Baseball DIY

Reading the recent post on Bo Jackson as "player of the day" reminded me that back around 1990 (yee gads...) I had that famous "Bo Knows Ball" poster on my wall. He was wearing football pads and had a baseball bat behind his neck, across his shoulders. The point was that he could play both and also have rock hard abs...I think you had to be a girl to really appreciate the abs part.

When I was writing about Jackie Robinson yesterday I thought of an interesting similarity between Jackie and Bo - both were more than one sport players. Jackie was an amazing baseball, football and basketball player and baseball was not his best game. He was actually (according to those who saw him play) a far better football player but he couldn't get on with a pro team so he turned to the Negro Leagues instead and started his pro baseball career.

Bo Jackson was also a multi-sport athlete and that was a large part of his fame, that he could do more than one pro sport period, not that he was particularly stellar at it. (The point was, he was able to make the cut.) I think we are so used to seeing one sport athletes, and only one sport athletes, that we forget how many people are really good at more than one. The pro schedule (and who knows what else) makes it impossible for pretty much anyone to play more than one type of game. See what happened to Michael Jordan if you don't believe me.

My Uncle Mike was a multi sport ahtlete - pitcher on the baseball team, center on basketball, quarterback on the football team. You would all know who he is if he had played at a different time instead of the late 1950s. He got a plaque when he graduated, not a scholarship. But my Mom says he was really something to watch, he was beautiful.

Mike Hurley knew ball, he knew them all.......