Sanders has his moments but over the course of his career wasn’t a very good ballplayer. He was an okay player, I guess, and had a relatively short career. He did play brilliantly in the 1992 World Series, although his team lost. He wasn’t even the best player of his time named “Sanders.”
His and Jackson’s careers were about the same length and of about the same value; okay, but forgettable if they hadn’t been stars in other sports. They’re the baseball equivalents of football players like Warren Williams or Michael Haddix.
Gene Conley: Good enough to play in a world series and all-star game and an NBA final and still have time to try to make a trip to Israel in the middle of the baseball season.
Bob Hayes was an Olympic gold medal sprinter who made the transition to wide receiver and ended up getting a Super Bowl ring. He was a major reason for the shift to zone defenses in the NFL – no one could keep up with him man-to-man.
A single game might not require endurance (depends on who’s pitching), but a regulation season sure does, even if you don’t make the playoffs. 162 games in six months (season runs basically from the beginning of April through the end of September) averages out to 27 games per month, plus half of those are road games, which means you might be flying across multiple time zones on the same day you play. Players usually don’t get to sleep until several hours after a night game, then sleep late before BP the next day, unless they have to travel.
It is a grinding schedule that can wear you down, and a player can have nagging injuries or problems that drag on all year. Plenty of players in their 30’s creak like old men when they try to get out of bed in the morning.
It’s a long season. It may not be professional football, which has been described by a player as “10 or 12 car crashes, every weekend,” but it’s certainly not a walk in the park.
I think Bo Jackson is in a special category – maybe the most physically gifted individual of our generation; just bigger, faster, quicker & stronger than 99.99999% of mere mortals. This translated well into football, and slightly less well in baseball. But there are some legends about what he was able to do, on wikipedia:
And that CB Fry guy…it appears that when talents were handed out, he went around and cut in line about 8 times. I hate guys like that.
From everything I’ve read about Williams, he brought the same dedication and focus to fishing that he did to hitting, and that he mainly fished in the waters off his Florida home.
He was on the bobsled team for his sprinting abilities. I don’t consider this a significant multi-sport talent, compared to Dave Debusschere or Bo Jackson.
Zaharias and Thorpe are my votes for the greatest multi-sport athletes of all time. Right up there is Bo Jackson.
I like Jim Brown but his accomplishments are a level below, since he never did two pro sports at the same time. Having played lacrosse, though, I have to say I’m thankful I never faced him. I can not imagine what that would be like.
One more factoid about Bo Jackson…Wikipedia reported that he was clocked in the 40 yard dash at 4.12 seconds. This would be ridiculously, stupid fast…even if it’s overstated by a two tenths of a second, that would make him faster than almost every NFL wide receiver, who tend to be wiry, skinny guys, which he was definitely not. Jackson was big enough to run over people, but fast enough to just outrun them – built like a truck, but runs like a Ferrari.
Doesn’t surprise me. Hell of a nice guy, too- he came to the CA Angels to die (as did so many former baseball greats), and he was an extremely cool guy. Instead of inviting the team over for a BBQ, he would invite the clubhouse staff, the towel guys, etc, and show 'em a great time. He also had a lovely wife and really well-behaved kids, which reflects well on him.
I wasn’t a Deion Sanders fan, but to his credit, and Bo as well, I think they both would have been star baseball players if they had chosen to play baseball only. Bo in his prime year hit 30+ hr, 100+ rbi and if he was able to focus on refining his skills in the offseason like most players, he likely would have been a superstar. Not to mention the fatigue factor in the second half of the season- it effects most star players who didn’t spend their whole off season playing nfl football
Deion was the first and probably last person ever to hit a major league home run and score an nfl touchdown in the same week, hit over .300 one year, and close to it a few others, and likewise, if he was able to take the time to refine his baseball skills, probably would have been an outstanding basebally player
I guess time marches on. **treis ** mentioned Jackie Robinson many posts ago and he was never considered again. I guess people nowadays just remember him as the first black player in major league baseball. However baseball was his least effective sport. He was a better football player, a better basketball player and an Olympic class track and field athlete.
Reading up on Robinson’s MLB career it is hard to believe that anyone could have put up with the pressure he endured and produce even moderate performances. I would be pretty confident in backing him as the best US athlete of the latter half of the 20th century.
