Where Have You Gone Bo and Deion?

Every Sunday, Christopher C. Wuensch will retell Mets’ and baseball history using the thousands of baseball cards and other memorabilia that he’s tasked with organizing in his basement.

 

Bo Knows. Deon knew also. They just had different ways of telling the world.

The NFL season kicks off today as anxious fans throughout the country pull on the respective jerseys of their favorite team.

If there’s anyone who knew something about wearing multiple jerseys, it was Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the confluence of the late-baseball season and the opening of the NFL’s slate spelled conflict for both Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders.

Bo and Deion were throwbacks to a Thorpian era where athletes were simply athletes and not specialized in one single sport. In layman’s terms, Bo and Deion were two-sport athletes.

When Jackson debuted in 1986, no one had transitioned between the NFL and MLB since Carroll Hardy in 1967. Hardy was Hula Bowl MVP, but only played one year with the San Francisco 49ers before switching to baseball.

And as rare a feat of playing two sports sounded in the late 90s, the feat was a bit more common than imagined. All told, 67 players have appeared in at least one NFL and one MLB game — albeit most of them dating back to the 1930s.

The list includes former Heisman winners (Vic Janowicz and Jackson) and several Football Hall of Famers (Red Badgro, Paddy Driscoll, George Halas, Ernie Nevers, Ace Parker, Jim Thorpe and Sanders), but Bo was a physical specimen unseen in pro sports. He was a four-tool player who’d throw a guy out at home plate during the week, then rush for a 90-yard touchdown on the weekend.

Jackson led the league with the NFL’s longest touchdown run in three of the four year he played—breaking off scoring runs of 91, 92 and 88 yards. He finished with 3,134 total yards rushing and 18 career touchdowns — with 2,782 and 16 of them, respectively, coming on ground.

He was en route to a hall of fame career when a hip injury felled him. He was never quite the same ever again.

Sanders—better known as “Neon Deion” or “Primetime”— performed with a lot more pomp than Jackson. While Jackson was a running back, Sanders made a living stopping guys like Jackson.

He finished with 53 career interceptions, good for 1,331 yards. He led the league in return yards (303) and defensive touchdowns (3) for the 49ers in 1994. He played defensive back, returned kicks and even played a bit of wide receiver.

In 2011, the Football Hall of Fame in Canton opened their doors to him.

But for all the bluster surrounding Bo and Deion, they weren’t the only players to play both pro baseball and football. They weren’t the even the only double-dipping players in their own era.

It turns out, 1989 and 1990 were the golden age for switching sports—a trend of the time that was right up there with bleached and ripped jeans.

Brian Jordan didn’t just play both sports; he was an Atlanta Falcons’ secondary mate of Sanders for three seasons (’89-91). In three seasons in Atlanta, he picked off 5 passes and pounced on 4 fumbles. But his biggest impact in Gate City came two miles away from the Georgia Dome at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium with the Braves.

Jordan played more games in the Bigs (1,456) than Jackson (694) and Sanders (641) combined. From 1992 to 2006, the outfielder who played for the Cardinals, Braves, Dodgers and Rangers, hit a respectable .282 with 184 home runs and 821 RBI.

With Bo, Neon Deion and Jordan hogging the spotlight, Matt Kinzer quietly slipped into their dual-sport fraternity. Kinzer was a two-sport athlete out of Purdue who went 0-2 in nine career appearances for the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers in 1989 and 1990. He retired with more than twice as many runs allowed (23) than strikeouts (9).

In 1987, the NFL player strike opened up an opportunity for Kinzer to be Deion while Deion was still a freshman at Florida State. Kinzer punted in one game for Detroit in the Lions’ 19-16 Week 4-win over the Green Bay Packers.

Bo knew. Deion knew. But Brian Jordan and Matt Kinzer? They also knew.