How a BYU law student ended up in the middle of one of baseball’s most famous home runs

There’s never been anyone quite like Bo Jackson.

Heisman Trophy winner. Baseball superstar. NFL standout. The only man to be named an All-Star in two sports.

Author Jeff Pearlman summed it up best — Jackson was “the last folk hero.”

Though his career was cut short by injury, the pure electricity of Jackson’s half decade run with the Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Raiders will never fade.

Arguably his most iconic moment came in the 1989 MLB All-Star Game in Anaheim, where Jackson led off the bottom of the first inning with a monstrous home run to center field.

July 11, 1989: With Ronald Reagan in the booth with Vin Scully, Bo Jackson leads off the bottom of the first of the All-Star Game in Anaheim with a Home Run. pic.twitter.com/1t5H3CNMDp

— This Day In Sports Clips (@TDISportsClips) July 11, 2021

If you know anything about Bo Jackson, or have ever just watched an MLB All-Star game, you’ve probably seen a replay of the home run. It remains one of the most memorable blasts in the history of baseball’s midsummer classic.

For Paul Cooper, it was perhaps the highlight of his life as a sports fan. He was the one who retrieved the ball.

Not only that, but he manifested it moments beforehand.

“The guy sitting next to me (in the center field bleachers) was a total stranger, and I said, ‘Hey, when Bo Jackson hits a home run here, I’m going out to get it,’” Cooper told the Deseret News. “And this guy is looking at me like I’m crazy. Two pitches later, sure enough, you hear the crack of the bat.”

But how Cooper ended up in center field in the first place is nearly as miraculous as him ending up with Jackson’s homer.

Cooper was between his second and third year at BYU law school, where he was roommates with Cougar football player Warren Wheat.

“It was (Wheat’s) senior year, and he was being recruited for the NFL, so there was an agent that came to town,” Cooper said. “Warren met with him, and he said, ‘Hey, I want you to come with me to meet this agent.’ I’m like, ‘Alright,’ so we met this guy, and Warren ends up signing with him.”

“Then the agent says, ‘Hey, do you want to do a summer internship with me, as a sports agent?’ I’m like, ‘Of course!’”

Cooper’s internship took him down to California, where he lived in Newport Beach during the summer of ‘89. Wheat had been drafted by the Los Angeles Rams a few months earlier, so he was around as well.

That’s when the agent called again, this time offering Cooper and his friends free tickets for the MLB All-Star Game at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Much like accepting the internship, taking the tickets was a no-brainer.

So there Cooper sat in center field, right next to the stadium’s tarp-covered, folded bleachers being used as a batter’s eye — an area he would soon become acquainted with.

When Jackson hammered Rick Reuschel’s sinking fastball 450 feet to center field, Cooper jumped on the tarp in an attempt to grab the battered baseball.

But Cooper had competition.

“So I come from the side, and there’s a bunch of people coming from below,” Cooper said. “They’re faster than me. I mean, this whole thing is like running on a trampoline.”

There were two other fans ahead of Cooper, but the tarp’s tricky surface slowed them down and took them out, as they collided with each other to put Cooper in the lead.

“The ball hits and kind of goes over their heads, and they tumble,” Cooper said. “I go down for the ball and there’s like six of us in there, and I just see it, reach in, grab it and stand up and to do my thing.”

The NBC broadcast cameras caught Cooper’s moment of celebration for 25 million viewers to see: donning a white shirt, baseball cap and sweater tied around his waist, Cooper simply stood up and held the ball in the air, with the calm display a polar opposite to that of the mad scramble for the ball.

Getting the ball came at a bit of a physical cost, with Cooper’s hip taking a shot from the seats under the tarp. “When you go down (on the tarp), you think it’s a trampoline, except there are these hard seats under it. So I hit the side of my hip and had a huge bruise.”

When Cooper got back to his seat, a member of the Angels organization approached him saying Jackson would want to get the ball back, allowing Cooper the opportunity to meet the slugger and work out a trade of some kind.

He was then ushered to a new seat behind home plate to watch the remainder of the contest, and since his friends weren’t permitted to join him, Cooper took all of their hats with him so Jackson could sign them.

Upon Jackson’s exit from the game, Cooper was brought down into the belly of Angel Stadium, with the arranged meeting taking place just outside of the American League clubhouse.

“I’m there with three hats on my head and the ball, and in comes Bo,” Cooper recalled. “He’s in his jersey and his sliding pants. ... The other guy there had a new Rawlings ball in a box, and he’s like, ‘OK, what’s going to happen here is you’re going to give Bo the actual ball, and he’s going to sign this ball for you.”

But Cooper decided further negotiations were in order.

“I go, ‘I was kind of hoping for something more than just a ball,’” Cooper said. “I’m doing this to Bo Jackson!”

Cooper asked for a signed bat, along with signatures on all of the hats as well as the new signed ball. Jackson happily obliged to Cooper’s requests — except for one.

“When he was signing the ball, I said, ‘You’ve got to put ‘MVP’ on it,’” Cooper said. “Bo was like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to jinx it,’ so I’m like, ‘All right, you don’t have to write that.’”

Jackson did end up avoiding the jinx, as he received All-Star MVP honors at the game’s conclusion. On the new baseball, he personalized the signature to Cooper while adding the date of July 11, 1989 as well.

Cooper laughs now about the trade with Jackson, acknowledging the craziness and courage to dare ask such a hulking, physical specimen for more than he was offered. “I think back on it, and I’m like, ‘What was I thinking?’”

Though he had plenty of new souvenirs to prove the validity of his story, for many years Cooper didn’t have a convenient way to show people the footage of him with the ball on the NBC broadcast.

Thankfully, the footage has stood the test of time.

“It was a different time for TV, so you had to see it live. Afterwards, I got it on a VHS tape, and that’s all I had,” Cooper said. “I had this VHS of me catching the ball, and occasionally they’d show the clip again, like at the next All-Star game or something like that. But it wasn’t until the internet and YouTube that it became easier for me to show people, and it showed up on Bo Jackson’s ’30 for 30′ [ESPN documentary] too, which was cool."

In the nearly four decades since his moment in the All-Star spotlight and encounter with Jackson, Cooper has worked as a city attorney in San Diego, pivoted to a career at a hospitality group and finally retired about a year ago. He’s raised three children — all grown now, all having gone to BYU or BYU-Idaho, and all currently living in Utah. He’s continued in his love for baseball, rooting for his hometown Padres as a member of the Friar Faithful.

But after all these years, Cooper remains grateful for the unbelievable experience he had with Jackson. While the ball could have sold for thousands of dollars at auction had he kept it, Cooper has no regrets for his decision back in ‘89.

Seriously — how many other fans can say they got to barter with Bo Jackson? It’s a unique, memorable feat that belongs solely to Cooper, and that’s priceless.

“When I think about it now, I wonder, ‘Should I have held onto the ball and just waited (to sell it)?” Cooper said. “... But the older I get, the more I appreciate it. I realize how iconic that moment was and how amazing it was to interact with probably the greatest athlete that’s ever lived.

“I was a spectator, and I’m almost as much a part of that sequence as Bo Jackson. It’s pretty amazing.”