Deion Sanders is one of the best athletes of all time
Deion Sanders is one of the best athletes of all time because of his elite status on the football field combined with his nine season career in Major League Baseball in which he had a solid .263 average. A case can be made that he is the best athlete of all time because of what he accomplished in baseball and football.
Sanders was drafted with the 5th overall pick by the Falcons in 1989 and played for Atlanta for the first five seasons of his career where he was selected to the Pro Bowl three times. He then was an All Pro and selected to the Pro Bowl in his only season with the 49ers and then was selected to the Pro Bowl in four of his five seasons with the Dallas Cowboys.
Sanders, whose nickname is Prime Time, played 14 seasons as an elite corner back and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2011. He went to Florida State and was a star on the football team and also played on the baseball and track teams.
He once played the first game of a doubleheader in baseball, ran a leg of a 4X100 relay and then returned to play the second baseball game. He had an impressive .331 average in 1986 and tallied 27 steals in 1987 while on the baseball team as a Seminole in college.
In terms of the MLB, he was drafted in the 6th round by the Kansas City Royals in 1985 out of high school and then was drafted in the 30th round of the 1988 draft by the Yankees. The reason that he was drafted much lower in 1988 was because he had shown that he would be a star in the NFL and teams likely thought he might not stick with baseball.
Sanders is the only person to play in a Super Bowl and a World Series, to hit an MLB home run and score an NFL touchdown in the same week and to have a reception and interception in the Super Bowl. In terms of baseball, he played in 641 games in nine seasons (he did not play in 1996, 1998 or 1999), and had a .263 average, a .319 on-base percentage, 39 homers, 72 doubles, 168 RBI and 186 steals.
He played his first two seasons with the Yankees and made it to the majors in 1989, one year after he was drafted. The first season he only played in 14 games but in 1990 he played in 57 games and had .158 average in his first season of extended playing time at the major league level.
Buck Showalter, who was Sanders’s manager in the minors and field coach in 1990, recently said on the YES Network that one of the most impressive games that he has seen was when Prime Time had two doubles, a triple and a homer in the opening game of the Double-A season in 1989 for Double-A Albany. He also had the game winning catch on that 33 degree day in New London, Canada in conditions that made him feel out of his element since he is from Florida.
In 1989, Sanders would hit .286 in 33 games before being promoted to Triple-A Columbus where he hit a solid .278 with 16 steals in 70 games. He made his MLB debut on May 31 against the Mariners when he went 1–4 with an RBI. Showalter and Sanders had a close relationship and Sanders said he liked the way he treated the players on the team.
When Sanders was playing for the Yankees in 1990 he was involved in a very memorable game when the Yankees faced off against Bo Jackson’s Kansas City Royals. These two are regarded as the two best all around athletes ever and combined they hit four homers in a game that the teams played against each other at Yankee Stadium.
Jackson hit three homers and Sanders hit an inside the park homer after Sanders leaped as far as he could and was not able to make the catch on the line drive that was hit. Sanders said this was a very memorable game for him to face off against his friend and fellow star multi sport athlete.
This July 17 game was dubbed “The Bo and Prime Time Show.” After Jackson’s 3-homer performance Sanders said, “He’s (Bo’s) one of the best athletes who ever put on a uniform."
Sanders showed his near unmatched speed on that inside the park homer and then had to resort to leaping over the catcher and touching home plate since the Royals catcher was blocking his path to the plate. Showalter was the 3rd base coach and confidently sent him home since he knew how much speed the athletic player had.
This was part of Jackson’s downfall as he injured his arm while diving for the ball. Jackson had to leave the game right after Sanders scored his inside the park homer since he was in so much pain.
Sanders was teammates during the 1990 season with Don Mattingly, Jesse Barfield, Jim Leyritz, Roberto Kelly and Dave Righetti but that team finished 28 games below .500.
Towards the end of the 1990 season, Yankees general manger Gene “Stick” Michael said that Sanders’s football career was stunting his baseball development and production. Sanders had some friction with the Yankees since he requested a $1 million salary for the 1991 season, which is part of what led them to release him after the 1990 season.
He signed with the Braves before the 1991 season, which meant that he was playing for the Atlanta baseball and football franchise. Sanders had arguably his best baseball season in 1992 when he had a career-high .304 average, a career-high .346 on-base percentage, a career-high .495 slugging percentage, a career-high 14 triples (led the NL in this category) , a career-high eight homers, tied a career high 28 RBI and had 26 steals.
He was also part of the 1992 Braves team that lost the World Series to the Toronto Blue Jays. Prime Time said in his recent interview with Jack Curry that the main reason he played in that World Series was because of his previous success against David Cone, which would continue in the Fall Classic.
After going 0–5 in the NLCS, Sanders was an impressive 8–15 in four games with four runs scored, two doubles an RBI and five steals. He caused havoc on the base paths in a series that the Braves lost 4–2. Sanders had two steals and went 1–3 in Game 2 that was started by Cone. He had eight hits in that World Series but went a combined 0–8 in the two other playoff series he played in.
In 1994, while playing 46 games for the Braves and then 46 games for the Cincinnati Reds, he had 38 steals, 28 RBI and a .283 average. He played for the Reds once again in 1997 after taking off the 1996 season and concentrating only on football.
In 1997, he finished second in the National League with 56 steals and also had 23 RBI and a .273 average. He played in a career-high 115 games that season.
There is no telling when his stats could have been if he had concentrated on baseball in his whole career and not been playing football in the fall. However, his ability to be a solid and productive baseball player for nine seasons while also being a Hall of Fame football player is remarkable.
He was a premier base stealer with six double digit steal seasons out of his seven seasons played in the 1990s and his career total of 186 could have been even higher if 1997 was not his only season of 100 plus games played. His baseball career all got started in earnest with Showalter and his two MLB seasons with the Yankees.
Showalter was Sanders’s manager with the Single-A Fort Lauderdale Yankees in 1988 in which Sanders played six games and for Double-A Albany in 1989. He played for Showalter for a total of 39 games in the minors but that experience had a lasting impact on Sanders since he said he might have stuck with baseball full time if his minor league coach was his manager with the Yankees.
In 2001, Prime Time signed a minor league contract with the Syracuse Chiefs, the Blue Jays Triple-A affiliate. In Sanders’s final professional baseball game, in 2001, he hit a solo home run and had an RBI single in the team’s 12–6 win over the Toledo Mud Hens.
Jackson, who had the very popular Bo Knows campaign, could definitely be considered the best all time athlete but injuries prevented him from showing his true potential unlike Sanders. However, he showed what he was capable of in 1989 when he was one of the best players in all of baseball with 32 homers, 105 RBI and 26 steals. From 1987 through 1990, Jackson had four consecutive seasons hitting at least 22 homers.
Jackson was drafted with the first overall pick in the NFL in 1986 and had a total of 16 touchdowns in four seasons in a career that was cut short by injury.
