TAMPA, Fla. — The chat was one thing. Reggie Jackson, after all, loves to talk. When the Montreal Expos used to play interleague games at Yankee Stadium, Reggie would walk in unannounced in the middle of Felipe Alou’s pre-game media sessions, greet his old teammate in Spanish, sit down on a chair … and take over. Alou, 11 years Jackson’s elder, would wink at the reporters. Interview? Over. School? Very much in.

Reggie will talk your ear off about hitting, so it was no surprise that when Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista and Troy Tulowitzki took their turns in the batting cage at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Saturday, the now-New York Yankees senior adviser stayed around to talk shop.

What happened next was interesting, however. Reggie pulled out an iPhone and started videotaping Donaldson’s BP. "Come over here with me," he said, tugging on a reporter’s arm as he moved to the right side of the cage. "I want to see it (Donaldson’s BP) from this angle.

"I wanted to see, because they say Josh is doing something new and different … I wanted to see and then have him interpret it for me so I could hear his words of definition," Jackson said. "Because players don’t like the word ‘down-through.’ I used to think I had a swing that was down-through and level and I had to go to video to prove it because the younger generation thinks the swing is up.

“The guy they say is at the forefront, on the cutting edge of it, is Josh Donaldson.”

"Well," Jackson continued, "his swing’s as level as it gets. It might finish high, but the pass through the ball, the path through the ‘pay zone,’ where you collect dues, is level."

Asked if he’d use the information gathered to instruct the growing crop of young Yankees prospects, Jackson stared at the questioner as if he’d just been asked the stupidest question in the world.

"I video’d it," he said. You could add the "What the hell do you think?" on your own.

Donaldson was among seven Blue Jays regulars taken to Tampa for Saturday’s game against the Yankees, who had three major league pitchers scheduled to work, but sent Michael Pineda, Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman over to their minor league complex instead. No matter. For Donaldson, it’s possible that his session with Mr. October might have been the most important aspect of the trip. Certainly, the coolest.

"Humbling," Donaldson said, later. "I was talking to Tulo and Bautista about it. You don’t expect a guy of that stature to be still trying to learn, maybe not learn what I’m doing but maybe it’s terminology or a different way of thinking about it. You just don’t expect it.

"He was kind of testing me in some areas. The good news is I’ve done a lot of extensive research and I’m very confident in what I’m doing and what I believe in, and if people want to hear it, I’ll tell them. It happens more often than you’d think. It’s one of those situations where you have to be careful, but I want people to remember me as being somebody who gave back to the game. I don’t want to just talk about what I do; I want to hear how other people go about doing things."

The fact is Donaldson’s become a bit of a “thing” in baseball. A segment he did on MLB Network last season about his swing was widely viewed and a topic of much conversation in clubhouses around baseball. He’s one of the cool kids … and talking to Jackson, who still cuts an imposing figure at the age of 70, he was chatting with one of the original cool kids.

Um, about Donaldson’s patented leg kick, Reggie?

"I didn’t like it at first, but I see guys like him who control it," said Jackson. "Mine was more a move like Tulo’s; I didn’t have a toe tap but a straight, short stride. That was my move. I kept it like that because I control it. I saw some guys with leg kicks; Al Oliver had one. But most of the guys were like (Willie) Mays and (Hank) Aaron, that’s what you saw and what you followed.

"Everybody is in the hitting zone the same, from Ty Cobb to Miguel Cabrera," Jackson said, fully engaged now. "You’re going to be the same: with the barrel behind the hands. And if you’re not, you’re not going to hit. Everyone may start the same, everyone may have a different theory, but when you get to the baseball — from Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth and Gehrig, to Cabrera, Donaldson and Bautista and Altuve — impact is in the same spot. Getting to it and the description of it may be different, what you think you’re doing may be different, so I had to come and talk to Josh Donaldson myself because he’s used quite often as players use the high leg kick, and up-swing, etc. Well, this guy’s swing is as level and pretty as you’ll see and so is Tulo’s and Bautista’s and Morales. I just want to see it.

"I got 50 years in. But I’m still trying to learn and understand, mostly understand the vernacular. I get the move. I know what that is. I don’t need to describe it; I can tell you to go Google me. That will tell you that I understood the swing. But I wanted to hear it, because I want to be able to communicate it. I need to take time to learn the new words, the new vernacular … whatever you want to call it."