For Bo Jackson, the Proof Will Be in the Pounding

The way the Kansas City Royals tell it, Bo Jackson wasn’t born, he was built. And it was done with an erector set, with parts from Cooperstown.

So when Ken Berry, the Royals’ minor league hitting instructor, came to town last week to monitor and assist the Heisman Trophy winner in his first week as a professional baseball player with the Double-A Memphis Chicks, he said: “I’ve been told that if I mess with him too much, my body will be thrown in the river.”

Jackson, 23, may have the tools--begin with those Black & Decker biceps--but at the start of his new career, anyway, it seemed that his instruments were considerably rusty. He began against the Columbus (Ga.) Astros with a run-scoring single, muscling one up the middle for all the cameras to see, then finished his first game by going 0 for 3. The next night he went 0 for 3. And the next: 0 for 4. And the next: 0 for 4. The Bo-rometer went kerplunk: a 1-for-15 start.

Out of his right-handed crouch, Jackson was hitting ropes and moonballs in batting practice. But through four live games as the Chicks’ designated hitter and right fielder, Jackson had endured seven strikeouts, two grounders back to the box, umpteen curveballs on the outside of the plate and a few fastballs busted in on his hands. His batting average was .067.

Even the Tampa Bay Buccaneers managed a twice-as-good .125 winning percentage in banner 1985.

Jackson might have turned down the Buccaneers, who made him the No. 1 pick in the National Football League draft, but he couldn’t turn away from baseball Rule No. 1: for most mortals, it takes time. The Royals are plenty willing to wait.

“Once I break the ice, I’m going to break it big,” Jackson said after his pro career was 18 innings old. “I’m just surprised that I can lay off from baseball for 3 1/2 months and come back and see the ball like I do.

“I’ve gotten this far on patience, why shouldn’t I have more?”

As recently as three weeks ago, there had been talk that Jackson would keep the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from falling off the earth’s crust. When Jackson announced on June 21 that he had opted for baseball, Tampa Bay owner Hugh Culverhouse was all but left standing at the lectern with his checkbook and without the running back. So Culverhouse did the only sensible thing.

He quoted Dionne Warwick: “Keep smiling, keep shining, that’s what friends are for.”

This is why Bo Jackson turned to baseball: He liked the defending world champion Royals, who drafted him as a long shot in the fourth round when every other major league team figured he’d go football; he liked the challenge of succeeding in a new sport; he did not want to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

If he had had no other option, the former Auburn running back would have played for the Buccaneers. But Jackson had an option and he took it.

Why not Tampa Bay?

Jackson wasn’t convinced that Tampa Bay was going to reverse its 10-38 mark of the past three years. Research told him that the Buccaneers had commitment but not confidence.

Jackson is concerned about his knees and knows that running backs Billy Sims and William Andrews both recently blew out their knees in the NFL. Pete Rose never limps, and he’s 45. In baseball, which includes more than 50 players with million-dollar-a-year salaries, Jackson could play for 15 years, maybe longer, if he learns to throw a knuckleball.

Jackson’s representatives spoke with numerous Buccaneers players, past and present, and asked about many things, including management’s treatment of star players, specifically star black players. Jackson’s representatives spoke with linebacker Hugh Green, traded by the Buccaneers to Miami last year, and quarterback Doug Williams, who left for the U.S. Football League in 1983 after bitter contract negotiations. When Williams left the team, there were whispers of racism.

Culverhouse declined to discuss Williams. “That’s an over-the-hill case,” he said.

Richard P. Woods, one of Jackson’s Alabama-based representatives, said he asked Williams about “what we only knew as rumors of racial things” and that Williams “responded very guarded, trying not to say that it’s a racial situation.”

Woods said Green told him that the Buccaneers “treated him very badly, but he was very supportive of the organization and the city. He felt it would be a good experience for Bo.” Overall, Woods said Buccaneers players said Jackson would enjoy playing for the Buccaneers.

Jackson was born in Bessemer, Ala., in 1962 when the civil rights movement was taking flight. “He’s grown up in a society with a lot of imperfections and a lot of rules and he’s sensitive to that,” Woods said, “although he does not bring it up. He never raised a question about it to us.”

In a web of complexities and possibilities rests one near-certainty: if Jackson’s baseball career buds, he won’t return to football.

Jackson won’t talk about football other than to say he doesn’t miss it. “The pads? The hitting? The sweat? No,” he said. He added: “I’m concentrating on baseball, baseball. Football is nowhere in the picture.”

Woods said of a possible return to football for Jackson: “I don’t want to say it’s a matter of the sun coming up in the West. I think it is very remote.”

The Buccaneers reportedly offered Jackson a $7.6-million, five-year contract. Culverhouse said, during negotiations, that he stipulated that Jackson would “be the highest-paid rookie ever in the NFL.” Last week, he wouldn’t discuss details.

However, sources close to the negotiations indicated that the Buccaneers’ five-year offer was for about $4 million in present-day value. Sources said the contract called for salaries stretching from $300,000 in 1986 to $700,000 in 1990, a $500,000 signing bonus and a $1 million annuity which, over a period of many years, would pay several million dollars. Several performance bonuses, such as $500,000 for breaking Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing mark, could have added a total of $1.5 million, sources said.

