Bo Knows ... Homeruns

[AWK]

By Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY

LOCKPORT, Ill. — Bo Jackson pulls into the parking lot of the fitness center he owns in a black Cadillac Escalade with a license plate that reads "Broke." He steps out of the car, looks down, cringes and asks business partner Jim Thompson if he has seen the skid marks.

"Damn kids!" Jackson says. "Nobody is supervising their kids. I would love to get my hands on them."

Jackson's voice trails off, but his menacing look remains. He might have retired from professional sports 16 years ago and might be 35 pounds heavier than during his playing days, but nobody messes with Bo.

PHOTO GALLERY: Bo Jackson's career in photos
VIDEO: 'Bo Knows' commercial

"I hear people say, 'Don't go up and talk to him, because he's an —-hole," Jackson says. "I actually like that, because I know nobody's going to bother me."

Jackson redefined the modern athlete and is the only person to be an All-Star in professional baseball and an all-pro in football, but the 47-year-old has no need for team sports these days. He has attended a handful of baseball games and not one NFL game in the last 17 years, but this week he is making an exception.

Jackson is returning to Anaheim, Calif., where 21 years ago his popularity and powers might have reached their heights when he captivated the nation with his performance in the 1989 All-Star Game and entertained it with his groundbreaking "Bo knows" commercial. Now he is back to throw out the ceremonial first pitch Monday for the Home Run Derby (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET).

Nike, which calls Jackson the "godfather" of the company, is commemorating the event by launching a new cross-trainer shoe. It features a baseball shooting out of "Bo" with the number 448, signifying the distance of one of the most dramatic homers in All-Star history.

"People following the game already knew what he could do," former All-Star second baseman Harold Reynolds says, "but that was a coming-out party for the rest of the world. He did things no one has ever seen before. We talk about Stephen Strasburg and LeBron James and all of the hype with those guys. Can you imagine if Bo Jackson played now what the hype would be?"

Jackson, 27, was appearing in his first and only All-Star Game. It was the fourth year of a baseball career made more notable when Jackson, the 1985 Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn, initially eschewed a pro football career. When he did opt for the NFL, signing with the Los Angeles Raiders in 1987, he famously said the sport would be "a hobby."

Still, he had decided to end his four-year NFL career after the 1991 playoffs, but the choice was made for him Jan. 13, 1991, when he suffered a dislocated left hip in a playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

He had hip surgery, and a diagnosis of avascular necrosis and hip-replacement surgery followed later that year. The Kansas City Royals, who drafted and signed him in 1986, released him before the 1991 season; injury-marred stints with the Chicago White Sox and California Angels produced occasional highlight-reel home runs, but Jackson never played again after major leaguers went on strike in August 1994.

As quick as Jackson had become a global icon, he was gone. Jackson says he never intended to play pro sports beyond 34 and nowadays limits his activities to playing golf (six handicap), hunting and fishing when not operating the Bo Jackson Sports Enterprise training facility.

"I've got my own little corner of the world where I hang out right here," says Jackson, who lives in Burr Ridge, Ill., 18 miles southwest of Chicago. "My circle of friends is very, very small. I don't do the bar scene. I don't do the club scene. If I want to have a drink, I'll do it right there in my house. That's just who I am.

"I love where I am in my life. I'm in a very happy place. A cool place. I wouldn't change a thing."

For at least that one evening in Anaheim, nobody was cooler than Bo.

Homer turns heads

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, then with the Oakland Athletics, set the stage for the drama in the 1989 All-Star Game. La Russa, manager of the American League team, and pitching coach Dave Duncan were in a quandary, having sluggers such as Mark McGwire, Kirby Puckett, Cal Ripken Jr. and Ruben Sierra but lacking a leadoff hitter. Jackson had the speed but struck out too often for the Royals to bat him leadoff.

La Russa, on Duncan's advice, asked Jackson, who agreed but didn't let La Russa in on a secret.

"I was playing with a strained hamstring," says Jackson, a left fielder. "I pulled it 2 1/2, three weeks earlier, but (trainer) Mickey Cobb and I kept it quiet."

The AL already was down 2-0 in the first inning, and it could have been worse if Jackson had not saved two runs on a two-out running catch on a ball hit by Pedro Guerrero.

"We needed something, and I wanted Bo to make things happen," La Russa says. "I didn't know he was going to start it off like that."

