Transcription
Hey, welcome to the Pressbox Chronicles with Jeff [Music] Pearlman.
Hey, welcome to the Pressbox Chronicles with Jeff Pearlman. The show where a cranky middle-aged sports writer, that is me, who has seen it all, takes you behind the scenes and into the stories. I am your host, Jeff Peron, and this is going to be the first part of a two-part series about Bo Jackson. And I can't say I'm the world's biggest Bo Jackson expert, but I have to I definitely have a PhD in Bo Jackson. I wrote a book called The Last Folk Hero, all about Bo. And what I wanted to do is use two episodes to talk about his three greatest baseball exploits and really dig into them. And then next episode is three greatest football exploits.
So, we're going to start today with what I consider one of the absolute definitive plays, not just in the history of Bo Jackson, but maybe in the history of freaky athletic sports plays. And we're going back to June 5th, 1989. The Kingdome in Seattle, which was a shitty, shitty sardine can of a stadium. Nobody wanted to play there. It was dark. It was dank. It sucked. The team was bad. And it's a uh it's a game between the mediocre Kansas City Royals and the very bad Seattle Mariners. And we're now in the 10th inning of a tie game. And it's three to three. And the Mariners are at bat in the bottom of the tenth. and Harold Reynolds, their speedy second baseman, um a gold glove player, really good player, is on first base and up to the bat comes Scott Bradley, uh a catcher, kind of utility player out of the University of North Carolina, a slap hitter, a gap hitter, no power, but you know, makes contact. And on the mound for the Royals is Steve Farre, their kind of closer. And in left field is one Bo Jackson.
And if you know anything about Bo Jackson, even if you if it's 1989, you know anything about Bo Jackson. Bo Jackson won the Heisman Trophy out of Auburn. He was the number one pick in the NFL draft. He bypassed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to play baseball because he hated the Buccaneers and he hated their ownership and thought they were a bunch of douchebags. So he goes and plays for the Royals and he's kind of this athletic phenomenon and he's been this phenomenon and people love Bo Jackson. So now it's 1989. It's June 5th. He's in left field. Harold Reynolds is on first base and he has a fivestep lead off the bag. And Harold Reynolds can run. I'm not saying he's Ricky Henderson, but he has that Vince Coleman speed, that Tim Reigns speed. He can run. He steals 60 bases in a season, leads the American League. And he's leading off first and Steve Far is on the mound. And Scott Bradley is at the plate and Bo Jackson is in left field and on the pitch far right. Let's go. And Reynolds is running on the pitch and he has an enormous lead and a great jump. And Scott Bradley hits the ball to left field into the gap. And Reynolds is running fast, like really fast, like as fast as you can. And the ball goes 320 ft, bounces off the wall in left field. And Bo Jackson standing there fields a ball. And Reynolds, by the time Bo gets the ball, Reynolds is heading toward third. This game is over.
And Bo Jackson gets the ball and he turns to throw. Bob Boon is the catcher for the Kansas City Royals. He's in his 18th season. He's seen a lot. He's won a World Series. He's played with a bunch of teams. He was with the Angels with the Donnie Moore home run. He knows his [ __ ] and he knows his game is over. And he starts walking away from the plate because he knows Harold Reynolds is going to be safe. And the home plate umpire starts walking away from the plate because this game is over and he's not going to have to call this. And he literally starts walking up the line toward first because the game is over. And Reynolds is charging around third and the third base coach for the Seattle Mariners is Bob Diddier. He's been doing it for a long time and he's rounding Reynolds around and he knows he's going to score. This game is over. I interviewed Bob Dier for this for the book. He's like, "There was no chance. This game was over. We won. Hooray. we can go into the into the clubhouse and drink beers and celebrate a rare win for the Mariners."
