I couldn’t help but think of Arkansas’ greatest multi-sport athlete when watching ESPN’s most recent “30 for 30” film on Bo Jackson. Jackson’s record-setting documentary isn’t complicated; it is the story of a man who ran faster, jumped higher and was stronger than his competitors. In it are plenty highlight film clips, with plenty people discussing how awesome the feats in those clips are. Sometimes, when no film of Jackson’s mythic awesomeness is available, a commentator tells a story passed down the grapevine. Like the one of how as a child unaware of his own powers, Jackson threw a rock so hard at a minister’s pig he killed it.
This isn’t brain surgery. It’s solid cinema, which here is simply getting out of the way and letting Jackson’s exploits – real and apocryphal – bowl over the viewer.
It’s time the same is done for Arkansas’ own Bo Jackson, Pine Bluff’s Basil Shabazz.
More than 20 years after his heyday he holds a power over the people who saw him that is unmatched by other Arkansan athletes. I’ve spoken to people who saw Shabazz play, guys like KATV’s Steve Sullivan and Wadie Moore, the longtime Arkansas Gazette prep sports editor, and there is an unmistakable glimmer in the eye and a lift in the voice when they discuss memories of Shabazz.
At Pine Bluff High School, he electrified in football, track, baseball and track. He didn’t even play baseball until his senior year, then flashed enough potential to get drafted in the third round by St. Louis. He set state records in track events he hadn’t even trained for. He high jumped 6’9”, a record still standing and almost took the 200-meter dash mark in sweatpants, as one Hogville commentator recalls:
shabazz did things that mcfadden couldnt do. ie miss all of the calls at the meet of champs 200 then run across the field with sweats on when the runners are down in the starting blocks. no warming up or anything except running across the field while throwing his sweats off.
Shabazz then ran a 20.8, another record that still stands.
In basketball, Shabazz started for the Zebras’ 1990 state champions but it was on the gridiron as a running back that he really made a name.
His last game was his finest, as he rushed for 171 yards and five touchdowns against an undefeated Texarkana team that came in 13-0 and allowing 4.2 points per game. At times, he made the the state’s staunchest defense look downright silly. On one play, Pine Bluff lined up in the I-formation about 19 yards from Texarkana’s endzone with Shabazz in the backfield. Across the way were “supposedly the two best linebackers in the state,” Wadie Moore recalls. “Shabazz got the ball and ran straight through those guys before they could even get their arms up. They just looked at each other.” Shabazz, who also notched a 77-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in that game, was named the 1991 USA High School Athlete of the Year by the National Sports News Service.
Bo Jackson’s documentary is chronological, his rise fairly linear as a superstar in high school, college and the pros. When he suffered a career-ending injury in early 1991, at 28 years old, he was at the peak of his powers.
Shabazz’s story may best be told out of chronological order. His athletic peak came early, as a high school senior (he didn’t score the minimum ACT score of 17 to qualify for college athletics) and he played pro baseball before trying college football. The magic was gone, though.
He didn’t thrive in either attempt.
Because he is so much more familiar with failure, Shabazz presents a more challenging subject than Jackson. Gleaning from the two Shabazz interviews I have found since he moved to Texas in 1998, he has worked in various fields – helping troubled boys and mentally disabled adults, attending culinary school, teaching private baseball lessons. With all this opportunity to mentor youth, surely he has discussed his poor upbringing – how he and his brother went without electricity, and whatever money they had often had to pay off their mother’s gambling debts.
But when it comes to his own rise, and fall and rise again, what lessons has he taught? A few years ago, Shabazz told Nate Olson he had “no regrets” and “played the hand I was given.” This is fine for an absolute fatalist, but people in the business of inspiring the next generation often find sharing regret adds power to their message.
Two of Shabazz’s children would now be entering adolescence, likely playing sports. Do they know how great their father was? If, out of curiosity, they searched YouTube for highlight clips of him they would sadly find only barren wasteland.
But the tape’s out there, in the vaults of an outlet like KATV Channel 7 or the Creative Sports Network. Getting that video would be a fine first step for any aspiring storyteller in Arkansas’ burgeoning film industry. It will be a shame if Basil’s story isn’t told – and shown – in greater detail. We’d all be the better for it.
A freelancer, Evin blogs at thesportsseer.com. He also wants to pen a screenplay about this amazing story from Arkansas sports history.
I saw him almost jump completely out of the long jump box in junior high school at Sylvan Hills. He was a beast!
Powerful stuff – really enjoyed this article Evin
The greatest athlete to ever come out of Alabama went on to win the Heisman trophy and play in Pro Bowls and MLB All-Star games. The greatest athlete to ever come out of Arkansas, well, we all know how that ended. The story here would not be so much about relaying legendary tales of high school prowess, but how the adults, educators and coaches in Basil’s life failed miserably in harnessing any of that athletic talent into something ESPN documentary worthy.
I’m sure there are lots of Basal Shabazz type athletes that have fallen through the cracks.
ASU has a DE on its team, Quintaz Struble, whose father, Mandrell Dean, was suppose to be one on the greatest athletes ever in Oklahoma, and had a similar story, but ended up much worse.
Here is a link to an article that tells a little bit about him(did not find the Sunday story):
http://blog.newsok.com/highschoolsports/2012/01/27/coming-sunday-the-story-of-quintaz-struble-the-son-of-an-oklahoma-legend/
“The story here would not be so much about relaying legendary tales of high school prowess, but how the adults, educators and coaches in Basil’s life failed miserably in harnessing any of that athletic talent into something ESPN documentary worthy.”
