MLB All-Star Game 2015: 5 most memorable All-Star Game performances
By Will Osgood
Bo Jackson the obvious MVP in 1989 MLB All-Star Game
Here’s my other repeat offender (so I at least got ’em out of the way quickly). Bo Jackson was a two-sport start Auburn University in the early 80s. He was wanted, pawed after and pretty much begged by executives in both the NFL and MLB to play their sport, for their team.
He was the 1985 Heisman Trophy winner for his running back play. He was drafted first overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1986 NFL draft but instead decided to play baseball for the defending World Series champion Kansas City Royals, who drafted in the fourth-round of the MLB draft (because everyone assumed he’d focus on football).
He first saw action for the big league club in September 1986, but it took until 1989 to really show his baseball promise at the big league level–proving how hard baseball is even for the greatest athletes in the world (Michael Jordan may have some thoughts on this topic as well).
But boy oh boy did he explode in 1989. He was voted to start the All-Star Game in Anaheim and start did he.
He began the game by making a wonderful running catch on a liner fading away from him off the bat of Pedro Guerrero and, as so often happens in baseball after a great defensive play, led off the bottom of the first. He didn’t waste much time making his mark offensively, sending a tape measure shot to just right of centerfield which landed on the tarps covering the seats used just for football in Anaheim Stadium’s two-sport setup.
He’d later steal a base and end the game going 2-for-4 with two runs driven in. The MVP was a mere act of coalescence.
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