Bo Jackson is one of the greatest athletes to ever walk the face of this planet.
He starred in football and baseball at Auburn, then went on to have a highlight reel-worthy career for both the NFL's Raiders and MLB's Royals.
Injuries prevented Jackson from being a decades-long superhero, but he showed enough in his professional tenures for us to know just how special he was.
There was a chance once, though, for Jackson to have done something even more remarkable.
Long-time MLB manager Joe Maddon wanted Jackson to pitch.
Maddon told this story to Sports Illustrated's Connor Orr.
Maddon was on the Angels' staff when Jackson was 31 years old and entering his final season of pro baseball.
He watched Jackson throw a ball hundreds of feet in the air to a worker helping put up a large sign in left-center field at the California Angels' ballpark. Jackson did it without even warming up, Maddon said.
"I mean, no one could do that. Nobody. No-body," Maddon said.
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Maddon suggested to eventual Angels manager Marcel Lachemann that Jackson should be tried as a pitcher.
"Of course, that never made it to Bo's ears," Maddon told SI. "... I don't know if Bo would have ever wanted to do it, but I would have loved to see it."
Maddon eventually got to manage a sports unicorn of a different kind. He presided over Shohei Ohtani's first MVP season with the Angels in 2020, when he hit 46 homers and had a 3.18 ERA.
But if Jackson had been a home-run hitting, long-touchdown scoring, strikeout-throwing machine? Whew, that would've been even on another level.
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