Dual Natures
I'd like to be this good at ONE thing.
Specialization is the name of the game in modern sports. From a young age, athletes are now told to focus on the one sport they show the most promise in, despite numerous examples of a more well-rounded approach paying dividends at the highest level.
This even happens within individual sports themselves. In 2022, the National League finally adopted the designated hitter, which the AL has used since 1973. A lot of purists threw up their hands in disgust, but I didn’t see the point in getting upset. Most pitchers had long since stopped even trying to hit at a respectable level, out of concern for injury and devoting all their practice time to pitching. So why go through with the charade? I mean, I respect the extra aspect of strategy with the old NL rules, but automatic outs aren’t much fun.
This wasn’t always the case. Not only did we once appreciate pitchers who could swing a bat like they meant it, but we celebrated athletes who excelled in more than one sport. And that list is an impressive one.
John Elway and Dan Marino were both drafted by the Royals in the 1979 Draft. Neither signed (oh, how Elway’s relationship with Kansas City could have been very different if things had gone another way), but Elway did play minor league ball in the Yankees’ system a few years later. By all accounts, he had the talent to make it to the Show, though he was primarily using the Yankees and the threat of playing baseball as leverage to make sure the Indianapolis Colts traded him after selecting him first overall in the 1983 NFL Draft. Perhaps it’s a cynical take, but this could be viewed as another benefit of branching out and not putting all your eggs in one basket.
They weren’t the only quarterbacks to make their presence felt in more than one game either. Perhaps the greatest QB of all time, Tom Brady, was drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 18th round of the 1995 Draft. (Relatively speaking, this was only marginally lower than his 6th round selection by the Patriots in the NFL Draft.) The Expos made a strong push to sign him, but Brady ultimately decided to attend the University of Michigan and try his hand at football. That choice seems to have worked out okay for him.
Other G.O.A.T.’s have tried their luck in multiple sports as well. In 1994, at the age of 31, Michael Jordan abruptly retired from the NBA after winning three straight titles with the Chicago Bulls. Numerous theories have been offered as to why he made such a sudden change, from conspiracy theories centering around secret gambling suspensions, to the likely truth that he was simply burnt out and needed a break after the death of his father.
Jordan played a season with the Birmingham Barons, the AA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, who were owned by Jerry Reinsdorf. Reinsdorf was also the owner of the Chicago Bulls, and after MJ got baseball out of his system, he wisely welcomed him back to the Bulls, where he would go on to win three more championships. Jordan’s numbers on the diamond weren’t terrible, but they weren’t great either, so he likely made the smart move in going back to the hardwood.
Of course, no multi-sport star had the resume of Dave Winfield. A standout baseball and basketball player at the University of Minnesota, in 1973 he became the last athlete to be drafted by three professional sports. The Padres took him with the fourth overall pick, the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks selected him in the fifth round (the ABA’s Utah Stars also picked him in the 6th round of their draft), and the Minnesota Vikings took a flyer on him in the now nonexistent 17th round of the NFL Draft, even though he didn’t play football in college. He was that good of an athlete.
Once he reached the professional level, Winfield focused on baseball, which panned out. He never played an inning of minor league ball, jumping straight to the majors, recorded over 3,000 hits, earned 12 All-Star selections, won a world championship (1992), and is now enshrined in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.
No one can fault him for not attempting to play two pro sports with results like that on the baseball field. In fact, the pro level is probably where specialization should kick in. Only a handful of athletes have ever managed to reach the highest level in more than one pro sport, and even fewer have excelled at both of them, much less simultaneously.
Take D.J. Dozier, for example. I don’t mean to sell his accomplishments short, since he is undoubtedly a thousand times more athletic than me and most of you out there reading this combined. I’m simply trying to illustrate how difficult it is to play two pro sports.
Dozier was a solid, but hardly spectacular running back for the Minnesota Vikings (1987-90) and Detroit Lions (1991). He rushed for 691 yards and 9 touchdowns in his career, and when his time in the NFL came to an end, he turned his attention to baseball. In 1992, he played 25 games for the New York Mets and put up the following statline:
.191/.264/.234, 9 H, 2 Doubles, 2 RBI, 4 SB, .498 OPS, 43 OPS+
Again, much better than I could ever hope to do, but he didn’t exactly set the world on fire. And that was the end of his run.
