BO JACKSON : Inconsistency Aside, He Is Winning Fans

There is a certain mystique about Bo Jackson that grows a little every day. He played in the Cotton Bowl 15 months ago and now he has become major league baseball’s new Mr. Biceps.

Jackson is the starting left fielder for the Kansas City Royals, romancing the stone of a new sport. Most expected Jackson to take his royal bearing into the National Football League last year, which is why Jackson now makes his way across the American League with the constant boast: “I like making liars out of people.”

Certainly, the former Auburn running back has been nothing short of dramatic with the Royals. He hit two homers and drove in a club-record seven runs in a game against the Detroit Tigers April 14, and several days later tied a major league record by striking out five times in a game against the New York Yankees.

Statistically, he has reached the awkward equilibrium of a raw, albeit renowned, rookie: Jackson has 18 hits and 19 strikeouts in 54 at-bats this year . That means his batting average is .333 and his strikeout average is .350. He has a team-high three home runs and 14 RBIs, the fourth most in the American League. Yet he is also on a 220-strikeout pace for the year , which would break Bobby Bonds’ major league mark of 189.

Rarely are his moments standard or uneventful. Jackson has thrown out two runners and twice has thrown to the wrong base, allowing runners to advance. He reached over the wall in Yankee Stadium to rob Dave Winfield of a home run, dove to rob Don Mattingly of an extra-base hit and played Fenway Park’s Green Monster with aplomb. He hit what appeared to be your basic 6-4-3 double-play ball here this week and outran the throw to first.

The bottom line is that Jackson, with 39 major league games and 53 Class AA minor league games under his baseball belt, is producing in a way even the most optimistic Royal executives didn’t expect for months, perhaps years.

Kansas City Manager Billy Gardner said: “I know it’s early yet, but you gotta like what you see in the kid. We didn’t want to bury him, break him down early. We didn’t think he’d start well. We’d hoped for maybe .250 or .260. All we wanted him to do was make contact. And I’ll tell you, his speed is made for our turf field. With Bo in left and Willie Wilson in center, it’d be a hell of a collision between those two guys if it ever happened, wouldn’t it?”

Kansas City General Manager John Schuerholz said: “Bo will have unequaled temporary highs and unequaled temporary lows in performance. But one of these days, the switch will be flipped. There won’t be ups and downs. It will mostly be all ups.”

Kansas City’s erudite reliever, Dan Quisenberry, curiously put it this way about Jackson: “He’s better than cat food.” Later, he added, “He’s exciting to watch. Even when he struck out five times, it was exciting.”

“Things are going great with me,” said Jackson, 24. “I’ve been playing well--not necessarily great--but I’ve been holding my own in left field.”

Jackson turns a bit mean when asked if he might someday return to football. His annoyed expression seems to say, “Would you ask Ronald Reagan if he might someday return to acting?”

“I don’t talk about that other sport,” Jackson said. “Just baseball.”

Last July, Jackson rejected a reported five-year, $7.6 million offer from the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The football world thought he was bluffing--until Jackson accepted a three-year, $1.066 million guaranteed deal from the Royals. He might become baseball’s fourth-round pick of the century. Jackson’s $333,000 salary this season jumps to $387,000 next season. He’ll also receive a $150,000 bonus in 1988 if he is still playing baseball then.

Jackson said this week that his football career effectively ended “when I signed with the Kansas City Royals.” Even Tampa Bay Coach Ray Perkins is about to throw in the Bo towel; the Buccaneers officially lost rights to Jackson with last Tuesday’s NFL draft. Perkins said: “I think his football career is totally over. He’s settled it in his mind, and I’m happy for him.”

Richard Woods, Jackson’s agent, said there is “absolutely no chance” Jackson will ever play in the NFL. He said the 1985 Heisman trophy winner will not use the two buyout dates written into his Royal contract that would allow him to return to football (at a substantial penalty). Woods even can pinpoint the moment Jackson’s NFL prospects vanished.

“I’d say it happened when Bo’s average reached .500, right when he hit his second home run in the game against Detroit, on a breaking ball on the outside of the plate, through the pouring rain over the 410-foot sign in right center field,” Woods said.

