If you know who Bo Jackson is, then you know “Bo knows,” and the pop-culture moment surrounding his ubiquitous ‘80s Nike ad campaign. If you don’t know Bo, you probably still know that he was maybe the single greatest professional athlete of the 20th century—the onewho made history as a multi-sport phenomenon in the ‘80s when he played centerfield for the Kansas City Royals and left to become the most exciting and dominating running back in the NFL. Either way: what do you really know about Bo?
The tales were legion—splitting baseball bats over his head, running up walls, jumping over them, demolishing something called The Boz—and everyone wanted to watch him play, wear his sneakers, and believe he could do anything. Along the way to superstardom, totally dominating the landscape of sports and entertainment, and pioneering a new type of sports celebrity who was more famous than the team or the sport he was playing, he did what he’d always done: he captured the world’s imagination. And then he kind of just disappeared.
Finding Bo fell to writer Jeff Pearlman, whose work you know even if “you don’t know Jeff.” After working at Sports Illustrated, he wrote the book that became the HBO hit series Winning Time, as well as four more of the best best-selling sports books of all time. And through covid Pearlman chased the man, the myth and the legend of Jackson for what became his latest tome, The Last Folk Hero.
GQ: I’m operating from a basic premise that there’s a thematic element to your work—what people would call behind the scenes, or “the real true story.” I know it’s a research-driven process, obviously, but can you talk to me a little bit about how that works and what you do to achieve that kind of realness?
Jeff Pearlman: All right, so first of all, I’m the anti-artsy writer. In fact, I hate what people refer to journalism as a craft. I don’t view myself as a craftsman, I don’t view this as a craft in the way it’s painting or whatever. I just call everybody, everybody. Gary Smith, when I was at Sports Illustrated, I think I read somewhere, he said, “You always make the extra call.” And I do take that literally. You always make the extra call, always.
So if you’re reading somewhere that in 19-whatever, Bo Jackson bought a house and they list the real estate agent, you find that real estate agent. In his own autobiography, Bo Jackson wrote about beating up a hog with a stick? Well, I was determined to find the neighborhood farmer. He’s dead, but I talked to his son. Just always make the extra call, always make the extra call, always make the extra call.
And the other thing is, if you’re going to write a biography, you have to be honest and you have to be truthful. And it has to be a full telling of this person’s life. So if Walter Payton’s mistress was in row three and Walter Payton’s wife was in row one in his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and you know that to be true, you can’t just paint Walter Payton as this family man. You just can’t, even though it’s going to upset people and it might even hurt sales of your book. You can’t do it. So I always talk about how biography is so flawed and it sucks in a lot of ways. You are going to hurt people’s feelings writing biographies if you do it, in my opinion, correctly.
Luke Zaleski
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