Reggie Jackson helped put the Oakland A’s on the baseball map as a charismatic superstar player in the 1970s, but the Hall of Famer this week said he had designs on another role with the franchise — team owner.
The 76-year-old Jackson was on the “Howard Stern Show” and said that money was no object for his group, which he said included Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and he believed a deal was all but done when the A’s were up for sale in the early 2000s. Jackson suggests he had an agreement in place with then-A’s owner Ken Hofmann, and is “absolutely” convinced then-MLB commissioner Bud Selig made sure the deal didn’t happen — paving the way for the A’s to be sold to a group led by Selig’s fraternity brother at the University of Wisconsin, Lew Wolff, in 2005 for $180 million.
“It broke my heart,” Jackson said during a wide-ranging interview with Stern on Wednesday. “I went into depression for about six months.”
When @mroctober tried to buy the Oakland @Athletics he says he was blocked by Bud Selig. He tells Howard what happened and why he decided not to sue the former #MLB commissioner. pic.twitter.com/aBQpLhcd85
— Stern Show (@sternshow) March 22, 2023
Jackson said his group, which also included John McCaw, the former part-owner of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, had enough money that, “I could have bought the National League.”
Jackson said, “In writing, I sent a letter to Ken Hofmann, who owned the A’s, that I’m willing to pay $25 million more than any bid that you get. Bud said to me, he said ‘Reggie, stay with me. I’ll guide you through. I’ll get this done for you.’
“And then all of a sudden it came out that the A’s were sold to a guy by the name of Lew Wolff — Bud Selig’s college buddy.”
Selig could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Frustrated A’s fans can only wonder what the franchise might look like now if Jackson and his group of deep pockets were in charge.
Wolff sold his shares in the team in 2016, making John Fisher the sole principal owner. With Opening Day just a week away, the team heads into another season of uncertainty — the A’s lease at the Coliseum runs out after next season, there has been no movement on a potential new stadium at Howard Terminal, and the dark cloud of a potential move to Las Vegas continues to hover over the franchise.
Jackson’s wasn’t the only group in discussions with Hofmann and Steve Schott when the team was sold in 2005. Warriors primary owner Joe Lacob has said he had a presumed deal dissolve around the same time. Lacob also says he’s had a standing offer with Fisher to buy his part of the team for more than a decade.
In his Schott’s 2022 book “Long Schott”, he wrote: “Reggie Jackson had a group that he said wanted to buy the team, with Brian Shapiro and other investors, and said they were willing to pay $25 million more than what the Fishers were offering. But by the time Reggie contacted me, we had the deal in place. It would have been great and historic for Reggie to be part of the ownership group, as the first African American owner. I had a good relationship with Reggie, having retired his No. 9 a year earlier. But I had to commit to the deal with the Fishers and baseball and couldn’t chase the last dollar.”
Jackson told Stern he was so convinced he was about to own the team he broke into the majors with and helped lead to three straight World Series titles that he was prepared to sue Selig and baseball when Wolff (Jackson says surprisingly) got the team instead of his group.
When asked if he felt his reputation as a “troublemaker” as a player was a factor in the potential deal failing, Jackson told Stern, “I absolutely believe that. And I absolutely believe that Bud was the guy involved that denied me from getting a team. I had a 100-page lawsuit drawn up, I still have the deck — about 3-4 inches thick. And there’s six inches of text messages and all that kind of stuff that went back-and-forth. I never filed it.”
Jackson said he didn’t file the lawsuit on the advice of others, who suggested there would be significant retribution from the baseball owners.
“I got scared away by some people in baseball. They said, ‘Reggie, the first thing you have to do is resign from baseball — from the Yankees. And you probably won’t get hired again. And you probably won’t this and you probably won’t that.’ And I didn’t know enough about the legal system, etc.
“I should have sued. I didn’t. It’s obviously still in my craw.”
Jackson, who spent his first nine seasons with the franchise and returned in 1987 for his final year in the majors, has appeared at numerous A’s functions at the Coliseum during the Fisher era, including last year’s celebration of the 1972 World Series team. The next likely appearance would be April 16, when the A’s honor the 1973 team that beat the Mets in the World Series for the second of Oakland’s three straight championships.
