Bo Jackson Career Biography and Statistics

Bio:
Bo Jackson was a John Henry-like colossus who won the Heisman Trophy, was the only athlete to become an All-Star in both Major League Baseball and the National Football League, and ran the 60-yard dash fast enough to consider joining the U.S. Olympic team. Jackson played running back for the Los Angeles Raiders and left field and designated hitter for the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago White Sox and the California Angels.

Jackson was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the first pick in the 1986 draft, but chose to play baseball for the Kansas City Royals, who had drafted him that same year. (The New York Yankees had drafted him four years earlier as a high school player, but Jackson chose to attend college.) In his first year with the Royals he hit 22 home runs and two years later made the American League All-Star team. After hitting a 450-foot home run off Rick Reuschel and stealing a base, Jackson was named the game's MVP.

In 1987, Jackson decided to play pro football for the Oakland Raiders, who had drafted him. Joining the Raiders midway through the 1987 season, Jackson rushed for 554 yards on 81 carries in just seven games. Over the next three seasons, Bo Jackson would rush for 2,228 more yards and 12 touchdowns - an achievement all the more remarkable because he was a substitute back for Marcus Allen. In his four NFL seasons, he averaged 5.4 yards per carry, which put him in the rarified air of Jim Brown.

Jackson's play was the stuff of legend: In a game against the Seattle Mariners, he made a flat-footed throw from the warning track to home on a fly that nabbed an incredulous Harold Reynolds. In another game, against Baltimore, he ran full-tilt toward the outfield wall, caught a long drive, then ran up the wall and floated down. In 1991, he gained 221 yards against the Seattle Seahawks and literally ran over linebacker Brian Bosworth, who prior to the game had bragged about stopping Jackson.

A major hip injury suffered in a 1990 NFL playoff game eventually forced Jackson to undergo a hip replacement, which ended his football career. People thought Jackson's baseball life was over, too, until Jackson, then playing for the Chicago White Sox, homered on the first pitch he saw in 1993. However, the hip condition had sapped his speed and forced him to retire from baseball in 1994.