GARY | A nattily-dressed Bo Jackson is sitting in the Genesis Center ballroom, looking like he could still smack a baseball 450 feet or take it to the house on an 80-yard touchdown run up the middle.

And he's 45 years old.

Jackson was the first pro athlete ever to be named an all-star in both Major League Baseball and the National Football League. Wednesday afternoon, he was in town to speak to scholarship winners at the Don Barden Gary Foundation luncheon.

Bo knows how to inspire, too.

Football and baseball almost simultaneously. How did he ever pull that off?

"I didn't 'pull anything off.' I just did what I had been doing since I was 2. That was the way I stayed out of trouble as a kid," Jackson said during an exclusive sitdown with The Times. "For me, that was a way of life growing up.

"You guys always thought I spread myself thin. I never spread myself thin. I didn't worry about injuries. You can get injured playing chess. Injuries are just a speed bump in the road of life. I never intended to play football all my life or had dreams to be in the baseball Hall of Fame. I used sports to further my business career, like sports used me to put people in the stands."

Bitter? Certainly not. Sports were never the center of his universe, according to Jackson.

"So it was easy for me to walk away when I did," he said. "You don't see me trying to get a coaching job. You don't see me doing sports commentating. You seldom see me at a sporting event, and I live in Chicago."

But, oh, the memories he could share and the tales he could weave after eight years of baseball and four seasons in the NFL. If only it mattered as much to him.

Like hitting 20 homers in 25 games his senior year at McAdory High School in Alabama; or winning the Heisman Trophy at Auburn in 1985; or playing for the Kansas City Royals and Oakland Raiders from 1987 through 1990; or rushing for 221 yards against Seattle on Monday Night Football -- just 29 days after his first NFL carry -- or belting three home runs (412 feet, 464, 400) in a game at Yankee Stadium; or just 53 minor-league games before his callup to the majors and getting his first four-hit effort in only his fifth game.

"I find business just as exciting as I did sports because I'm learning the art of being a schooled business person. Sports, I know how to do, so why should I stay in it?" said Jackson, who played briefly with the White Sox. "It's been fun learning how to be an employer instead of an employee."

Jackson currently runs a food company that supplies the military and Indian casinos throughout the country. He will soon become part owner of a bank and has several warehouse storage sites in the Midwest.

Born with a chronic stuttering problem as the eighth of 10 children, Bo had no choice but to gradually cure himself and to this day still carefully picks his words.

"I'm always going to try to do what everybody else can't, not to show anybody else up, but that's just me," Jackson said. "Don't go through life being a follower. Be a leader."

Jackson returned to Auburn in 1995 and graduated with a degree in family and child development. He had promised his mother that he would do so before she died of cancer.