Tales from the Bo Zone

Sportswriter Bill Simmons once answered a reader’s question with a new phrase: “The Tyson Zone,” the collection of celebrities about whom one can hear any story and believe it to be true. Simmons listed, along with Tyson, famous people like Andy Dick, Paris Hilton and Tara Reid (this was 2004). In the years since, the Zone has expanded to include the likes of Tom Cruise, Rip Thorne and Donald Trump.

Tyson Zone entrants’ exploits do not have to be related to that member’s profession for the celebrity to be eligible for entry. Athletes on the list like Dennis Rodman and Ricky Williams are known for their colorful personal lives, not their mythical performance in the game. Then a new title must be created for legendary feats like Babe Ruth’s shot, Michael Jordan’s flu game, and Mickey Mantle’s 660-foot home run.

After reading Jeff Perlman The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jacksonwe might have to name this club “The Bo Zone”.

Perlman is no stranger to larger-than-life characters and stories that might be too good to be true. Although his 2014 book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers exactly reflected real-world events, the cable TV show for which it served as inspiration, Time to Win: The Rise of the Lakers Dynastydrew criticism from former players for allegedly being loose with the truth.

But just as many reviewers believe the show’s possible factual inconsistencies are more exciting than the truth, the stories Perlman relays about Bo Jackson are worth believing simply because they’re incredible. And Perlman knows Beau.

To understand what Bo Jackson was, Perlman argues, it is important to first understand what Bo Jackson was not. An undisciplined offensive player and often unmotivated running back with an Iverson-like aversion to practice and a penchant for sitting out some of the biggest games of his college football career, Jackson was not, as sports fans would say, a gamer. He didn’t have a killer instinct, he wasn’t a mainstay in the playoffs, and he didn’t have a long Hall of Fame-worthy career in either sport he played professionally.

The last folk hero not a sportsman’s book. This is a superhero book. A guy who, despite never lifting weights regularly, could bench press more than anyone on the Los Angeles Raiders.

Who stood waist-deep in the pool and jumped flat-footed out onto the edge of the pool.

Who threw a football 140 feet in the air and hit the scoreboard of the New Orleans Superdome.

Who destroyed the legend of Brian “The Boz” Bosworth, a cult figure in his own right, by carrying it into the end zone for a touchdown.

Who was so dominant, the developers of Tecmo Super Bowl made his virtual rendering almost unstoppable.

Near the beginning of the biography, Perlman tells an anecdote that encapsulates his titular character. On a September 1991 flight from Southern California back to Chicago, one engine on a 737 carrying White Sox players and coaches caught fire. Appropriately, there are two competing versions of what happened next.

Former professional baseball player Joey Cora — in a story that several of his teammates support — recalled Jackson exiting the cockpit, turning toward the back of the plane and letting everyone on board know they were going to be OK.

Backup catcher Matt Merullo told Perlman a different story, one also corroborated by members of the ’91 White Sox. In this edition, Jackson, whose hip had deteriorated to the point where doctors thought he would never be able to walk again, broke into a dead sprint to the front of the plane and helped land it himself.

No, these two stories cannot both be true. But, Perlman argues, these two stories were Bo Jackson.

Consider Jackson’s 1989 laser stunner from the warning track to home plate, killing Harold Reynolds. All available videos open with Seattle Mariner Scott Bradley at the plate hitting a double into left field. The tape shows Jackson throwing the ball off the wall, then Reynolds rounding third base and heading home. It shows a ball flying out of nowhere and the Kansas City Royals catcher tagging Reynolds into the plate.

It doesn’t show Jackson throwing the ball.

Perlman is absolutely fine with that. In fact, as he says, it only adds to the supernova that was Bo Jackson. The last folk hero is meticulously researched, with hundreds of interviews and an impressive amount of Alabama high school statistics. But for all the information packed between its covers, how much actually happened is ambiguous, and Perlman himself admits as much repeatedly throughout his book’s nearly 500 pages.

Ambiguity is what makes things interesting. It’s what makes Jackson’s moniker “The Last Folk Hero” fit as tightly as the Superman costume he wore to a college photo shoot.

This puts him squarely in the Bo zone.

The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson
by Jeff Perlman
Mariner Books, 496 pp., $29.99

Zach Kessel is a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he serves as president of the campus chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society.