Reading about Stanford runningback, Heisman hopeful and MLB prospect Toby Gerhart in the Times last week made me think about Bo Jackson, for obvious reasons.

I was six years old when Bo Jackson first joined the Raiders, but I was head over heels for baseball by then and starting to grasp football, so I recognized that it was cool.

I guess, naive as I must have been then, I didn’t really think about how crazy that was.

In 1989 and 1990, Bo Jackson totaled 60 home runs, 41 steals and a 132 Major League OPS+. In those same years, he combined for nearly 1800 yards from scrimmage with 9 touchdowns and 5.5 yards per carry.

Then Deion Sanders, just a couple of years later, posted a 130 OPS+ with the Braves in the same year he picked up over 1000 return yards for the Falcons.

To be honest, I didn’t remember Neon Deion being any good at baseball. His baseball career seemed like a gimmick, and so I was surprised to learn he was actually a decent player for a couple of seasons.

Jackson, though, was different. Bo Jackson was a star in two professional sports at the same time. Again: Bo Jackson was a star in two professional sports at the same time.

That’s nuts. It’s so hard to imagine nowadays, in an age of such advanced specialty workouts and everything else.

And maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that Jackson got that terrible hip injury and flamed out so quickly.

But man, Bo Jackson was a stud.

I read his autobiography, Bo Knows Bo, pretty soon after it came out. It dealt with a bit with his childhood and a whole lot, if I recall correctly, with his college sex life. I was nine. I think the entire time I was reading it, I was thinking, “I obviously shouldn’t be reading this.”