Despite What Bo Knows, Deion Will Go for Two
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Back in the ‘60s, when he was running the Dodgers’ player-personnel program, the late Fresco Thompson had a high school hotshot athlete come in to see him about signing a contract. The young man hesitated at the terms.
“Mr. Thompson,” he said, “I’m torn. I play both sports equally well, so I don’t know. Should I sign to play baseball--or football?”
Fresco didn’t even hesitate. “Look, kid,” he purred. “Do you want a career--or a limp?”
I don’t know how his young prospect responded to Fresco’s metaphorical advice, but I talked to a young man the other night at Dodger Stadium who apparently wants both.
Deion Sanders is kind of baseball’s Dennis Rodman. He doesn’t dye his hair or cross-dress, but he marches to his own calliope. He does things his way. Trouble is, he does them very well.
They call him “Prime Time” because he’s at his best when the lights are hottest, the pressure is greatest and the stakes are highest. Sanders is definitely not a morning guy. Or even an afternoon guy. Deion is not a lounge act. He’s a center-stage performer.
He wants action. The only time he stays still is in an airplane going 500 mph. He might be a sleep-till-noon guy, but when he gets up he wants a ball to hit, a ball to catch, a card to turn, a game to win.
You go a long way to understanding him when you learn he not only tempted the fates in football one way, he took them on two ways--wide receiver on offense, cornerback on defense.
Naturally, he plays for the Dallas Cowboys. He found the San Francisco 49ers kind of boring.
Sanders probably would find an erupting volcano boring.
Deion, who plays center field for the Cincinnati Reds in the summer and corner for the Cowboys in the winter, thinks he’s bulletproof. He probably would take on a guy on a riverboat with his own deck and not even cut the cards and expect to win. He can’t stand golf--too slow--which is a pity because that means Tiger Woods has nothing to worry about.
The thing about Deion Sanders is, he could probably become a great baseball player. A Ty Cobb type of great. He can do everything Jackie Robinson could. Someone suggested the other night he is probably the fastest man in baseball. He was batting a robust .361 at the start of business the other night, he already had stolen 20 bases and was on his way to a record total if he keeps it up.
Some managers think he could bunt .400, but the first near-full season he played (97 games with Atlanta in 1992), he hit 14 triples (led the league) and eight home runs. Deion is no banjo strummer at the plate.
He’s not only unwilling to give up football to make Cooperstown some day, he even gave up baseball first. He didn’t play at all last year.
“Like to have drove me nuts,” he grumbles.
Quit football?! “Then, what would I do in the off-season?” he challenges. “Go to Venezuela? I can’t just sit there, you know. I can’t just go hunting or fishing.”
And, of course, the public library is safe from him. The only time Sanders reads, he says, is on a plane. Where there’s nothing else to do.
So, Fresco’s advice falls on deaf ears. “What about Bo Jackson?” I ask him. “Don’t you think about that?”
Vincent “Bo” Jackson was Prime Time of his era. A superlative athlete like Sanders, he won the Heisman Trophy in 1985. He ran the 100 in Olympic times, he was the state decathlon champion and set state records (Alabama) in the hurdles, the high jump, and the 60-yard sprint. He set the school record at Auburn with 4,303 rushing yards. He was a star pitcher and batter. He was all-world.
He wisely skipped football, spurning a Tampa Bay pro contract to play baseball, but, like Deion, he didn’t find enough to do in winter. So he signed with the L.A. Raiders. He was Pro Bowl stuff there.
He hit 32 home runs for Kansas City one year, 28 another. He drove in 105 runs in 1989. He was prime time, all right. You couldn’t turn on the television set without seeing Bo in a commercial.
And, then, he got tackled in a playoff game against Cincinnati at the end of the ’90 season and suffered a dislocated hip. He went from a career to a limp.
You don’t see “Bo Knows” commercials anymore. He went from Page 1 to “Whatever became of. . . ?”
Fresco Thompson could have told him.
The new Prime Time is unimpressed. “He played a few years after that,” he frowns.
Well, Bo played in Sarasota and Birmingham--and 23 games with the White Sox--the next season. Hardly prime-time stuff. He stole 27 bases in 1988 but stole only one base in the majors the rest of his “career” after his injury. He hit a few home runs but that was a good thing as he had to hit the ball where he could walk around the bases. Correction: limp around.
Deion Sanders doesn’t want to hear about it. “I don’t think about things like that. I’m not the type to worry. I’ve been blessed with unique abilities, and I want to take advantage of them. Wouldn’t you?”
Well, yes. But I can do what I do with a limp.
A lot of people were glad Babe Ruth didn’t stay a pitcher in his career. But Fresco Thompson would have been glad also that professional football wasn’t around to tempt him. The Babe wouldn’t be out there risking compound fractures all winter long.
Bo knows.
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