Not sure if Basil’s story is unique enough for a national audience, but I definitely think it’s appropriate for a statewide or even regional audience.
Just found this apropos excerpt from a Torii Hunter bio:
“Torii’s first love was football. On offense he lined up at quarterback—he had the best arm in town—and on defense he patrolled the secondary as a hard-hitting free safety. Of course, come the spring the youngster turned to baseball … As a talented two-sport star, he naturally discovered a hero in Auburn’s Bo Jackson. Torii marveled at Jackson’s sprinter’s speed, raw power and impeccable instincts—and thrilled with the rest of the country as he became a star for the Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Royals in the 1980s.
Torii entered Pine Bluff High School as a sophomore in 1990, and immediately became a football star. He also made headlines in basketball and track for the Zebras. Success in baseball was slower to come, but by his junior season, Torii was distinguishing himself on the diamond. No matter how good he was, however, he could not hope to be the best in the school at any sport. That distinction belonged to his friend Basil Shabazz.
Considered by many to be the greatest prep athlete in Arkansas history, Shabazz could do it all. Though he played just one season of baseball, he was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals and received a $150,000 signing bonus. The notoriety helped Torii’s cause; when the scouts came to see Shabazz, they noticed him, too.”
http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/celebritytalentbios/Torii-Hunter
That’s a gem of a find, Evin. Thanks for adding it to the discussion. Perhaps Sporting Life Arkansas should just do this documentary? We can make that happen.
Honestly, I’m more impressed by what he’s doing now, and he’s probably more at peace with himself than most professional athletes. Glad to hear he has devoted his life to helping others. There is no monetary value that can compare to that.
Great piece, but a couple of minor corrections are in order. I covered PBHS during the 1989-90 basketball title run (and the 1990-91 hoop season as well), the 1990 football season and the 1990 and 1991 baseball teams at the Commercial.
1. Shabazz did play basketball at PBHS for three years, but he was not a starter on the 1990 state championship team (future Hog Ken Biley was the star of that team). In fact, he was off the team by conference season (he played during the first semester). He did return the next season to start on a Zebra team that shared the 1990-91 AAAA-Central title with Parkview.
2. Torii Hunter did play football at PBHS, but was a bit player at best on the 1990 title team. That team was loaded.
I’ll always remember something Billy Bock told me about Shabazz. Bock said he truly believed that he was coaching a Heisman Trophy winner. Shame he would never get the chance in college.
From the spring of 1990 (track season) until the spring of 1991 (track/baseball), no athlete in Arkansas had the run of success that he had.
Shabazz led PBHS to a AAAA track state title in May 1990 and being 1/4 of a record-setting 4×100 relay squad (and then he fell just short in winning the Decathalon), a AAAA football title in the fall of 1990, a conference title and state semifinal berth in AAAA basketball, a share of the conference title in baseball, and a state runnerup in the AAAA track meet (PBHS lost to NLR by just a couple of points). Had Shabazz been able to qualify for just a couple of events in the state track meet (I beleive there was a conference baseball game that conflicted), the Zebras would have won another track title easily.
Two best football plays ever by Shabazz.
First was the touchdown above described by Wadie Moore. Out of the Wishbone, it was a simple counter blast that was a white blur that Texarkana could not catch.
The second was an electrifying punt return against LR Hall at Quigley late in the game to win. He got the punt, split two defenders, made a cut to the middle of the field and was gone by the time he was at the Zebra 30. He still had 70 yards to go an no one was going to catch him.
Amazing athlete. Amazing story.
Nice detail Walter. Thanks for adding.
I second that. It’s crowdsourcing truth at its best, a must for this brave new bloggy world.
I also like Simon’s idea of making the Shabazz film a SLA-financed project.
I’m a freshman at the University of Arkansas, so I never saw Shabazz play. However, I have heard the legend of him. I am majoring in journalism (focusing on sports journalism) and when I went to Springdale High School, I interviewed our legendary former coach Jarrell Williams (coached SHS to 4 state championships, won a lot of games) for a story I wrote for the high school newspaper. Here’s an excerpt from that story…
Me: Who is the best athlete you ever coached against?
Jarrell Williams: Basil Shabazz from Pine Bluff. He was a man among boys. We played them at Pine Bluff one year and we scored a touchdown with five seconds or so left in the first half. I didn’t want Shabazz to get the ball again, so I told our kicker not to kick it to him, to kick it in the ground. Well, one of the up-men picked it up and tossed it back to him and he went 85 yards for a touchdown. Then in the second half, he had a run where he was running down the sideline and our guy got in position to make the play and was waiting for him, but Shabazz just jumped over him. Our kid kind of looked over at me like, “What was I supposed to do coach?” I had to tell him that that was all you could do.
I am totally for a documentary being made about him and I would love to be involved.
Everytime the conversation comes up about the greatest athlete (let alone; football, basketball, baseball or track) in the history of Arkansas, BASIL SHABAZZ is by far heads and shoulders above all the rest.
I played football and basketball in both Texas and Arkansas growing up and would tell people stories about these amazing plays by this kid and they just couldn’t believe it unless they were there.
The older he got the krazier these stories became but were TRUE….
It is truely sad that the rest of the world didn’t get to see Basil’s handy work face/face; or in this age…the internet. But trust me when I say this….HE WAS GREAT!!!
Honorable mention does need to go out to Eric Mitchel (also from Pine Bluff); who was considered the best up to til Basil’s arrival. But Eric only competed in two sports.