THE LAST FOLK HERO

An appreciative life of sports star Vincent “Bo” Jackson (b. 1962), a star in both football and baseball.

In his latest sports bio, prolific sportswriter Pearlman demonstrates Jackson’s near-mythical achievements on the gridiron and diamond, whether “throwing a football straight into the air and hitting the New Orleans Superdome scoreboard—140 feet above his head,” or “the 1989 throw from the leftfield corner to gun down Seattle’s Harold Reynolds at home” as an adult or chucking a rock a couple of hundred yards as a 7-year-old. Much of the book centers on Jackson’s accomplishments as a player for Auburn, often the Alabama Crimson Tide’s poor relation on the Southern football circuit, at least until Jackson helped engineer crushing victory over their archrivals (legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant retired immediately afterward). Of particular interest to aspiring athletes are the pages devoted to Jackson’s carefully orchestrated negotiations with the MLB and NFL, who wanted him so badly that he was able to play both baseball and football concurrently—albeit not without some hardball thrown by the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who treated Jackson precisely like “a poor kid from East Bumfuck, Alabama.” Taking down other sports heroes in the bargain, notably Reggie Jackson (no relation) and Deion Sanders, Pearlman throws in about every sports cliché in existence, from staccato sentence fragments to overwrought mixed metaphors (“Jackson was no longer a secret weapon. If anything, he was a flashing bolt of lightning”). Yet there are revelations, as well, including an explanation of how he came to be known as Bo. Ultimately, Pearlman is no mere hero worshipper, writing of his subject, “he is far from warm and bubbly, and oftentimes quite suspicious of the motives of anyone not named Bo Jackson.”

A good choice for devotees, showing how their hero sometimes has feet of clay—but remains a hero all the same.