Bo Jackson Mixes Rough Cuts With Plenty of Highlights

Each night America gets its dose of Bo. Long after the kids have been tucked away and the dishes dried, he flashes across the television screen on news highlight films--a blip of sensation and then gone. A running catch, a gargantuan home run or Bo’s specialty, a bat splintered over some portion of his anatomy (first it was his knee, Wednesday night his head, which brings thanks that Bo isn’t a shot putter).

Bo Jackson is not so much a conventional athlete as a moment awaited, living anticipation. How far will the next ball fly? How fast can he run? How strong is his arm? Or the ultimate question: What might he be if he didn’t play football, too? He dangles the answers tantalizingly by improving each year; he stops short of providing them by leaving holes in his game and leaving it altogether in the fall.

“If you watched just replays and highlights,” Blue Jays scout Gordon Lakey said, “you’d think this guy was the greatest thing ever. Well, he’s pretty good. He’s just still a little rough around the edges.”

Tales of Bo, Part I, from Philadelphia Phillies scout Ray Shore: “I was watching him in Texas, and Nolan Ryan had struck him out six times in a row, twice in this game. Just kept throwing fastballs. Then he threw a couple under Bo’s chin and got behind, 3-and-1. Well, Bo about hit the next one onto the runway out past the center-field fence.”

Jackson started cutting against the grain of public perception in the spring of 1986, after he won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s outstanding player and was the first player picked in the National Football League draft, by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He decided to play baseball (at which he was good, but not preeminent) and was assigned by the Royals to their double-A team in Memphis, Tenn. His professional debut was covered by more than 150 media members; ABC-TV cut away from its Monday night baseball game to show Bo’s first at-bat (a single chopped over second base), and the attention paid him masked his remarkable lack of qualifications.

Tommy Jones, the Memphis manager in 1986, remembers. “He was very, very raw,” Jones said. “I mean, you had to be impressed by his sheer athletic skills, but he really had no feel for how the professional game was played. Defensively, when he reported to Memphis, he was no more prepared to play professional outfield than some guy who stepped off a beer-league softball diamond.”

After that first single, Bo went 0 for 29. “The Royals were calling me every day,” Jones said. “They were questioning me, wondering if they made a mistake starting him at double-A.”

So that’s where it began. Bo Jackson, 6-1 and 222 rippling pounds, one of the fastest human beings on the planet, began playing professional baseball--because he wanted to--basically as a novice.

Tales of Bo, Part II, from Minnesota Twins scout Jerry Terrell: “Earlier this year, there were seven of us in the stands scouting the Royals. Bo hits a ground ball to short and we all time him down the line. I clicked my watch and I look at it and then I say, ‘I didn’t get him, I must have clicked it too soon. It’s too fast.’ One of the other guys says, ‘What did you have?’ I said, ‘Three-point-six-one (seconds).’ They all did, too. Four-flat is fast from the left side, three-six-one from the right side, not on a bunt . . . unheard of.”

Statistics tell part of the story. Jackson is tied for the American League lead with 17 home runs, ranks fourth with 20 stolen bases and 46 runs scored, and is sixth with 48 RBI. “He’s putting up numbers that rank him in the upper echelon,” Boston Red Sox scout Frank Malzone said. “But numbers can be deceiving. He’s coming across as winning a lot of ball games with hits and defensive plays, but we never hear about the shortcomings.”

Lost in the hail of Bo’s Blows and Bo’s Throws is a hard fact: He has been playing full-time baseball for barely three years and remains fundamentally deficient. As a rookie, Lakey said, “he didn’t have good work habits at all.” Now he does. But he is chasing players with five times his experience and--enormous talent notwithstanding--sometimes it shows.

Hitting. Jackson’s strikeout frequency has dropped, from one per 2.5 at-bats as a rookie to one per 3.42 this season. But he can still be had.

“Right now, just throw hard fastballs and you’ll get him out,” Terrell said. “Greg Swindell struck him out three times in Cleveland. Then he caught up with one and hit it out. That’s the percentage you live with. He chases high pitches, he chases low pitches, and when he gets one, it jumps.”

Fielding. He is no longer the novice Jones was given in Memphis. Hours of shagging flies have improved him vastly. But he still uses his speed and his bounce to make up for a lack of technical expertise.

“He doesn’t get that pure jump on a ball that Devon White and Gary Pettis get,” Lakey said. “And he gets turned around on balls he should catch. But he’s improving. He has become a very fine defensive outfielder.”

Arm. By consensus, Jackson has the strongest arm in the American League. But he regularly throws through cutoff men, costing bases. “He can throw people out at the plate,” Malzone said, “but then again, he can throw it into the stands.”

Tales of Bo, Part III, from Toronto Blue Jays scout Lakey: “There was one play he made at Royals Stadium. He went to the wall to rob a home run, and he was waiting, with his glove over the fence. The ball died and landed at his feet, so that made him look bad. But I’ll tell you, that was an unbelievable play. That wall is 12 feet high and if that ball had been in the first couple rows, he would have caught it.”

The football thing is always there. Jackson has barely hit .200 after the All-Star break in his first two seasons. The theory is that he begins to think about the Los Angeles Raiders as the summer wanes toward September, abetted by the Royals’ early departure from the pennant race. This summer, however, the Royals are in the race, trailing Oakland by only 2 1/2 games in the American League West.

Beyond October, however, Jackson has given no indication that he will abandon his football career. On performance, there would seem no need to--he is one of the most explosive running backs in the NFL. “But,” Lakey said, “he has to be tired.”

He admits to no such weariness. He gives no clue as to his future, which has always been his way of doing business. He remains a gasp waiting to fill the throat, another fable to be recited.

“The guy’s more than just some freak show,” Jones said. “He’s just in his own category.”