Brian Jordan fared somewhat better. He played safety for the Atlanta Falcons from 1989-91, and recorded 5 interceptions, 4 sacks, and 2 safeties. Not bad, but his MLB career was far more prolific. He played for five teams from 1992-2006 and put up a very respectable statline:
Not too shabby. Definitely not HOF numbers, but he was a good ballplayer. He was a far better baseball player than Danny Ainge, who played 211 games over three seasons (1979-81) with the Toronto Blue Jays. Here is Ainge’s career statline:
.220/.264/.269, 2 HR, 37 RBI, 146 H, 57 R, 12 SB, .533 OPS, 47 OPS+, -2.0 WAR
Yeah, Ainge didn’t light it up, and Blue Jays fans weren’t sorry to see him leave and pursue his NBA dreams. Ainge had the last laugh, however, becoming a core member of the great Boston Celtics teams of the 80’s, teaming with Bird, McHale, and Parrish to win three NBA titles. After retiring, he took over the Celtics’ front office and become the architect behind their 2008 title.
All of this should make it abundantly clear that these were talented athletes. That should be obvious. You don’t go pro in any sport (much less two) without a ridiculous amount of talent, regardless of how impressive your stats may or may not be.
But two athletes stand out even amongst them. Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders are the gold standard of multi-sport athletes. They not only reached the pros in two major sports, but they somehow balanced their lives and played them at the same time. Were they the best at either baseball or football? Well, that’s a complicated question we’ll explore in greater detail, but there is no doubt that the world has never seen two athletic specimens quite like them, before or since.
When it comes to freakish athleticism, most of the attention is lavished on Bo, and rightfully so. The guy had a body that looked like it was chiseled out of marble, which he apparently had no problem showing off in his super-tight Kansas City Royals uniform. He broke speed records and bowled people over on the gridiron. He hit baseballs farther than anyone had ever seen and had a cannon attached to his right arm. How were you supposed to compete against that?
Deion, to take nothing away from his athleticism, had a more conventional athletic look, but no one could deny his elite speed. As a cornerback, he took frequent criticism for not wanting to hit people, but his NFL highlight reel is filled with clips of him running away from people and high-stepping it into the endzone on interceptions and kick returns.
Sanders did attempt to tackle Jackson once during a college game, when Bo was at Auburn and Deion was just a freshman at Florida State. In his excellent biography of Bo Jackson, The Last Folk Hero (which I highly recommend) Jeff Pearlman recounts a long touchdown run by Bo when Sanders took the right angle and somehow managed to catch up with him before he crossed the goal line. Bo gave him a look, Deion thought better of it, and Jackson pushed him to the ground before he scored. It was the only time they would meet on the football field.
This was unfortunate for Sanders, since football was his top sport. They met five times on the baseball field, when Jackson was with the Royals and Deion was playing for the Yankees. The most memorable matchup took place on July 17, 1990. Sanders hit an inside-the-park home run that got past Jackson in CF, but Bo still came out on top, hitting three home runs into the stands and leading the Royals to victory.
Deion has described football as his wife and baseball as his mistress. He was a two-time Super Bowl champ (1994,1995), six-time first team All-Pro, eight-time Pro Bowler, and 1994 Defensive Player of the Year. He’s an NFL Hall of Famer. On the baseball field, despite a flair for dramatics and greatness, his numbers were far more pedestrian.
His best years were with Atlanta from 1991-94, though he also spent time with the Yankees (1989-90), Reds (1994-95, 1997), and Giants (1995). After stepping away to focus on football, he made an unsuccessful comeback attempt with the Reds in 2001.
He has publicly expressed frustration that time restraints kept him from mastering baseball. Football took precedence with Sanders, and because of the way his contract with the Falcons was structured, he was forced to miss the magical postseason run by the Braves in 1991 in order to report to training camp.
His agent fixed that loophole in time for the 1992 season, and he became the first and only athlete to play two pro sports on the same day, suiting up for the Braves in the NLCS after playing for the Falcons earlier that afternoon. This added to the accolade he’d accomplished in 1989, when he became the first player to hit a homerun and score a touchdown in the same week. He’s also the only athlete to ever appear in both the World Series and a Super Bowl.
Bo, on the other hand, was almost the exact opposite of Sanders in nearly every way. Deion was naturally outgoing and confident to the point of cockiness. He was always willing to talk trash and act as his own hype man, and nicknames like “Prime Time” and “Neon Deion” fit him like a glove. Bo was quiet and reserved, the result of a severe childhood stutter he had only begun to master by the time he reached the pros. Despite being the focal point of one of the largest and most successful ad campaigns in history— Nike’s “Bo Knows” media blitz— Jackson shied away from the limelight and preferred to let his actions on the field talk for him.