Jackson, facing San Francisco Giants pitcher Rick Reuschel, was down 0-and-2 when he swung for the first time. He crushed a low-and-inside fastball to center field. Jackson says he thought he hit it too high, but it carried. And carried. It didn't land until it hit halfway up the black tarp in the center-field bleachers, 448 feet from home plate.

"It was a sound I'll never forget," says Mark Gubicza, a pitcher for the AL team and Jackson's teammate with the Royals. "It was like an explosion. Then you heard all of the oohs and aahs like they were watching fireworks. It was something they had never seen in their lives.

"Later in the dugout, it was like having Willie Mays or Hank Aaron in your dugout. Everybody wanted to be around him."

When Jackson returned to the dugout, he looked at Puckett, who stared at him until he finally broke out laughing. "Kirby says, 'Jack? Jack? Damn. Damn.' " Jackson says. "Then he says, 'Can you hit for me, too?' "

The stadium was rocking when Wade Boggs followed with a homer, marking the first time in All-Star history a team opened the game with consecutive shots. National League manager Tommy Lasorda screamed to get pitchers warming up in the bullpen.

"I was still going crazy at the sound of that bat speed," NL pitcher Rick Sutcliffe says. "I had never heard anything like it before. I've never heard anything like it again.

"But when Boggs hit that homer, Lasorda is yelling for John Smoltz and I to get to the bullpen. Here we are, enjoying a cup of coffee, and Lasorda has us sprinting toward the bullpen. Well, while we're running on the carpet, our spikes get caught, and we ended up flipping over and falling on each other. We could have broken our necks, our arms, something. Next thing we know, John's in the game. I'm in the game. And we lose the game.

"So Bo pretty much screwed up everything that day for us."

Commercial a smash

The only sound louder than Jackson's homer might have been the celebrating going on at Nike headquarters.

Its "Bo knows" commercial was about to air at the end of the inning for the first time. It featured Jackson playing a variety of sports and athletes such as Kirk Gibson, Jim Everett, Michael Jordan, John McEnroe and Mary Decker proclaiming "Bo knows ..." and Wayne Gretzky saying "No" when Jackson is shown skating. It concluded with Jackson playing the guitar and musician Bo Diddley proclaiming, "Bo, you don't know diddly."

VIDEO: 'Bo Knows' commercial

Sales of Nike's new cross-trainer shoe were about to take off.

"We look at Bo affectionately as our godfather," Nike vice president Kris Aman says. "That 'Bo knows' campaign was one of the most historic that Nike has done. Bo was amazing; the things he did, and the circumstances he did them under, was unprecedented. Every time he showed up, you had the feeling something magical would happen."

Says McGwire, the hitting coach for the Cardinals and the starting AL first baseman in 1989, "As time goes by people may not remember what he did on the field, but they'll never forget those Nike commercials."

While McGwire went on to break Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998, Jackson was long retired.

Although Jackson says he had offers from three teams to sign when baseball returned in 1995 from its work stoppage, he was too comfortable at home. He answered to no one, he says, but his wife and daughter. He had enough of sports, even cutting ties with Nike and all of his other sponsors.

Sports was changing, and Bo wasn't going to change with it. Steroid use in baseball was on the rise, with players getting stronger and running faster. Jackson says he didn't need it.

"When I was born, God gave me a natural greenie, a built-in steroid," Jackson says. "I was always faster than people, stronger than people. So when I found out what guys were doing, I figured guys were cheating just to catch up to where I was.

"But I didn't know. To be honest with you, I was so focused on what I was doing, people could have been doing steroids right under my nose and I wouldn't have known.

"But you know what I always wondered, why the guys were drinking all of this milk after games. I'm going to have a beer or drink some water, and I'm thinking, 'Why are all guys drinking all this milk?' I found out later it was because they were coming down from greenies. I didn't even know what a greenie was. I swear to God I didn't know."

Image unblemished

Jackson says his proudest accomplishment isn't the All-Star Game home run, running over Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth or any of the other athletic feats. It's his image.

No arrests. No stupid stunts. No embarrassing incidents.

He's in bed these days at 9. He won't permit pictures to be taken outside public appearances and never with a woman who's not his wife, Linda, a clinical psychologist. His oldest son, Garrett, just completed his master's degree at St. Mary's in Minnesota, and he has a son, Nicholas, and daughter, Morgan, attending Auburn.

Jackson's placid existence seems to make it harder for him to comprehend the foibles of modern athletes.

"These guys have people working for them that's not going to slap their hand when they do something wrong," Jackson says, "or pull them aside and say, 'You can't do that. You're going to look like (a jerk).' Then you wouldn't have all of this stupid stuff going on that you see.

