Five years ago, Philip Taubman, a summer intern in TIME'S San Francisco bureau, reported our first story on Reggie Jackson, then a powerful but temperamental young outfielder. Taubman went on to graduate from Stanford in 1970, spent three years in Boston as a TIME correspondent, and joined the New York writing staff as a contributing editor last year. Appropriately, Taubman, long a rabid baseball fan, writes about sports. Even more appropriately, his first cover story--which he reported as well as wrote--is about Jackson, now the undisputed superstar of the Oakland Athletics.

The Jackson-Taubman reunion was pleasant and productive. The pair met in New York and then talked at length amid the din of the team's bacchanalian charter flight to the West Coast. After arriving in Oakland, Jackson turned to Taubman and grinned: "This here's my town--kick back and enjoy it." Taubman did so for four days, accompanying Jackson on everything from a dinner date with a girl friend to a trip to the laundry, enjoying the slugger's remarks all the while. "Reggie is one of the most candid, cooperative people I've ever interviewed," says Taubman. "He also has a passionate, lyrical way of expressing himself." Taubman later found that the A's curmudgeonly owner, Charles O. Finley, also expresses himself passionately, if not lyrically; he also proved considerably less helpful. When asked about his somewhat strained relationship with Jackson, Finley responded with a string of obscenities, informing Taubman: "If you had a brain in you, you'd be an idiot."

Baseball is the favorite sport of Senior Editor Laurence I. Barrett and Reporter-Researcher Edward Tivnan, who pitched in to edit and verify the facts in the story. Tivnan was astounded by the accuracy of Jackson's off-the-cuff citations of dates and statistics. "Jackson's phenomenal memory made my job a lot easier," he said. Captain of the Amherst College baseball team his senior year, Tivnan also played for an American Legion team in Worcester, Mass, (where a teammate was A's Reserve First Baseman Pat Bourque), and currently holds down third base in an altogether different league--for TIME'S softball team that has weekly games in Central Park.

Recalling his own boyhood as a self-confessed baseball nut, Editor Barrett notes: "In simpler times, before the football and basketball booms, people lived baseball." As a kid Barrett played third base for the Falcons, a sandlot team in his native Bronx, and attended 40 or 50 games a season at Yankee Stadium. "My only regret," he sighs, "is that Jackson doesn't play for the Yankees."

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