: Bo Knows Stardom And Disappointment
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| Bo knows stardom and disappointment By Ron Flatter Special to ESPN.com There have been others -- from Jim Thorpe to Deion Sanders. But even now, eight years after he played his last football game and four years since his last baseball game, Bo Jackson is still considered by many to be "the man" among multi-sport athletes.
He never played for a world champion, but the 6-foot-1, 225-pound Jackson was the first athlete named to play in the All-Star Game of two major sports. Not bad for a guy who won a Heisman Trophy and became a 1998 College Football Hall of Fame inductee in a sport he described as his "hobby." "When people tell me I could be the best athlete there is, I just let it go in one ear and out the other," Jackson said when his star was near its apex in 1990. "There is always somebody out there who is better than you are." Maybe in one sport or the other. But from the fall of 1987 to the winter of 1991, Bo knew no equal among paid athletes who took less than two months off. In baseball, he was a career .250 hitter with 141 home runs and 415 RBI in 2,393 at-bats in eight major-league seasons (1986-91, 1993-94) as an outfielder and designated hitter with the Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox and California Angels. He hit 107 homers for the Royals from 1987 through '90, when he also played pro football. As a part-time running back making full-time money with the Los Angeles Raiders, he ran for 2,782 yards on 515 carries, an impressive 5.4 average, and scored 18 touchdowns running and receiving in that 1987-90 period. He is the only player in NFL history to have two rushing touchdowns of 90 yards or more, with a 91-yarder coming when he rambled for a Raiders record 221 yards against Seattle a month into his pro football career. His last play as a Raider began the end of both his football and baseball careers. Even though the 1991 injury would lead to hip-replacement surgery in the spring of 1992, Jackson would make a triumphant return to baseball before retiring for good. Vincent Edward Jackson was born Nov. 30, 1962, in the steel town of Bessemer, Ala. The eighth of Florence Jackson Bond's 10 children, he was named after her favorite television actor, Vince Edwards, who portrayed Dr. Ben Casey. A child renegade, his family said Jackson was as wild as a "boarhog." Eventually, he came to be known as "Bo."
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