"Remember when (Tennessee Titans quarterback) Vince Young did that interview, and they asked him, 'Well, can anybody tell you anything?' He sits up all proud and says, 'Nobody can tell me nothin.'

"And you see what happened to him? He gets into this brawl at a strip club when somebody says something bad about Texas. I'm like, 'Dude, do you think I'm going to whip your butt because you said something? You can say whatever you want about Auburn. I'm not that shallow. ... I'll probably agree with you. But nothing will make me mad enough to snap you and you hire a lawyer and try to get $100,000 from me."

Jackson shakes his head. He says he didn't come along too early, just at the right time.

"My No. 1 goal is to keep my train on the track," Jackson says, "and not worry about anybody else's. That's the way I've always lived my life. (But) if you're stupid enough to go out and do some stupid (stuff), then be a man and suffer the consequences. I have no sympathy for you."

He is throwing the first pitch for the homerun derby tonight.  Gotta watch that.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/allstar/2010-07-11-bo-jackson-all-star-game-bo-knows_N.htm?csp=hf

[AuburnChopper 3.0]

Cool. 

[Snaggletiger]

I was watching.

I went to AU with Bo (When he showed up) and while the things he did were amazing, I don't think anyone really got a true appreciation for what he did until years later.  I was pumped that he hit the homerun but hell, that's just what Bo did all the time.  You expected that from him. 

I'll tell you how much things have changed and how special an athlete he really was, especially in football.  If it's 3rd and 8..tell me what kind of play comes to mind.  Naturally, some type of pass....a draw depending on the field position...pick a play.  I'm just betting toss sweep didn't come to mind.  I don't care what the situation was.  Long yardage, short..didn't matter.  AU would just turn and pitch the ball to Bo left or right and they had a far better chance of picking it up than any pass play they could have called.  Here he comes, bitch.  Try and stop him.  And if you didn't stop him or slow him up at the line of scrimmage, you were swimming in deep ca-ca.

Bye-Bye Bo.

[Pell City Tiger]

I remember him throwing a guy out at home plate - from the fricking warning track in left field. The ump did the dramatic "yerrrrrrrr OUT!" thing and the dude looks out at Bo in utter disbelief. Bo made like he was blowing the smoke off his pistol barrel. Everybody, the announcers included, were stunned.

I've got to try and find the video now.

[Aubie16]

I remember him throwing a guy out at home plate - from the fricking warning track in left field. The ump did the dramatic "yerrrrrrrr OUT!" thing and the dude looks out at Bo in utter disbelief. Bo made like he was blowing the smoke off his pistol barrel. Everybody, the announcers included, were stunned.

I've got to try and find the video now.

Not a great video but it is the best I can find:  You have to watch the ad, but they eventually get to it.

<object width="480" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x73jkf_reynolds_sport"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"

[AuburnChopper 3.0]

Right down the middle with a little zip.  Great ovation from the crowd! 

[Birmingham]

Right down the middle 5 feet high and a foot off the right side of the plate with a little zip.  Great ovation from the crowd! 

fixed.

[djsimp]

fixed.

I hope you're fixed. No more reproduction for you.

[AUJarhead]

When I was working in Kansas City a few years ago, they had an article talking about the 20th anniversary of Bo Jackson's debut...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2003726909_seam30.html?syndication=rss

Twenty years after his rookie season, his baseball exploits remain mythical to those lucky enough to have seen him.

By Joe Posnanski

Kansas City Star

Bo Jackson hit monstrous home runs, made miraculous defensive plays and stunned opponents with his speed. "This is not a normal guy," said teammate George Brett.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — OK, so one day in New York, Bo Jackson complained in the dugout before a game. Reporters surrounded Bo, which never made him happy anyway. Reporters wanted to explain things, and Bo Jackson wasn't about explaining. Bo was about doing.

"Everything I do, people tend to exaggerate it," he moaned. "With me, they want to make things bigger than they are."

Bo said he was just another guy. He wasn't some sort of folk hero, like John Henry or Pecos Bill. No, he hurt like other players. He made mistakes like other players. He struck out a lot. He wasn't forged out of steel, and he couldn't outrun locomotives, and he couldn't turn back time by flying around the world and reversing the rotation of the earth.

"I'm just another player, you know?" he said.

Then the game began, Royals versus Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

First time up, Bo hit a 412-foot homer to center field.