Well, Bo Jackson gets the ball and he turns to throw and he unleashes this throw. And what's interesting is this is the dark ages of television for uh for sports TV. And there's only one camera on this play taking in the whole play. It's the TV station for the Seattle Mariners. And the guy focuses on Bo and then goes to Harold Reynolds. So, there's actually no video of Bo Jackson fielding and throwing. You're looking at Howard Reynolds charger out third base because the camera wants to get Harold Reynolds scoring. Well, Bo Jackson releases this throw and the first guy to notice, holy [ __ ] is Darnell Kohl's who's on deck for the Mariners. And he's standing there and he's assuming Harold Reynolds is gonna going to score. And he looks up and the ball is coming and the ball is coming and the ball's coming and it's coming straight on a dart all the way 320 ft from left field. And Darnell Cole starts going slide, slide, slide. And Harold Reynolds in his mind is like, "Why the [ __ ] do I have to slide? I'm gonna score. This is nothing. Slide, slide, slide." Bob Boon, the catcher, is walking off. So now he sees the ball coming, but he wants to fake out Harold Reynolds. So he pretends he's not even looking at the ball. His arms are down. He's like this. Now the home plate umpire is way away from the play, but he turns his head and he's like, "Whoa, holy [ __ ] What's going on here?" The ball's coming closer and closer. Bob Boon suddenly breaks out of his deak. A deak is an old school learn word for a fake. Breaks out of his deak, goes to catch the ball. Reynolds is sliding. Bob Boon catches a ball tags Harold Reynolds and Harold Reynolds is called out from 45 feet away by the umpire. And um he starts screaming. He's like, "No, what? No." And Bob Diddier, the third base coach, is scream at the umpire. And the umpire umpire is Larry Young. He's screaming at Larry Young. And on video, you can't see what Bob Dier is saying. And you assume he's arguing the call, but he actually wasn't arguing the call. He was basically screaming, "How the [ __ ] can you make that call? You were 45 a week a feet away from the plate." And Larry Young is basically like, "You were too. Nobody thought he was going to score, but he's out." The throw is the most amazing baseball throw you'll ever see. And I've seen amazing throws from Ellis Valentine, from Dave Winfield, from Dwight Evans, from Roberto Clemente. It's the greatest single throw you'll ever see. The Royals wind up winning the game 5 to3 in 13 innings.
And when the game is over, the Seattle Mariners all run into the clubhouse to watch the video replay. And Harold Reynolds is playing it over and over and over. This is a VHS tape, so watch. And he's watching it over and over again. And number one, he realizes, "Holy [ __ ] I was out." But the thing that blows his mind, like blows his mind, is he thought Bo threw it. The ball was cut off by the shortstop and the shortstop threw it in. That ball traveled 320 uh ft on a dart to Baboon at home plate and he tagged him out. No one's ever ever made a throw like that to get a runner at home plate in the history of Major League Baseball. And the crazy thing is that's not even Bo Jackson's best play. [Music]
Okay, so here in my crackdown office where the magic happens, aka I write a lot of [ __ ] and put it on the screen and hope it works out. I keep a lot of props. I have pictures behind me. I have different momentos. I have a baseball my my late father-in-law got me signed by the 86 Mets. But maybe my favorite thing is this bat. And this is a signed Bo Jackson baseball bat. And I think I got it on a like on an online charity auction. I think it was 50 bucks. It wasn't very expensive. It's a Bo Jackson bat. And every now and then when I was watching Bo Jackson Highlights, I would actually hold this bat and I would kind of pretend to be Bo Jackson little kid in your living room, which is ridiculous cuz I'm 52 years old, but I did.
