The Jackson Two: What Music They Could Have Made

The old Jackson was waiting for the new Jackson.

“Where is he?” Reggie yelled at the Kansas City Royals’ dugout before Tuesday’s game. “Get him out here! Tell him I want to see him!”

No reply.

“I’ve been out here since 3:30! It’s almost 6 o’clock!” Reggie yelled. “Twenty-six hundred games and I’m always on time! What’s he been playing--two weeks? Come on, bring him out here! Where is he?”

No Bo.

“I’ve been reading about him!” Reggie yelled. “He hits one home run and he’s famous! They show it on CNN every 20 minutes! He’s a superstar already! Around the world in 20 minutes! Let’s have a look at him! Tell him to show his face!”

Still no Bo.

“Man, where is he?” Reggie yelled.

One of the Royals’ coaches, Jim Schaffer, relaxing in the dugout, jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “In there,” he said, motioning toward the clubhouse. “He’s stretching.”

“Stretching!” Reggie yelled. “When I was his age, we never even heard of stretching! What is he--22? I never stretched in my life, and look at me--like something Michelangelo carved out of a rock! Stretching!”

Outfielder Willie Wilson came out of the Kansas City dugout and approached the batting cage, where the greatest Jackson since Shoeless Joe was awaiting Flawless Bo from Kansas City, Mo.

“Where is he?” Reggie asked.

“He’s coming,” Wilson assured him.

Within seconds, Bo Jackson, rookie outfielder, emerged from the dugout and began tossing a ball back and forth with a teammate, limbering up.

He looked like he could have tossed a medicine ball back and forth. He had a neck that looked like a waist. His arms were like a blacksmith’s, his hands like oven mitts. Bo Jackson’s handshake could put you on the disabled list for 4-6 weeks.

Bo had been in the big leagues for seven games--2,683 shy of Reggie. They could have been teammates, though.

The Angels drafted Bo Jackson a year before the Royals did, but Bo went back to Auburn for one more college football season, just long enough to win a Heisman Trophy.

No baseball team was eager to draft the young Jackson a second time, even if he did look as though he might be able to hit baseballs like the old Jackson.

Tampa Bay made Bo the first pick of the National Football League draft, and that was the sport he was expected to play. Jackson even missed most of his final baseball season at Auburn because of an illegal trip he took to chat with the Buccaneers.

The Royals rolled the dice. They risked a high pick on him. Imagine their amazement when Jackson picked them.

He rushed through the minors the way he rushed through the Vanderbilt line and the Mississippi secondary: Hard and fast. He stiff-armed Triple-A baseball. He turned basepaths into paydirt.

In his first start in the majors, Jackson legged out an infield hit against Steve Carlton. In his seventh game, last Sunday against Seattle’s Mike Moore, Bo hit a home run that was truly Jacksonesque. It went 475 feet, a tape measure said. It wasn’t a homer. It was a homer-and-a-half. It should have counted for five runs.

That’s the one Reggie saw on TV, over and over.

When Bo finally came to the batting cage, for his first practice swings since the monster mash, Reggie wanted to watch. They rapped for a while behind the screen. Then Bo stepped in, with Reggie standing directly behind home plate, studying the swing.

Cameras clicked and whirred. Here they were, slugger and slugger redux. Two generations of generating power. Jackson & Jackson whacks.

All eyes were on Bo, deservedly so. Royal General Manager John Schuerholz, surveying the scene Tuesday, said: “He runs faster than anybody in baseball and hits the ball farther than anybody in baseball. Those things are going to attract a lot of attention for a long while.”

Bo took a few minutes before the game to take a couple of questions, none of them about stretching.

Asked whether the big homer was a big thrill, he said: “Yes and no. It was my first one in the majors, but I was concentrating at the time on helping us win the game. Now I look at it as just another hit.”

Jackson did not care to look back. He was asked if any familiar old feelings stirred when he watched football games on TV.

“No,” he said. “I’m a baseball player.”

He ran back onto the field. He moved better than anything Michelangelo ever did.

In the eighth inning, with two men on and the Royals down by three, Bo Jackson hit one into Anaheim Stadium’s right-field stands.

There he is, Reggie! There he is!