The Saga of Bo Jackson, or, We Hardly Knew Ye

The orthopedist we talked to doesn’t want publicity. He doesn’t need it. He scarcely has time to treat those flooding his office with jogging injuries and tennis elbows, much less those who have fallen out of golf carts.

But giving professional study to the case of Bo Jackson, visited by a hip disorder called avascular necrosis, the specialist isn’t optimistic.

“Bo’s condition might be likened to an arthritic hip of an old man,” he says. “It is troublesome but not crippling. One in that state can live normally, like the rest of us.”

The only problem is, the rest of us aren’t asked to run with the speed and intensity of Bo. Speed and intensity are the commodities Bo sells.

Belting a home run requires a lot of hip, too.

The orthopedist for the Kansas City Royals no longer sees a baseball future for Bo, proof of which is Kansas City uncouples this entertainer.

And you have to believe its orthopedist is consulting the rest of the big league teams. Bo goes up for grabs. No one nibbles.

An orthopedist in Birmingham, Ala., and another at UCLA see flecks of hope. The Birmingham healer predicts Bo will return to baseball by the All-Star break.

The Raiders express confidence in Bo’s playing football. The Raiders also have a contract to negotiate with Marcus Allen.

If they were to hint Bo isn’t coming back, Marcus might say to them: “Tell you what I’m gonna do. You keep the gate receipts; I’ll take the television money.”

The Raiders blanch.

“I’m being nice,” Marcus says. “I could ask for the gate receipts, too.”

The Raiders have a delicate contract problem with Bo that must be adjudicated if he can’t play. At the end of this year--1991--he is due to collect a major balloon payment.

If he doesn’t play, can he try to collect the money on the ground his injury was sustained in football, in the service of the Raiders?

In this mother of legal wars, how many lawyers populate the battlefield?

Bo is a fascinating portrait, a dramatic performer bowing out in a manner spectacularly undramatic, victim of the simplest of tackles in a playoff game with Cincinnati.

When he left Auburn, he never aimed to play football, explaining he wasn’t eager to spend the next 10 years in and out of surgery.

His arrangement with the Raiders was dramatic. Here was a guy signing with a team to play only the last two-thirds of the season.

The runs he made were dramatic. And his pursuits of fly balls in baseball were dramatic, though not always artful.

Last year, he bought drama to his arbitration. Kansas City offered roughly $1 million. Bo asked for a dollar more than the $1.7 million Texas was paying Ruben Sierra.

How he linked himself to the affairs of Ruben Sierra isn’t known to this day. Nor was it understood by the arbitrator, who ruled in favor of Kansas City.

But the legend of Bo was snowballing. He hunted with a bow, said he wanted to fly an F-15. The stir he created would lead to a vast commercial empire. He intrigued newspaper guys by treating them like dogs. Archly aloof, he occasionally granted an audience, tossing listeners a crumb of charm.

He dramatized his right to privacy, as if he were the only athlete set upon. He irritated certain teammates, seeing him more occupied with Bo than with the club.

Even the day he got hurt, he upset some members of the Raiders. Repairing to the bench with a hip injury no one believed would be serious, he detached himself from what was happening in a playoff game to play catch with his son.

The kid is the cutest little guy you have ever beheld, but his presence on the field during a game was a violation of the rules, exposing the Raiders to a fine.

Such matters never troubled Bo, proceeding by his own code. One hopes he beats the medical odds and returns to the show.

But when judgment of athletes is called for, there is a large difference between those who performed and were great and those who might have been great if they had performed.

At the time he malfunctioned, Bo had yet to attain greatness, in baseball or in football. One wishes him well.

But, darkly, our medical maven observes: “With that kind of hip, he has a better chance in golf.”