Deion Sanders' Unbelievable Attempt to Play Two Pro Sports in One Day

On October eleventh, nineteen ninety two, Dion Sanders almost did something that had never been done before. And it's not often that you almost do something and get recognized for it, but what he did was unheard of, as he was attempting to play both an NFL football game and a Major League baseball game all in the same day, showing how skilled he was as an athlete. And today we're going to dive into dual sport athletes throughout the history of professional sports and how hard and amazing that gave me. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Rees, your guide as you dadly learn more about sports history, increasing your sports knowledge. To today's trivia question, what three sports did Dion Sanders play in college? Now, growing up, most of us went to school and we were either the great athlete or you had a great athlete that was the best player in any sport they played, whether it was football, baseball, basketball, whatever they played, they excelled in and they were expected to be that alpha main person. But usually as you go higher in the ranks of sports, you had to decide do I do this sport or this sport? And for most athletes, when you get to college you have to pick one. But there are a select group of athletes that end up going for multiple sports and these are known as either multi sport athletes or dual sport athletes, and we've actually covered a few of them in past episodes. We covered stories about Jim Thorpe, who played football, baseball, and track and field. We covered Babe Dickerson's in Deja who who played basketball, golf, and track and field, and even covered Michael Jordan who was arguably the best basketball player ever and also attempted to play baseball as well. But there have been other great duels for athletes. Dave Boucher was a Hall of Fame basketball player with the New York Knicks and late after attempting a baseball career where he actually plitched a complete game shutout for the Chicago White Sox, and then after baseball, he would win two championships with the Knicks. And then there was Brian Jordan who was drafted in the NFL and Major League Draft and became a Pro Bowl and was even named to a Pro Bowl in the NFL, but later chose to focus more on baseball and became an All Star outfielder and played fifteen years in the major leagues. And then there was bullet Bobby Hayes, who won two Olympic gold medals and at one point was the fastest man alive, which is a title given to the sprinter who holds the record for the one hundred meter dash. And later he would go on to join the Dallas Cowboys and become a Hall of Fame receiver, being named to three Pro Bowls and two All Pros and winning a Super Bowl using his skill speed and showing that he also had hands. And most of us know Bo as Bo Jackson is one of the quintessential dual sport athletes, as he was an All Star in both the NFL and Major League Baseball and likely would have played even more football if not for the Tampa Bay Bucks, ruining his amateurism when he was in college, ending his college baseball career and making him boycott the NFL for multiple years to focus on baseball, but would come back to join the Raiders and become a pro bowler as well as being an All Star in Major League Baseball. And then we come to our story today with Dion Sanders, also known as Prime Time. He grew up in Florida and attended Florida State, where he was a three sport athlete in football, baseball, and track, and in his freshman year he was a starter on the football team, helped take the baseball team to be in ranked fifth in the nation, and led the track and field team to a conference championship. Now he was drafted by the Kansas City Royals out of high school, but chose to go to college, and after college, he was drafted in the thirtieth round by the New York Yankees. Do largely two teams viewing him as more of a football player and not thinking he would play baseball or wouldn't play right away because he was the fifth overall pick by the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL, meaning he showed a lot more promise for the NFL. But Dion had seen what bo Jackson was doing and wanted to also do the same and wanted to play in both leagues, and in doing so he had to make a contract. He had to decide which one was more important because the baseball postseason overlaps with the beginning of the football a regular season, and he chose to focus more on football. But if he was allowed to play baseball during the off season, that's what he would do, and in the nineteen eighty in the nine season, he was the first person to ever hit a home run and score a touchdown in the NFL in the same week and still is the only to ever do so. And the way his contract normally worked is he would play until the end of July and then he would report to football and so he often didn't play for the teams that made the postseason, but luckily in nineteen ninety one, he signed with the Atlanta Braves as he was playing football in Atlanta two, which made it an easy thing for him to play for both teams, and