And to me, my favorite Bo Jackson at the plate moment and maybe the most beautiful baseball play ever as far as aesthetics, as far as the lighting, as far as the setting, July 11th, 1989, the 60th Major League Baseball All-Star game in Anaheim, California. And Bo Jackson was the top American League vote getter. He had 1,748,696 votes. Will Clark of the San Francisco Giants was the top overall vote getter, but Bo American League. And at this point, Bo Jackson is simply a phenomenon. He's a football player. He's a baseball player. He's a advertising freak. He's everywhere. And everyone wants to be Bo Jackson. And leading up to the All-Star game, Nike has plans during the game. We're going to pay a shitload of money to have the brand new Bose ad run during the game. And B knows was this phenomenon. If you're too young to know, Bonos was a thing. Just like Air Jordan was a thing. Just like Little Penny was a thing. Think about sports phenomenons from the past, marketing phenomenons in the past. Could be LeBron, could be Carmelo, whatever modern ones are. Bose was as big as it got. And it basically was Bon knows football, Bon knows baseball, B knows basketball. This whole marketing campaign around this guy who could do anything. And leading up to this game, Nike decides, we're going to unleash this ad, this national ad to run during the fourth thing of the All-Star game, and we're also going to paper the stadium uh where the Angels play in Anaheim with B knows ads everywhere. So, it's a big sort of marketing risk with the hope that Bo Jackson performs.
And on the day before the All-Star game, so July 10th, 1989, Tony Larusa, the manager of the Oakland A's and the manager of the American League All-Star team, meets with Wade Bogs. And Wade Boggs was an all-star third baseman for the Red Sox. And by now, it was pretty customary that Wade Bogs was going to lead off for the American League. And Tony Larusa pulls Wade Boggs aside and says, I was just kind of thinking, what if I lead Bo off? Would you be cool with that and you hit second? And Bog is like, yeah, that'd be kind of sick. So Tony Larusa tells Bo Jackson, "You're going to lead off." And Mo Jackson is not a leadoff hitter. He strikes out way too much. He's not a contact hitter. He's the last guy you would want in a regular season to be hitting leadoff, but it's just the moment, the All-Star game. Bo Jackson prime time. And before the game, uh, Wade Bogs goes up to Bo Jackson and he says, "We need a handshake, like a special handshake, because you're going to homer in your first at bat." And, uh, Bo Jackson says, "Bogsy, you're crazy." He's like, "No, no, we need a handshake. We need a handshake." So, they come up with this really stupid handshake and uh they do it.
Okay, it's now July 11th. It's the All-Star game. It's 5:42 p.m. The game begins. And in the booth, everything about this is amazing. In the booth is Vince Scully, the legendary Dodger announcer, and Tom Siver, the retired pitcher who's a legend with the Mets and a future Hall of Famer. But in the first inning, Vince Scully is joined in the booth by Ronald Reagan, who at this point is 78 years old, former president, former baseball announcer in Iowa, uh, former actor, and Ronald Reagan comes into the booth. And Vince Scully and Ronald Reagan are calling this game. This is when the All-Star game is enormous. You have millions and millions of viewers. And, um, it's a big deal. And actually the day uh a few hours earlier, Ronald Reagan walked through the clubhouses of both teams and he shook Bo Jackson's hand and he turns to a Secret Service guy and he goes, "That man has a very strong handshake." So the game begins and it's American League National. Dave Stewart of the Ace starts with the American League. Top of the first inning, National League scores two runs. Well, now we're going to the bottom of the first and Bo Jackson is leading off. And on the mound from the San Francisco Giants is a pitcher named Rick Russell. And he's 40 years old. And he's kind of built like a guy who's eaten a lot of sandbags. His body is actually kind of like a sandbag. It's like bully and not much definition and kind of burly and he's just a he kind of looks like a tub of, you know, vanilla pudding. And he throws a lot of breaking stuff. He's not a guy who's going to blow by, but he's having this resurgence with the Giants. and Rick Russell's on the mound and Bo Jackson's at the plate and it's a perfect Southern California evening. The sky is blue. It's about 70°. Um the air smells fresh. I live out here sometimes. Just smells beautiful and the palm trees and the ocean nearby and everything about it. And Bo Jackson steps in and Rick Russell starts him off ball one and