Second time up, Bo smashed a 464-foot opposite-field home run. Longtime Yankees fans said that ball landed in a far-off place where only home runs by Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle from the left side ever reached.

"Colossal," teammate George Brett would say. "I had to stop and watch."

Third time up, Yankees manager Stump Merrill walked out to the mound to ask pitcher Andy Hawkins how he intended to get Bo out this time.

"I'll pitch it outside," Hawkins said.

"It better be way outside," Merrill replied.

Hawkins threw it way outside. Jackson poked the ball over the right-field fence for his third homer. The New York crowd went bananas.

Bo never got a fourth time up that day. Instead, he hurt his shoulder while diving and almost making one of the great catches in baseball history. New Yorkers stood and cheered as he walked off the field.

"You know what?" Royals Hall of Famer Frank White said almost 20 years later. "I really did play baseball with Superman."

It began a generation ago

It has been 20 years since Bo Jackson was a rookie. An entire generation of young baseball fans never experienced the thrill of watching Bo play baseball.

How can you explain Bo Jackson to a kid today? Old-time baseball fans and scouts tell tall tales about players. "Oh, you should have seen Mickey Mantle before he hurt his knees; he ran so fast he could bunt for doubles," they'll say.

Or, "Before Pete Reiser started running into walls, he could play left field and center field at the same time."

Or, "There was nobody quite like Monte Irvin before he went to war; he used to hit for the cycle three times a week."

So what makes Bo different? Well, for one thing, it's all on video. Bo really did break a baseball bat over his thigh after striking out. Bo really did throw a ball from left field all the way to first base on a fly to double up Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk. Bo really did, in his spare time, transform into the most sensational running back the NFL has ever seen. He really did ... well, he really did a lot of stuff.

But Bo Jackson was always grouchily unimpressed with himself. Michael Jordan thought that was part of Bo's magic. "Neither of us is very easily amazed," Jordan told Newsweek in those days when he and Bo were the two greatest athletes in the world.

When Bo Jackson was called up to the big leagues after only 53 minor-league games, he shrugged. When he had his first four-hit game in only his fifth game, he announced, "It's just another night."

Two days after that, he faced Seattle's Mike Moore, a power pitcher who would win 161 games in the big leagues. Before the game, Bo went over to Willie Wilson's bats, liked the feel of one, and announced, "This is mine."

With Willie's bat, Bo hit a 475-foot blast to left-center, the longest home run ever hit at Royals Stadium.

"There's something about Bo," Royals general manager John Schuerholz said then. "Call it mystical or magical."

Sept. 2, 1986: Bo's first game. His first at-bat was against Hall of Famer Steve Carlton. He hit a ground ball to second base, and Tim Hulett picked it up and threw to first — only Bo was already past the bag.

"Oh man, nothing that big should move that fast," said Royals Hall of Famer and former hitting coach John Mayberry.

July 29, 1988: Bo Jackson was facing Baltimore's Jeff Ballard. He called timeout and stepped out of the box. He adjusted his batting glove when he realized that the umpire did not actually grant his timeout, and Ballard was throwing the ball. Jackson jumped back into the box, swung that bat and ... yeah. He hit a home run.

"Most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life," says Bob Schaeffer, Kansas City's first-base coach at the time.

May 15, 1989: Baseball writer Peter Gammons was in Minnesota to write a Sports Illustrated cover story about Jackson, so he watched Bo take batting practice. It was a typical Bo hitting session — he cracked rockets all over the field. Then it was time for his last swing. Bo jumped into the cage and hit left-handed.

He hit a titanic shot 450 feet off the Hardware Hank sign in right field.

Left-handed.

"I got work to do," Bo said to the other players, whose jaws had dropped. He ran out to the outfield to shag some fly balls.

July 11, 1990: Bo ran up the outfield wall. Literally. He chased down a fly ball and caught it about four steps in front of the fence. He put his right foot on the wall, then his left, then his right — until he was 7 feet off the ground and sideways. For a guy who didn't want to be seen as a superhero, he sure kept doing superhero things.

"What do you think of Bo Jackson?" a reporter asked Bo Jackson.

"I've known this guy for years," Bo said of Bo. "And nothing he does fazes me."

"The Throw"

There are so many more. Once, he ran over catcher Rick Dempsey. Dempsey broke his thumb but said, "I held him to fewer yards than Brian Bosworth." That goes back to a Monday night game.

And we don't even have time for all the legendary football stories.