For emphasis, Woods added, “He cracked his bat, too.”

Romantics might say this grand slam was hit a ton, but all of Jackson’s exploits seem to get a bit exaggerated, right?

Perhaps that’s part of the reason splinters of jealousy can be detected in the Royals’ locker room. For instance, when several reporters surrounded the cocksure Jackson before a game this week, pitcher Bret Saberhagen looked up from a card game and snapped, “Why don’t you guys go talk to Seitzer?” (A reference to rookie third baseman Kevin Seitzer, who was hitting .412.)

And, after Boston’s Roger Clemens three-hit the Royals Tuesday night in Fenway, a local reporter attempted to ask Royals’ outfielder Danny Tartabull about Clemens, but Tartabull stung him with this: “Go talk to Bo. He’ll tell you everything. Now get outta here.”

Quisenberry said: “I think we were all a little bit leery (of Jackson) when he got here last September. We didn’t know what to expect from him and he didn’t know what to expect from us. Let’s just say when he got here his work habits weren’t that good. I’m not gonna dog the guy, so let’s leave it at that.

“But, as it turned out, we’ve gotten to know him and he’s a nice guy. I think he can be world-class at the rate he’s improving. I thought he was very raw when he came up (for 25 games) last September. Early in spring training, I didn’t think the guy should be with us. But he showed so many signs of improvement. His ability is just too much. At the end of spring training, I was hoping he would make the team.”

Cracking the acceptance barrier among baseball’s elite players will take time; baseball is one sport in which athletic skill doesn’t always prevail. Is there anything that can strip an athlete of bravado quicker than his failure in the batter’s box?

“It’s the grind of the 162-game season that can really strip a guy naked. Over the season, all of your weaknesses will be exposed,” said Hal McRae, the Royals’ 41-year-old designated hitter and batting coach. Jackson looks to McRae for hitting advice, but McRae said: “His mechanics are real good. He doesn’t need as much help as you would expect.”

As Jackson makes his first rounds of the American League, he is swarmed by the media at each stop. The comparisons have been princely: Mantle with knees. A right-handed Reggie. Clemente with a cool head. But the veteran players mostly withhold opinions on Jackson, a 6-foot 1-inch, 222-pound slab of granite.

Don Baylor, Boston’s veteran DH, said: “A lot of pitchers will test him the next time around. It’s too early to tell about him. What’s crazy about this sport is how people compare guys in the early part of their careers to the greats. But Frank Robinson, Ted Williams, Mays, DiMaggio--those guys put up awesome numbers for a lot of years. It’s a 162-game season, with about 600 at-bats, not just 40 at-bats.”

Boston’s Marty Barrett said: “That early success might have been a bad thing for him. I think it’s good to struggle early. Too many times, players take things for granted.”

The Royals waited until two days prior to the season opener before deciding not to send Jackson down to Class AAA Omaha. Instead, they demoted catcher Scotti Madison, who had a productive spring.

Schuerholz said: “Traditional baseball thinking--and I’m a traditionalist--would have been to send Bo down to Omaha. But there is just something about this guy. He’s hit the ball farther than anyone we’ve ever had. He’s run faster than anyone we’ve ever had. He’s thrown the ball harder than anyone we’ve ever had.

“He has been through every athletic pressure-cooker of the world since he was 9. Even though his baseball experience and exposure was lacking, it didn’t take a real genius to figure out we had a rare athlete in our midst. It was really a gut call in the end. The guy had never failed in anything, so why should we arbitrarily decide he doesn’t have the capabilities?”

Each day, it’s something new. A fan tossed a football on the Fenway Park field Monday night, which Jackson thought humorous. Tuesday night, Clemens overpowered Jackson with high fastballs, up and in. The result: Two strikeouts and a lazy fly to right. He struck out 12 times in 23 at-bats.

Jackson’s reaction to Clemens was typically to the point: “I’m out there trying to beat him and he’s out there trying to beat me. Tonight, he won.”

Rest assured, though, panic was not about to win out. Not with Jackson. He said, “I take it one day at a time, one game at a time.”