Bo Jackson reflects on past life 21 years after his All-Star blast
Bo Jackson pulls into the parking lot of the fitness center he owns in a black Cadillac Escalade with a license plate that reads “Broke.” He steps out of the car, looks down, cringes and asks busiess partner Jim Thompson if he has seen the skid marks.
“Damn kids!” Jackson says. “Nobody is supervising their kids. I would love to get my hands on them.”
Jackson’s voice trails off, but his menacing look remains. He might have retired from professional sports 16 years ago and might be 35 pounds heavier than during his playing days, but nobody messes with Bo. “I hear people say, ‘Don’t go up and talk to him, because he’s an –hole,” Jackson says. “I actually like that, because I know nobody’s going to bother me.”
Jackson redefined the modern athlete and is the only person to be an All-Star in professional baseball and an all-pro in football, but the 47-year-old has no need for team sports these days. He has attended a handful of baseball games and not one NFL game in the last 17 years, but this week he is making an exception.
Jackson is returning to Anaheim, Calif., where 21 years ago his popularity and powers might have reached their heights when he captivated the nation with his performance in the 1989 All-Star Game and entertained it with his groundbreaking “Bo knows” commercial. Now he is back to throw out the ceremonial first pitch Monday for the Home Run Derby (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET).
Nike, which calls Jackson the “godfather” of the company, is commemorating the event by launching a new cross-trainer shoe. It features a baseball shooting out of “Bo” with the number 448, signifying the distance of one of the most dramatic homers in All-Star history.
“People following the game already knew what he could do,” former All-Star second baseman Harold Reynolds says,
“but that was a coming-out party for the rest of the world. He did things no one has ever seen before. We talk about Stephen Strasburg and LeBron James and all of the hype with those guys. Can you imagine if Bo Jackson played now what the hype would e?”
Jackson, 27, was appearing in his first and only All-Star Game. It was the fourth year of a baseball career made more notable when Jackson, the 1985 Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn, initially eschewed a pro football career. When he did opt for the NFL, signing with the Los Angeles Raiders in 1987, he famously said the sport would be “a hobby.”
Still, he had decided to end his four-year NFL career after the 1991 playoffs, but the choice was made for him Jan. 13, 1991, when he suffered a dislocated left hip in a playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
He had hip surgery, and a diagnosis of avascular necrosis and hip-replacement surgery followed later that year. The Kansas City Royals, who drafted and signed him in 1986, released him before the 1991 season; injury-marred stints with the Chicago White Sox and California Angels produced occasional highlight-reel home runs, but Jackson never played again after major leaguers went on strike in August 1994.
As quick as Jackson had become a global icon, he was gone. Jackson says he never intended to play pro sports beyond 34 and nowadays limits his activities to playing golf (six handicap), hunting and fishing when not operating the Bo Jackson Sports Enterprise training facility.
“I’ve got my own little corner of the world where I hang out right here,” says Jackson, who lives in Burr Ridge, Ill., 18 miles southwest of Chicago. “My circle of friends is very, very small. I don’t do the bar scene. I don’t do the club scene. If I want to have a drink, I’ll do it right there in my house. That’s just who I am.
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