"The Throw" deserves its own section, however. On June 5, 1989, the Royals were playing at Seattle. It was the 10th inning, score was tied 3-3, Harold Reynolds was on first base when Scott Bradley rifled a double to left field. Reynolds was running on the pitch, so it was obvious he would score the winning run. He rounded third, headed for home and prepared to have his teammates mob him when he saw his teammate Darnell Coles pumping his arms, the baseball signal for "SLIDE!"

Reynolds thought: "Slide? Are you kidding me?"

So, he was about to launch into what he called "a courtesy slide" when he saw that Kansas City catcher Bob Boone had the ball. Boone tagged him.

Bo Jackson had made a flatfooted throw of 300 feet in the air. It was a perfect strike. It was so impossible, so ridiculous, so absurd that no umpire was on the spot to make the call. Plate umpire Larry Young finally came to his senses and made a fist — Reynolds was out.

"Now I've seen it all," Scott Bradley said.

"This is not a normal guy," said teammate George Brett.

"That was just a supernatural, unbelievable play," said Seattle manager Jim Lefebve.

"I just caught the ball, turned and threw," Bo grumbled. "End of story. ... It's nothing to brag about. Don't try to make a big issue out of it."

Bo Jackson's baseball career really ended on a football field in Los Angeles. He hurt his hip against the Cincinnati Bengals. He did come back and did a few remarkable things after that, but it was different. He wasn't superhuman anymore.

Harry Houdini in cleats

The thing is, anyone who saw him play will never forget him. Every game was like a Harry Houdini performance — you expected to see something you had never seen before.

This story began with that July day in 1990 at Yankee Stadium when Bo Jackson hit three home runs before being injured.

He missed more than a month, then returned on Aug. 11 to face Seattle. He came up in the second inning. The pitcher was Randy Johnson. First pitch, Bo crushed a long fly ball to center field. The ball splashed in the waterfall to the left of the scoreboard. The Royals estimated the homer flew 450 feet.

"I'm not trying to brag," Jackson said. "But I actually saw the threads on the ball right before I hit it."

For once, Bo Jackson had impressed himself. And that might have been his greatest feat of all.

[Thrilla]

MLB Network interview him before the Derby last night and showed all his superhuman baseball feats.  I can't find the clip but it was highly entertaining.  I noticed that he still has a little of the trademark Bo-stutter as well.

The one thing Bo didn't know?  His own video game.  Shit was hard.

[Ogre]

I caught a few minutes of the Celebrity All Star Softball Game last night.  They had a shortened field set up, and Bo cranked a homer that almost hit the warning track of the Angels stadium. 

Oh, and Thrilla's mom caught him whacking it to his Bo Knows poster he had in his room growing up. 

[Ranger12]

I caught a few minutes of the Celebrity All Star Softball Game last night.  They had a shortened field set up, and Bo cranked a homer that almost hit the warning track of the Angels stadium. 

 

Yeah, I think they said that was the longest HR they had ever seen in the softball game. About another foot or two and it would have hit the warning track. Jenny Finch was pitching against him and tried to do it from the back of the baseball mound.

[War Eagle!!!]

Yeah, I think they said that was the longest HR they had ever seen in the softball game. About another foot or two and it would have hit the warning track. Jenny Finch was pitching against him and tried to do it from the back of the baseball mound.

I'd let her do me where ever she wanted...

[Thrilla]

I caught a few minutes of the Celebrity All Star Softball Game last night.  They had a shortened field set up, and Bo cranked a homer that almost hit the warning track of the Angels stadium. 

Oh, and Thrilla's mom caught him whacking it to his Bo Knows poster he had in his room growing up. 

It was "The Ball Player" poster...get it right. 



It's still up in my shed in the backyard, and it still makes it move.

And, had it not disbanded, I would still be a paying member of "Club Bo".

[djsimp]

It was "The Ball Player" poster...get it right. 



It's still up in my shed in the backyard, and it still makes it move.

And, had it not disbanded, I would still be a paying member of "Club Bo".

I still have the BB/FB card like this along with the card named "Black and Blue".

[Thrilla]

I still have the BB/FB card like this along with the card named "Black and Blue".

What about the card "Bo Breaker" ?  Another classic, catching a photo of Bo snapping a bat in half over his knee.

[Snaggletiger]

What about Nurse Ballbricker?

[AWK]

Thrilla knows ... Bo's cock size.

[Thrilla]

Thrilla knows ... Bo's cock size.

He was hung like a wild boar.

[Snaggletiger]

He was hung like a wild boar.

Hung like a ole Bo Hawg.