before the nineteen ninety two season, he actually reworked his NFL deal where he made it so he would report to training camp but was allowed to rejoin the Atlanta Braves if they made the postseason during the season and would play games on off game days, so Sundays he would play football. All other days he would be allowed to play baseball if there was games, and nineteen ninety two was his best year in the major leagues. He hit over three hundred with twenty six stolen bases in just ninety seven games, and the Braves had a great year as they were working their way through the playoffs and would eventually make it to the World Series, making him the first person to ever play in the World Series and in the Super Bowl and still the only person to do that. So then comes October eleventh, nineteen ninety two. The Atlanta Braves are making their way through the postseason and make it to the NLCS for the chance to make it to the World Series, and one of their best players at the time was Deon Sanders, so again on non Sunday days, he would go play for them. But they had Game five set to be played on October eleventh, which was a Sunday, the same day the Atlanta Falcons were gonna play at Miami during a regular season game. But because the Braves base fo ball game was in the evening and the football game was in the afternoon, there was a chance he could do both, and Nike stepped in to try to help this, as Nike viewed Dion as a major asset and this could be a story that they could really sell for their shoes, cleats and everything. They endorsed for Deon Sanders. As Game four of the NLCS ended just before midnight the Saturday before, and so he had to fly that night to Miami to join the Falcons for their game against the Dolphins, and Falcons coach Jerry Glanville really didn't like the way this setup was. He would go all week not practicing with the team, and so he wanted to set some standards for it, and he told him in the entire team in the locker room that he would not be starting today as this was the first time he had seen him all week. But he was such a good player he made up for this and he didn't start, and after one play into the game he got put in there, making it a very high hollow gesture of making him not start. Now. Atlanta came up short and lost to the Dolphins seventeen to twenty, and Sanders was exhausted. He had played baseball the night before. He had played every snap except for that first one against Miami, including returning punts, and so he was exhausted and gotten iv after the game and then hopped into a limo just before five to take a helicopter to the airport to catch a flight to Pittsburgh, where they're playing the NLCS versus the Pirates, with the Atlanta Braves. That's right, he went from Pittsburgh to Florida to Pittsburgh again, all in less than one day, including playing an entire NFL game, and tried to join the team when he arrived just sixteen minutes before the official start game of the NLCS Game five. Now, not only were the Falcons annoyed by this, but the Braves were also annoyed by the fact that this player was not valuing the playoffs that they were in, and Bobby Cox, the manager of the Braves, informed Sanders that he wasn't going to play. He wasn't going to start, and he wasn't going to be a part of and he really was only going to play if everyone else got hurt. So this is how he almost became the first person to play in two professional leagues on the same day, but he actually just suited up for two on that same very fateful day. Now, Sanders was a valuable player for the team, as he hit over five hundred in the four games in the World Series, but sadly his efforts were not enough, as he was the only player for the Braves to hit over three hundred in the World Series, and they would go on to lose the World Series four to two to the Toronto Blue Jays. But that same year he was an All Pro for the Atlanta Falcons, and Dion would go on to play sixteen years in the NFL and play nine years in baseball. Now, he obviously had more success in football, as he is a Hall of Fame football player who won two Super Bowls, made eight All Pros, as well as eight Pro Bowl selections, whereas in the man baseball he had a career batting average of two sixty three with thirty six home runs and one hundred and eighty six stolen basis, he prioritized football as that was his major sport and it showed in his stats between baseball and football. And if you enjoyed this and you want to learn more about Atlanta Sports, check out Atlanta's own where they give you an Atlanta fan perspective on all the professional Atlanta teams, including the Braves and the Falcons that Dion was a part of in the nineteen nineties. And we'll have a link in the description if you want to check it out. And if you want to help us out, please subscribe wherever you're listening to so you do not miss a single episode, and we will see you next week for more daily sports history and the answer to today's trivia question, what three sports did Deon Sanders play in college? The answer is he played football, baseball, and he was a runner on the track team.