Bo's in. And Bo Jackson is wearing his white Kansas City Royals jersey with the blue Royals across inscript across the chest. He has a button open and he just looks respplendant. He looks like a walking muscle. Bo Jackson did not have an ounce of fat on him and the uniform is tight and he just is all muscle. And Rick Russell throws a sinker on his second pitch and it starts high, it starts to dip. And Bo does his swing and he just goes swings all the way through. And the ball starts going and Ronald Reagan who's jabbering on. He's in the early stages of early dimensions. He's jab. He just goes, "Hey." And Vince Scully says, "He's remarkable." And look at that one. And the ball is going dead center into this perfect blue sky. Uh the Cincinnati Reds Eric Davis is playing center field. And the ball goes over his head over the 400 to 4 foot sign and travels 448t away onto the uh batter's eye. And in the outfield is Paul Cooper, a law student at Brigham Young University. And he runs out and one guy has the ball at first. He's tackled. The ball gets away from him. This BYU student, Paul Cooper, picks up the ball and holds the ball. And he's on national TV on the batter's eye holding up the ball as Bo Jackson just like a stallion, like a Olympic champion is running around the bases and the place is just going crazy. And he gets back to the dugout and Kirby Pucket, the late Minnesota Twin superstar, greets him and says, "Damn, Bojack, what the [ __ ] did you do to that ball?" And and Wade Bogs gives him the stupid handshake with the shoulder tap and all that stuff. And in New York City at Mickey Manel's restaurant, which is located on Central Park West, uh, Central Park South, Phil Knight, the head of Nike, and four Nike employees are watching this game and watching this moment. And as Bo Jackson is rounding the bases, they're going crazy. They are screaming and yelling and high-fiving. And everyone in the restaurant, Phil Knight told me later, is like, "What the [ __ ] is wrong with these people?" because they didn't know that this was the all-time greatest marketing bonanza ever. And a couple of minutes later, the new B- nose ad campaign runs on TV. And that moment, Bo Jackson, Allstar game, millions of people watching Ronald Reagan, Vince Scully leading off is to me one of the most beautiful, beautiful moments in the history of my boyhood watching baseball.
But I actually think the next play is even better. Whenever I talk about Bo Jackson, I end up getting in these discussions like what's the greatest thing you've ever seen Bo Jackson do? What's the thing? What's the thing? And I always say like there have been other players who hit amazing all-star game home runs. Uh Reggie Jackson in Detroit, Fred Linton in the Grand Slam in Chicago, all lot of home runs, right? There are people who have made amazing throws. As I said, Ellis Valentine made some amazing throws. Clemente, amazing throws. Um, Dwight Evans, you know, Dave Winfield, amazing amazing throws. Ruben Matteo, amazing throws. However, there's only one guy in the history of Major League Baseball who literally Spider-Manike climbed up a wall, ran across the wall, ran down the wall. And we're going back to July 11th, 1990. And the Kansas City Royals are visiting the Baltimore Orioles. And this is way before Camden Park. The Orioles played in shitty Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. And it kind of sucked. And it was dreary. And it was just a sucky old stadium in the in the years leading up to teams finally figuring out, wait, we can have really nice stadiums and why are we playing in these dumps? And this is a game nobody would want to see. At the time, the Royals are in last place, so 36 and 46. and they're trailing the Oakland A's by 15 games in the West. And the Orioles suck, too. They just suck and nobody cares. And it's one of the worst pitching matchups you could ever imagine going to. Starting for the Kansas City Royals is Pete Filson, who had been a borderline major leaguer with the Minnesota Twins, gets hurt, has a comeback with the Royals, wouldn't if you walked down a street anywhere in America, nobody would recognize him. And starting for the Orioles is the equally mediocre Bob Malaki. So basically, you're going to watch two crabby teams on a rainy night in Baltimore to watch Pete Filson face Bob Malaki. And that's why the announced attendance was about 20,000. They're probably 15 14,000 actually in the stands. So at this point, Boj Jackson is playing center field because he has speed, he has a arm, he has a range, and uh you know, give him a shot there. And he's playing center field. Bottom of the third inning and the Orioles have a guy, an outfielder named Joe Orselac who is best