynasty. Finley traded Jackson to the Orioles seven days before the start of the ‘76 season, and Jackson played just one season in Baltimore before taking advantage of the brand new free-agent market and signing a five-year deal with the Yankees worth roughly $3 million.

“Some clubs offered several hundred thousand dollars more -- possibly seven figures more,” Jackson told the press, “but the reason I'm a Yankee is that [owner] George Steinbrenner outhustled everybody else.”

• Thus began one of the most famous player tenures in Yankees history, though Jackson’s first season in pinstripes was anything but smooth. Manager Billy Martin famously pulled Jackson from a game in June and nearly got into a brawl with his new slugger in the dugout as a national audience watched on television. Jackson’s personality did not always mix with his teammates, making the Yankees’ clubhouse one of the most volatile in modern baseball history across the late 1970s. Martin benched Jackson in the final game of the 1977 ALCS after he began the series 1-for-14 against Royals pitching, though Reggie came off the bench to deliver a key pinch-hit single late in the decisive Game 5.

All the headlines and attention of 1977 led up to the World Series, where Jackson stole the show. He homered in Games 4 and 5 against the Dodgers, but that was only a preamble to Game 6, in which Jackson homered in three consecutive at-bats (all on the first pitch) against three different pitchers to lead the Yankees to a championship-clinching victory.

How hard is it for a player to homer in three consecutive plate appearances while seeing just three total pitches? Per the Elias Sports Bureau, Joey Votto (June 9, 2015) is the only player to do so since 2000.

• Jackson would always be known as “Mr. October” from that point forward, but the nickname was well earned from more than just one incredible night in the Bronx:

1. Jackson was part of five World Series champion teams, and his clubs went 4-1 in Fall Classics in which he participated.

2. For a 15-year run from 1971-86, Jackson was a near-continuous presence in October. He appeared in 77 total postseason games for the A’s, Yankees and Angels in that span, the most by any player before the introduction of wild cards expanded the MLB postseason format to three rounds beginning in 1995.

3. Jackson actually hit better in the postseason (.278/.358/.527) than he did in the regular season (.262/.356/.490) throughout his career.

4. His 10 total World Series homers are tied for the fifth most in history, but he tallied those across five Fall Classics, fewer than all the men above or equal to him at the top: Mickey Mantle (12 World Series appearances), Babe Ruth (10), Yogi Berra (14), Duke Snider (six) and Lou Gehrig (seven).

5. Jackson’s five homers in the 1977 World Series remains the standard for any Fall Classic, tied with Chase Utley (2009) and George Springer (2017).

6. Jackson’s .755 slugging percentage across his five World Series appearances is still third in Fall Classic history (min. 50 plate appearances), trailing only George Springer (.839) and David Ortiz (.795). His 1.212 career OPS is fifth in World Series history behind Ortiz (1.372), Springer (1.295), Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth (1.214 for each).

7. Starting with his last three games of the 1977 World Series and stretching over to Game 1 of the following year's ALCS against the Royals, Jackson hit a sublime .714/.765/2.143 (10-for-14), with two doubles, six home runs and 10 RBIs. That stretch still contains the all-time best marks for homers, slugging, OPS (min. 15 plate appearances) and total bases (30) by any player across a span of four postseason games.

• Jackson’s heroics in October 1977 inspired the Standard Brands company to create the “Reggie!” chocolate bar in time for the Yankees’ home opener in ‘78. Fans were given Reggie! bars at the gate and Jackson obliged, of course, by hitting a homer. When he trotted back out to right field the next inning, fans threw Reggie! bars on the field in appreciation.

• Jackson retired after the 1987 season with 563 career home runs, the sixth-highest total at the time he hung up his spikes. As one of the first great sluggers of the free agency era, he also became the first player to belt at least 100 homers for at least three different franchises (A’s, Yankees, Angels).