October 11, 2024 • 11 mins
Join us on Daily Sports History as we explore Deion Sanders' incredible attempt to play two professional sports in a single day. On October 11, 1992, "Prime Time" made history by trying to play in both an NFL and MLB game. Discover the challenges, the outcomes, and how this bold feat cemented Deion’s legacy as one of the most versatile athletes in sports history.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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
(00:23):
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
(00:46):
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
(01:07):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:52):
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
(02:13):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:59):
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
(03:19):
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
(03:43):
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
(04:03):
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
(04:26):
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
(04:48):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:32):
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,
(05:55):
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
(06:16):
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,
(06:38):
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
(06:59):
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
(07:23):
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
(07:45):
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
(08:06):
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,
(08:26):
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
(08:49):
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.
(09:11):
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
(09:31):
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,
(09:53):
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
(10:15):
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
(10:38):
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
(11:00):
is he played football, baseball, and he was a runner
on the track team.
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
(00:23):
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
(00:46):
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
(01:07):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:52):
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
(02:13):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:59):
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
(03:19):
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
(03:43):
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
(04:03):
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
(04:26):
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
(04:48):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:32):
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,
(05:55):
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
(06:16):
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,
(06:38):
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
(06:59):
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
(07:23):
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
(07:45):
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
(08:06):
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,
(08:26):
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
(08:49):
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.
(09:11):
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
(09:31):
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,
(09:53):
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
(10:15):
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
(10:38):
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
(11:00):
is he played football, baseball, and he was a runner
on the track team.
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