remembered because his last name is Orselac. Otherwise, he was a pretty forgettable major leager, like a good player, but not that memorable. Played for the Pirates, played for the worlds. And Pete Filson throws Joe Orslac a very ordinary hanging slider. And Joe Orslack swings and he hits the ball into the left center gap. And the ball's coming. It's kind of fading. It's kind of fading. And Bo Jackson is running from center field and he's running from center field and Willie Wilson isn't left and he raises his glove to the sky and he makes his catch and the catch is a really good catch. It wouldn't be an all-time great catch but it was a really good catch. But he's running and Bo Jackson weighed about 220 lbs. He ran at this point probably a 4240. like he was all mass and all speed and he's running and he catches a ball and the wall is not that far away and he's running and he basically has this decision. Am I going to slam into this wall and kill myself? Am I going to try pulling up and probably pop a knee or sprain an ankle or do do I just roll with it? And Bo Jackson, he catches the ball and Gary Thornton, the ESPN announcer, goes, "Bo is there." and he runs to the wall and at the warning track he's he's approaching the warning track. He plants his foot in the dirt. He raises his right knee and he digs his cleat into the padding and then he goes padding, padding, padding. He runs up the wall, literally up the wall, then he runs across the wall and then he runs down the wall. And the announcer with Gary Thorne just starts laughing [Laughter] [Applause] like he can't he can't even figure out what he just saw because it's so utterly preposterous. And later on I was talking to Billy Ripken who was the Orio second base brother of Cal Ripken and he said what was really crazy about that play is it wasn't a wall like you think of. It wasn't a wall wall. Basically it was a green padding covering a chainlink fence. So the ball I mean when you climb up the wall the wall is moving with you. It's like bump bump bump and Bo Jackson got so high the Orioles bullpen was behind the wall and I interviewed a bunch of guys who were sitting in the Orioles bullpen and they all thought Bo Jackson was coming over the wall. So they all went back like this because they felt Bo was going to tumble over and he runs down. Now it's the most amazing play I've ever seen. Physical play I've ever seen. It's just phenomenal. And um
The next day, all over Major League Baseball, I interviewed different guys from different teams. All these players, during batting practice, are trying to run up walls, and they get like one step up and fall on their ass. So they get two steps up and they fall on their head. And it was just this comical, funny, weird, madcap adventure of trying to climb up walls like Bo Jackson.
And interestingly, when I was working on the book, I interviewed a guy who played with Bo in Memphis. Bo Jackson started his baseball career at the double-A Memphis Chicks when he signed with the Royals in 1986. And they played a game at Charlotte, North Carolina, at an old dilapidated stadium named Crockett Park. And he told me that Bo climbed a wall, ran across it, went down, but there were like 500 people there to see it and no TV recording the game. But he swears Bo Jackson did this. And the guy told me when he saw Bo do it in Baltimore, everyone around him was shocked. And he was basically like, "Yeah, I've seen that before."
And the last weird thing about it is Joe Erslack, the man who hit the ball; I interviewed him for my book, and he told me he did not realize until 10 years later that he was the one who hit that ball. He'd seen the replay a million times, but when he hit the ball, you're running and you're looking at your coaches. So, first he's running at first, he's looking at first, and then he's looking at the shortstop and second baseman or their position, whether he should turn. He didn't even realize that that play was the ball he hit until years and years later. I just think that's kind of a ludicrous moment considering he was part of maybe the greatest physical feat in Major League Baseball history and, for my money, the most phenomenal Bo Jackson moment in his very short baseball career.
That is a wrap for this episode of Pressbox Chronicles with Jeff Hurman. Please leave a comment below on what stories you'd like to hear more about, or if there's a particular sports figure you'd like me to delve into. I'd be happy to do it. Um, please make sure you like and subscribe and follow me on TikTok, Jeff Pearlman, author, and on Blue Sky, Jeff Pearlman. Thank you so much for diving behind the scenes and digging into the story. We will see you next time on Pressbox Chronicles.