Jhonny

I was reading Jhonny Peralta's Wikipedia entry, which led me to this passage from a New York Times baseball round-up:

Whatever criteria Major League Baseball used to select its list of 60 Latino players for its voting for the Latino Legends team, common sense had to be one of them, and common sense says that Ted Williams, despite his Mexican mother, and Reggie Jackson, despite his half-Puerto Rican father, should not be considered Latin players.

Their inclusion on the ballot would have gone well beyond political correctness, raised far more questions than their exclusion and just might have been insulting to Latinos whose heritage more closely matches that of players like Roberto Clemente and Juan Marichal.

But mentioning Jackson as a Latino recalls Mickey Rivers's riveting remark to Jackson nearly 30 years ago when they played for the Yankees. Jackson was giving Rivers a hard time, and Rivers responded:

"Reginald Martinez Jackson. You got a white man's first name, a Puerto Rican's middle name and a black man's last name. No wonder you're so messed up."

30 years later, is Reginald a white man's first name?