Bo Knows Hiccups: Sports Legend has Been Hiccuping for Months

A legend on the football field and the baseball diamond, Bo Jackson was hit with a case of the hiccups approximately 10 months ago and is set to undergo a procedure to tackle the annoying problem. In an interview with the McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning radio show, Jackson was asked about the statue that Auburn recently unveiled at the school for fellow star athlete Frank Thomas. (The two were also both Chicago White Sox.) Jackson, 60, explained he couldn’t attend the ceremony for Thomas because he was dealing with the hiccups.

“I’ve had the hiccups since last July and I’m getting a medical procedure done the end of this week, I think, to try to remedy it,” he said. “I’ve been busy sitting at the hospital, sitting with the doctors poking me, shining lights down my throat, probing me every way they can to find out why I’ve got these hiccups. That’s the only reason I wasn’t there.”

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Thomas has also tried a number of cures, but nothing has worked so far. “I have done everything — scare me, hang upside down, drink water, smell the ass of a porcupine,” he added. “It doesn’t work.”

Jackson was a star in the NFL and MLB after excelling as a college athlete, but suffered a hip injury in early 1991 during an NFL playoff game and did not return to pro football the following season. The injury also limited him on the diamond, and Jackson did not return to MLB after the strike-shortened baseball season in 1994 at the age of 32.

It was a tough break for Jackson, but he’s fortunate he didn’t have to suffer through the fate that befell Charles Osborne following an accident in 1922. While hanging a 350-pound hog for butchering, Osborne fell down to the weight and broke a tiny blood vessel in his brain. For the next 68 years, he hiccuped nonstop before the airway assault finally subsided in 1990. Osborne’s plight remains the longest attack of hiccups confirmed by Guinness World Records.

Hopefully, Bo won’t know about that and his upcoming procedure will work.