Bo Jackson Was ‘Mythological’ Star in 2 Sports. Then a Hip Injury Brought Him Back to Earth

Bo Jackson is the subject of Jeff Pearlman’s new book, The Last Folk Hero

With Bo Jackson, you really had to be there.

In the late 1980s, Jackson exploded onto the scene as the most exciting young player in two major sports: football and baseball. He was the best pure athlete most American sports fans had ever seen.

Almost immediately, he became the subject of tall tales. On the football field, his highlight reel runs looked like the product of a video game cheat code. On the baseball diamond, he made spectacular catches in the outfield, and it was said the ball sounded different coming off his bat.

Off the field, Nike designed its “Bo Knows” ad campaign around him, in which he’s famously pictured wearing football shoulder pads while holding a baseball bat, every muscle in his Greek God physique accentuated.

Then, suddenly, he became mortal again: While playing for the Los Angeles Raiders, Jackson suffered a devastating hip injury in a playoff game in 1991, ending his football career and robbing him of his explosiveness in baseball. He bounced around Major League Baseball for a few years as a journeyman, but the phenomenon was over.

A new book by author Jeff Pearlman, titled The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, looks back on Jackson’s legacy. PEOPLE interviewed Pearlman about Jackson.

PEOPLE: Bo Jackson hasn’t played a pro sports game since 1994. Why a book on him now?

Jeff Pearlman: He’s the greatest athlete of all time. I looked at my kids and my kids’ friends and thought, “None of these kids are gonna know about Bo Jackson.” When you have the greatest athlete of all time, he’s worthy of remembering.

He won back-to-back state decathlons [in high school] in Alabama. He stole 90 of 91 bases [attempted in high school]. He could’ve been an Olympic sprinter. He was the No. 1 pick in football, and he could’ve been the No. 1 pick in baseball [had he not joined the NFL]. He’d play an entire baseball season, take two weeks off, and then run for 100 yards in an NFL game. It’s preposterous.

PEOPLE: What was Bo’s personality like? To what degree, if any, did that contribute to the aura surrounding him?

JP: Very guarded. He does not like people taking advantage of him. When you come up Black in the Deep South, and enough older white men have taken advantage of you, you have your pricklers up. You don’t see him on TV, or the radio. He’s not letting you in. He never needed to tell everyone how great he was. Everything he did, he did with reclusiveness.

And when he vanished — it reminds me of the death of Tupac or Marilyn Monroe — poof, he was gone. He came and went, and he didn’t give people a long goodbye. No number retirement, no speeches, just… gone. It adds to his legend times a million. You’re not left with memories of Sad Bo.

PEOPLE: Are there any athletes today who can match Bo for his folkloric, larger-than-life qualities?

JP: Shohei Ohtani [the Los Angeles Angels star pitcher and slugger]. Maybe the French basketball player coming into the NBA [Victor Wembanyama]. I’ve heard more and more about him: “Did you see so and so?”

But it won’t last, because he’ll come into the league and we’ll see him on Twitter 1,000 times a night.

PEOPLE: What’s your favorite Bo Jackson story, real or apocryphal?

JP: Everyone told me that in a high school baseball game, Bo hit a flyball that was so high that by the time it landed, he was on third base. I finally got hold of the opposing left fielder, and he said, “I’m telling you, it happened.” He lost sight of the ball and when it finally came down [to throw it in], Bo was rounding third base.

Now, maybe if there was a video camera there, like there would be today, you learn the ball hit a tree or something. But in the mythological, Paul Bunyan-esque world of Bo Jackson, it happened.

The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman, (HarperCollins) is on sale now.

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