A naturally gifted football player, Jackson earned a scholarship to Auburn and won the 1985 Heisman Trophy, nearly leading the Tigers to a national championship in the process. But unlike Sanders, football wasn’t Jackson’s first love, a fact lamented by his college offensive coordinator. Bo enjoyed playing the game, but he didn’t love it, and baseball was always calling him.
After blaming the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for flouting NCAA rules and costing him his baseball eligibility during his senior year at Auburn— whether the Bucs actually conspired to screw Bo over or not has been debated, but there’s no denying that they had an interest in keeping him away from baseball— Bo warned them not to draft him. When the Bucs ignored his threat, he refused to sign with them and committed to the Kansas City Royals instead.
As you can imagine, this was a big deal for me. But not just for me. ABC started interrupting their national game of the week coverage to broadcast his at-bats with the AA Memphis Chicks, if that gives you any idea of how much people were looking forward to Bo’s arrival at the Show.
He had a deal in place with the Royals that they would call him up to the majors in September of 1986, regardless of how he was performing in the minors. During his first batting practice at Kauffman Stadium, he made quite the impression when he smacked a dinger off the bottom of the Crown Vision scoreboard, hitting the ball farther than any Royals slugger ever had before. He never went back to the minors.
Over the next several seasons, Bo became the great hope of young Royals fans like me. As guys like George Brett and Frank White neared the end of their playing days, and stars like Willie Wilson and Bret Saberhagen were either traded away or walked in free agency, we looked to Bo as the guy who would carry us into the next great generation of Royals baseball.
Looking back, this was probably always a bit naïve and optimistic. Jackson had some serious holes in his game. He struck out a lot. Like, a lot. In fact, he led the AL in strikeouts during his best season in 1989 with 172. And he was undisciplined, which was understandable. He didn’t need to be disciplined. Everything came so easy to him. But this was bound to catch up with him eventually, and even in his prime, it kept him from shoring up the weak points in his game.
On top of that, as much as he loved baseball, he didn’t live and breathe it any more than he did football. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps I should be commending him for having his priorities straight, though it meant he was unlikely to ever be a team leader in the mold of George Brett or Frank White. Of course, that isn’t to say that he still couldn’t have been a legendary player on some great teams, so long as the Royals found someone else to fill in that leadership role.
But let’s not get carried away by focusing on the negative. Bo Jackson assembled a career highlight reel unmatched by many more complete players. Here are just a few worth mentioning. I’m sure you’re familiar with many of them.
1988 vs. Baltimore: Bo hits a one-handed HR while trying to call timeout mid-pitch. One handed and distracted!
1988 vs. Detroit: Bo throws out a stunned Ray Knight as he scrambles back to first on a routine flyout by Gary Pettis to LF.
1989 vs. Seattle: Bo guns down Harold Reynolds from the wall as the latter attempts to score from first. This is arguably THE Bo Jackson highlight. It’s just a shame there wasn’t better coverage with the cameras, but in the cameraman’s defense, no one could have expected Bo to actually throw him out.
1990 vs. Baltimore: Bo defies gravity when his momentum allows him to run up the wall after catching a line drive to deep LF.
Bo’s career stats look like this:
.250/.309/.474, 141 HR, 415 RBI, 598 H, 86 Doubles, 14 Triples, 82 SB, .784 OPS, 112 OPS+, 8.3 WAR
These stats don’t even begin to tell a complete story. For a player whose career was cut short by injury, and whose last few seasons were so fundamentally altered by injuries, it makes more sense to look at individual campaigns.
1987 was his true rookie season, and it was an eye-opening introduction, even if the stats don’t fully represent his impact.
.235/.296/.455, 22 HR, 53 RBI, 17 Doubles, 10 SB, .750 OPS, 94 OPS+
His 1988 numbers jumped modestly, but Bo’s real breakout came in 1989.
.256/.310/.495, 32 HR 105 RBI, 15 Doubles, 26 SB, .805 OPS, 124 OPS+
As mentioned earlier, he did lead the league in strikeouts, but who cares? For better or worse, no one would bat an eye at that today. And any manager would gladly endure the sight of Bo casually breaking a bat over his knee after another strikeout when he was becoming a true game-changer in every other respect.
