Falcons Don’t Want to Share Deion

The Atlanta Falcons threatened “enormous financial consequences,” including the return of a $2-million signing bonus, if cornerback Deion Sanders signs a contract with the New York Yankees to play baseball through the end of the season.

Falcon President Taylor Smith said he told Sanders’ attorney, Eugene Parker, during a meeting in Atlanta Sunday that the Falcons were “prepared to take all action necessary to enforce our rights” under the four-year, $4.4-million contract Sanders signed last September.

Sanders’ base salary for the upcoming football season is $550,000.

Smith said Parker nevertheless “indicated to us that Deion Sanders was close to a deal with the New York Yankees that would require him to play out the entire 1990 season and the entire 1991 baseball season.”

A new baseball contract would mean that the earliest the .153 hitter could be available for a regular-season football game would be the Falcons’ Oct. 7 meeting with New Orleans, their fourth game of the season.

The Yankees reportedly have offered Sanders a contract with a base salary of $1 million.