See Bo Hit, See Bo Run, See AL Win : Jackson Belts 448-Footer, Steals Show in 5-3 Victory

By MIKE PENNER

July 12, 1989 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

They told Bo Jackson to lead off Tuesday, so Bo led off, if that’s what you want to call it.

The first batter for the American League All-Stars, Bo looked at one pitch from National League starter Rick Reuschel.

He swung at the next.

By the time the baseball prepared for re-entry, its shadow could be seen some 448 feet from home plate. The ball didn’t just clear the center-field fence. It landed halfway up the green tarpaulin leading to Tunnel 70, which serves as a viewing backdrop for hitters at Anaheim Stadium.

Once again, Bo had gone where few ever thought to tread. His monstrous blast, the first leadoff home run in an All-Star game since 1977, was immediately followed by a home run from Wade Boggs and, just that fast, the American Leaguers had tied the game and were on their way to a 5-3 victory in the 60th All-Star game.

The idea behind batting Jackson leadoff, AL Manager Tony La Russa had tried to explain, was to make Reuschel as “uncomfortable” as quickly as possible. Uncomfortable? Well, it does strain one’s neck to snap it around as quickly as Reuschel had to in order to catch a glimpse of Air Bo.

The home run was estimated at 448 feet, but that’s only because Jackson hit it nearly as high as he did far. Official records aren’t kept, but that may have been the longest pop fly in Anaheim Stadium history.

“When the ball hit the bat,” NL Manager Tom Lasorda said, “it sounded like he hit a golf ball.”

It took off like one, too, drawing such a gasp from the crowd of 64,036 that Texas’ Nolan Ryan stopped warming up in the AL bullpen and hunted down a TV monitor.

“I didn’t know what happened,” Ryan said. “I had to catch it on the replay.”

Jackson’s was the first leadoff home run in All-Star competition since Cincinnati’s Joe Morgan did it 12 years ago. It also, apparently, was inspirational because Boggs, baseball’s pre-eminent spray hitter, followed him six pitches later with a rare home run, this one traveling a mortal-sized distance of 398 feet.

The back-to-back home runs were the first since Dodgers Steve Garvey and Jimmy Wynn turned the feat in the 1975 All-Star game.

Firsts, firsts. Before the night was through, Bo would lead the world in firsts.

With his next at-bat, coming in the second inning, Jackson hit a routine double-play grounder to shortstop but outran pivot man Ryne Sandberg’s throw to first. In so doing, Jackson prolonged the inning and earned a run batted in, with Ruben Sierra scoring from third on the play.

Then Jackson stole second base, becoming the first All-Star to hit a home run and steal a base in the same game since a fellow named Willie Mays did it in 1962.

Jackson added a single and a strikeout in his last two at-bats before turning left field over to Boston’s Mike Greenwell in the top of the seventh. Not a bad six innings’ work: four at-bats, two hits, two runs batted in, a stolen base and a home run that had the best players in the sport raving and running out of superlatives.

As a runaway choice, Jackson was voted the game’s most valuable player.

“I’m a believer,” NL outfielder Tony Gwynn announced. “Bo can do anything. It’s scary, it’s scary . . .

“He changes the way people think about the game. He’s redefining the game as we speak.”

Added NL third baseman Bobby Bonilla of Pittsburgh: “After seeing him tonight, now I know what I got to do. I’ve got to go home this winter and put a Nautilus machine in my back yard.”

It’s a shame Bo’s spreading himself too thin with that National Football League stuff, isn’t it?

And remember, Jackson was making his All-Star debut. His home run came in his first All-Star at-bat, an achievement matched by only eight other players.

“I had butterflies when I was in the on-deck circle,” Jackson said. “But when I got to the plate, I put tunnel vision on the pitcher and decided to just do what comes natural.”

We saw, we saw.

The thing is, Jackson didn’t even think he got a good swing at the pitch.

“It wasn’t a strike,” he said. “The ball I hit, I swung like I swing a golf club. Luckily, I got a piece of it.”

A piece of it? Not all of it?

Jackson shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

In 15 minutes, the 1989 All-Star game produced more runs--four--than 15 innings could during the first All-Star game held at Anaheim Stadium, in 1967. Twenty-two years ago, it took a 15th-inning home run by Tony Perez to give the National League a 2-1 victory at the Big A.

This time, the game was tied, 2-2, after one inning. The NL scored its first two against a shaky Dave Stewart, who walked two and yielded three hits, including run-scoring singles by Kevin Mitchell and Howard Johnson.

Reuschel gave the lead back after pitching to two batters. And when Jackson’s second-inning grounder scored Sierra, the AL was ahead to stay, soon to record its second consecutive victory and its third All-Star win in the past four years.

By the second inning, both starting pitchers were gone. Atlanta’s John Smoltz replaced Reuschel and Stewart gave way to Ryan, the fabled former Angel fastballer, much to the approval of the Anaheim crowd.

Ryan, at 42 the second oldest All-Star pitcher ever, completed two scoreless innings, striking out three--including San Francisco sluggers Will Clark and Mitchell in succession--while allowing only a scratch single to Gwynn.

But these strikeouts didn’t come via the vaunted Express. Older and wiser, Ryan resorted to curveballs and changeups to ease his way through his stint.

“The key, for me, was a good changeup,” said Ryan, who added the words most of us figured we would never live to hear:

“My fastball was just enough to make my changeup effective.”

Yes, things have changed a bit since Ryan last hung a shingle at Anaheim Stadium.

Ryan wound up as the winning pitcher and the most effective of a record eight pitchers employed by La Russa. Ryan was followed, in order, by Kansas City’s Mark Gubicza, Oakland’s Mike Moore, Cleveland’s Greg Swindell, Texas’ Jeff Russell, Milwaukee’s Dan Plesac and Cleveland’s Doug Jones, who was credited with the save.

Smoltz was the loser.

The American League scored its final two runs against Rick Sutcliffe in the third inning. Sutcliffe, a last-minute replacement for injured Mike Scott, surrendered four singles in the inning, including run-scoring hits to Sierra and Harold Baines.

Baines and Pedro Guerrero of the St. Louis Cardinals debuted as the first designated hitters to be used in an All-Star game.

The National League managed only one more run against La Russa’s fleet of relievers. That came in the eighth inning, after Russell walked Glenn Davis and allowed another single to Mitchell. Von Hayes drove home Davis with a single to left against Plesac.

On came Jones to close matters out. Jones ended the eighth inning by retiring Tim Wallach on a line drive to left and closed out the ninth by starting a game-ending double play, beginning with Tony Pena’s tapper back to mound.

Neither the Angels’ Chuck Finley nor the Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser appeared in the game.

La Russa was asked, was this what he had in mind when he had the temerity to bat Jackson, the American League’s home run leader, leadoff?

“Unfortunately for me, that’s exactly was I saw last week (from Jackson),” said La Russa, who now returns to his customary duties as Oakland A’s manager. “I saw home runs, line drives, stolen bases.

“I figured it’d be exciting.”

And Bo’s opinion of the leadoff profession? Is he ready for a new lot in life with the Kansas City Royals?

“Let’s not start nothing here,” he said with a grin.

For one All-Star evening, Bo had started enough.