Nowhere was this on display more than in the 1989 All-Star Game at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. He started off the game by robbing Pedro Guerrero of a hit in left-center and saving two runs. Then, in the bottom of the first, as former President Reagan joined Vin Scully in the booth, Jackson led off with one of the most epic home runs in All-Star Game history. The ball traveled 448 feet, much to Scully’s and Reagan’s amazement, and after Wade Boggs followed with a homer of his own, the American League was set on its path to victory and Jackson was on his way to the MVP award.
In case there was any doubt about this, Jackson beat out a double play throw in the second, and then promptly stole second, joining Willie Mays as the only players to hit a home run and steal a base in the same All-Star game.
If Jackson had hung up his cleats right then and there, he still would have been assured of baseball immortality. And maybe he should have. Not that his performance took any sort of step back. In 1990, he put up similar numbers to 1989. He might have even been performing at a slightly better pace, despite playing 24 less games due to injury. Unfortunately, 1990 would be Bo’s baseball swan song.
Al Davis, the owner of the Raiders, had selected Bo in the 1987 NFL Draft. Bo initially told him he was committed to baseball, but when Davis assured him he didn’t want to interfere with Jackson’s MLB career, and that Bo would not have to report to the Raiders until after the Royals completed their season, Jackson agreed to sign.
The first few years of this arrangement worked surprisingly well for all parties involved. Bo got to play both sports, he continued to progress for the Royals, and he gave the Raiders a midseason boost to their already talented backfield.
Over four incomplete seasons with the Raiders, Bo rushed for 2,782 yards and 16 TDs, in addition to 352 receiving yards and 2 TDs. His most famous highlight is probably running over Brian Bosworth on Monday Night Football, but without a doubt, his greatest accomplishment on the football field is his legendary dominance in Tecmo Super Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I don’t know how much credit he deserves for that, but for people of my generation, it has reached mythic proportions.
But while Tecmo Bo might have been indestructible, the real Bo was not. In January of 1991, he went down on a seemingly innocuous hit during a playoff game against the Bengals and never really got back up again. If Bo’s signing had all been part of an elaborate plan by Al Davis to screw over Kansas City, it worked.
His hip severely injured, he was released by Kansas City and signed on with the White Sox. Miraculously, and to his credit, he somehow managed to come back in 1993 as a productive part-time player off the bench for a Chicago team that won the AL West. He played one more season for the Angels during the strike-shortened year in 1994, but was never really happy and called it a career when the players walked out.
I don’t know what would have happened with Bo if he hadn’t gotten hurt. Would he have developed into an all-time great or merely remained a very good player with moments of unreal athleticism? Either scenario would have been fun to watch. Could he have been the face of a resurgent Royals club in the 90’s, instead of a team that gradually declined into irrelevancy? Perhaps, though Bo was not always the most popular guy in the Royals’ locker room and part of me wonders if he would have eventually grown too big for KC and left on his own.
We’ll never know. Bo was enigmatic that way. Perhaps most telling for me is my own personal experience watching him. I remember staying up late to watch the Royals play the Mariners and catching the Harold Reynolds play live from my living room. And I’m sure there were plenty other WHOA! moments I caught on TV over the years. But live and in person? Not so much. I had to have seen him play at the K several times between 1987-90, but nothing stands out. If one of the most exciting players in baseball history ever did anything spectacular while I was in the stands, I must have been in the bathroom when it happened.
My most memorable Bo moment came in 1993 when he wasn’t even with the Royals anymore. The White Sox were in town, and my aunt and uncle surprised me and my sister and cousins with tickets to the game. It was a day game, and my uncle brought his binoculars. Bo wasn’t even in the lineup, and the Royals won 5-4 in ten innings. I don’t remember anything about that finish or any other details of the game. My cousin and I were only concerned with catching a glimpse of Bo in the dugout through the binoculars.
As such, the most exciting thing I ever personally saw Bo Jackson do was spit out a bunch of sunflower seeds. But I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Any brush with greatness is still a brush with greatness, no matter how mundane. Besides, you’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Bo Jackson is proof of that.
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. Don’t forget to subscribe and share with your retro baseball friends, and drop your favorite Bo, Deion, or other two-sport star memories in the comments below.
I've written this on my blog, but in 1989, the Royals had the coolest baseball player on the planet. Not necessarily the best, but the coolest. That will probably never happen again.
Bro how you gonna have a conversation about 2 sport athletes and NOT mention the legend Charlie Ward. That appears to be bias to me!!!!!