Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat:
He got better as a baseball player every year of his career and his skill set was still raw. If he only played baseball, he'd be an all-time great. One of the best athletes this country has ever produced.
Buck O'Neil, a Hall of Famer and a great evaluator of talent, said he was at Royals Stadium and heard a sound of the ball coming off the bat during batting practice that he hadn't heard in decades. It was Bo Jackson. The only two others that had the same sound was Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BWillie:
Hahahahah. He had NEGATIVE career defensive WAR. It was negative every year. This idea that he was an elite fielder is simply made up. He was FLASHY not great. He was a good offensive player at .784 OPS in his career but All-Time great? Cmon this is what Im talking about. The legend grows every year.
Lorenzo Cain is better than Bo Jackson. Is he an alltime great?
While I don't discount this, defensive metrics back then were formulated off box scores and play-by-play data. Ten-time Gold Glove winner Roberto Alomar is dinged as a mediocre fielder by these metrics. [Reply]
Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat:
He got better as a baseball player every year of his career and his skill set was still raw. If he only played baseball, he'd be an all-time great. One of the best athletes this country has ever produced.
You can't make the hall if you're too injured to play ball. [Reply]
Ultimately, one of the reasons why Bo is being recognized today is he transcended baseball. He was a national star. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bo and Ken Griffey Jr. were national childhood heroes. Every kid in grade school wanted their baseball cards. I felt like they were almost like the last two baseball players that transcended the sport and by the mid-1990s, NBA and NFL players had surpassed MLB players in popularity.
I don't think MLB has had that type of star since Bo and Griffey. [Reply]
I missed Bo Jackson's first major league home run, because I was in the commissary getting another load of Cokes to sell in the stands, but I'll never forgot the sound in Royals Stadium when he got his first outfield assist, versus the Twins on September 9, 1986, five days before the homer. Mickey Hatcher was at first base when Hrbek hit a single to right field, where Bo was playing. Hatcher tried to make it to third and as it became apparent that there might be a play, the Royals Stadium crowd roar was the usual sort, until fans started processing the throw that Jackson made. It was incredible. It seemed to me that when Hatcher was called out, there was a moment of silence in the stands as folks were still trying to register what they just saw, and then loud cheers. Ive been to hundreds of major league games and I don't remember any other moment where the crowd roar noticeably modulated like that due to dis-fuckin'-belief, and the thing is, that play doesn't even get talked about when folks talk about Bo's legend, because he did so many other incredible things in his career.
That guy did things that other players simply couldn't. There's a reason why his fellow players considered him a legend and so too do those of us lucky to have seen him play. [Reply]
Isn't part of the deal when getting hit by a pitch, in order to take your base you have to make some sort of effort to get out of the way and not just stand there like a fucking dope ready to get a free bag for doing nothing? [Reply]