In a year in which agents charge that NFL teams are trying to roll back salaries, these numbers, excluding performance bonuses, would rate inferior to the contract signed last year by Cleveland rookie quarterback Bernie Kosar.

Jackson, who never requested a trade from Tampa Bay, rejected that offer and signed a three-year contract with the Royals which, including bonuses, amounts to $1.066 million. He’ll earn $200,000 this year (half of which is a signing bonus), $333,000 in 1987 and $383,000 in 1988. He’ll get a $150,000 bonus if he’s still playing baseball in 1988, regardless of at what level.

There have been reports that real estate investments and $1-million-a-year personal-services clauses are involved in Jackson’s deal with the Royals. Both Woods and Royals General Manager John Schuerholz deny those reports.

In fact, when asked to respond to reports that Jackson had signed a $5-million, five-year deal with the Royals, Schuerholz said: “Whoever the jerk is who dreamed up that figure and got it in circulation ought to have his press card yanked out of his hands and burned in public. It did everybody a disservice.”

If Jackson fails in baseball, he still can return to football. He can buy out his Royals contract on specified dates later this year and next year and would be forced to return 100% of his Royals earnings, salary and bonuses. “He wouldn’t get to keep a red cent,” Woods said. Jackson can also buy out his contract on July 15, 1988, and would be forced to return 50% of his Royals earnings.

Said Schuerholz: “Bo Jackson asked for those (buyout penalty) clauses. He wanted to make it perfectly clear to everyone who was suggesting he was only using baseball as a leverage against football in negotiations that he had no intentions of doing that.”

It’s also possible, though not probable, that Jackson could become the first player ever selected with the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft two years in a row. The Buccaneers will retain his NFL rights until Draft Day ‘87, at which point he is eligible to be drafted by any team. Also, an NFL team could trade with Tampa Bay to acquire Jackson’s NFL rights before the draft.

Woods said the only way Jackson would be the No. 1 pick in next year’s NFL draft “is if he told the team with the No. 1 pick that he wanted to play football” before the draft. Woods said that’s not likely to happen, but said he expects some team to select Jackson, perhaps in the middle rounds, “even if Bo says ‘I’m definitely not playing football so don’t draft me.’ ”

Jackson recently purchased a $2-million accident and life insurance policy. Woods said the only way Jackson’s decision to play baseball instead of football could backfire is “if something tragically happened, like if he got hurt in baseball, a freak injury, which would keep him from football too.”

Of course, at that point the insurance policy would kick in. “Financially,” Woods said, “he is provided for.”

Schuerholz said he’s never read scouting reports that are so “absolutely astounding” until he read Jackson’s. And Tommy Jones, the Chicks manager, said: “When you read the scouting report you look up and expect to see Mickey Mantle walk through the door.”

Yet, not all of the baseball scouting reports on Jackson read like velvety red-carpet treatment. A scout from one major league club filed this report on Jackson last spring, while Jackson was striking out 30 times in 69 at-bats with Auburn. It read, in part: “(Jackson) is striking out a lot at present and always has when I’ve seen him . . . against just mediocre pitching (he) has problems with the breaking pitches and hard stuff inside.

”. . . Believe he is the type player when, if he hits, he goes all out; if not, he had a tendency to let up . . . believe rookie league pitching would eat him up; believe he is using baseball leverage to drive up price on football. . . .”

The Royals, who have told Jackson that he will be called to the big leagues when rosters are expanded in September, didn’t see it that way. So for the time being, anyway, Memphis has become BoTown. Somebody on the local radio referred to Memphis resident Avron Fogelman, the Royals co-owner and owner of the Chicks, as “Avron Fogel-bo.”

As for the Chicks, they’re loving the attention. Pitcher Gene Morgan, who once yielded a game-winning home run to Jackson in a game between Mississippi State and Auburn, won $14 in the team pool when Jackson singled in his first at-bat.

“Bo told me he wanted half of it,” Morgan said. “I said, ‘Only if I get half of your signing bonus.’ ”

Chicks shortstop Joe Jarrell, a muscle-man who has hit 17 homers but has a shrimpy .215 batting average, announced to teammates in a voice just loud enough for Jackson to hear: “Yeah, you gotta have pop to play here.” Then Jarrell flexed his bicep, rubbed it proudly and, looking at Jackson, said: “Yeah, I’ve got some pipe.”

At which point Jackson jabbed his arm into Jarrell’s chest, flexed his mammoth bicep and said: “Now this is a pipe.”

Teammates “ooohed!” in admiration, and Jarrell smiled and said nothing more.

Jackson likely will begin next season in Memphis or in Triple-A Omaha. Many a bus ride awaits him.

He said he hopes people give him time and “don’t expect too much from Bo because of the name. I’ll come into my own whenever the time is right. I’m trying to get there. I just don’t want people out there to build me up . . . like I’m some kind of Superman.”