Tale of Two Sports, One City : Sanders Willing to Share Talents, but Falcons Are Balking

Deion Sanders was out in the street playing quarterback left-handed the day his mother brought home the children’s book that changed his life.

Recalling it, Sanders, the only active two-sport athlete in the big leagues, asked: “Do you know that little story about the little engine who keeps saying, ‘I think I can. I think I can?’

“As a kid, I read that all the time. I used to say it to myself: ‘I think I can. I think I can.’ ”

This year, at 25, Sanders has taken the story a step further. This year, he knows he can.

A Pro Bowl cornerback for the Atlanta Falcons, Sanders has been hitting over .300 all season for the Atlanta Braves.

In his two-sport commitment, he has played games continuously, more or less, for more than two years, hitting .191 last season as an outfielder, then changing into football gear.

In his third NFL season, the two-time Florida State All-American made the Pro Bowl as a starter last February, which was shortly before he returned to the Braves’ outfield.

And since opening day in April, frequently leading off against right-handed pitching, Sanders has used his speed to lead the majors in triples with 14.

“This is the first year I’ve been able to take baseball seriously,” he said recently in the Braves’ clubhouse, where his was the largest stack of fan letters. “I’ve been playing football most of my life, and I’m up here with guys my age who have been playing baseball the year around, winter and summer leagues, all their lives.”

He’s proud of that. He has the ego that inspires all good athletes. Still, until five months ago, after a five-summer experiment in professional baseball, Sanders was a career .189 hitter. What put him suddenly over .300?

“Two things,” he said. “You need at-bats to hit consistently, and some years I’ve been lucky to get 100 at-bats. Show me a superstar with 100 at-bats, and I’ll show you a guy who might be hitting .100.

“The other thing is that I’ve worked at it with (hitting coach) Clarence Jones. I tried every stance there is. I like to crouch, but I wasn’t seeing the ball down there. The only change I’ve really made is to stand more erect. I’m picking up the ball faster now, that’s all.”

It’s an unusual success story. But it has plunged Atlanta into a sports crisis.

Sanders is the only star who has played major league football and baseball in the same city, and he is dividing Atlanta’s sentiments.

The Falcons need him. The Braves are starting to appreciate him. And Sanders is willing to play for both simultaneously, as he did for a while last year.

But so far, it hasn’t worked out.

It’s a round-robin puzzle:

--Sanders’ Falcon teammates are mostly on his side. They want a Pro Bowl cornerback any way they can get him, preferably for 14 or 16 games, regardless of how often he practices.

--Sanders wants the Falcons, too, but he wants the Braves more. Along with any athlete who can play both games, he prefers baseball if he can play it well, and he seems to be proving he can.

--The playoff-bound Braves, who are loaded without Sanders, want him because no ballclub ever has enough talent. They don’t even have him under contract. He wants baseball so much that he’s playing for the Braves for $6,000 a day.

--The Falcon coach, Jerry Glanville, urgently wants Sanders for 16 games, but he doesn’t want him at all for 14.

As the most immediate consequence, Sanders is out of the opener against the New York Jets here Sunday.

It could only happen on a Glanville team.

“Our other players all have to be here,” he said at the Falcon camp in Suwanee, Ga. “It wouldn’t be fair to them to make an exception of (Sanders).”

That sounds logical, but the Falcon players say it isn’t. Almost to a man, they’ll take Sanders on any terms.

“We’re a Super Bowl team with Deion,” said defensive back Tim McKyer, who, with Sanders, forms perhaps the most effective cornerback tandem in the league. “Everybody understands that he’s a special kind of athlete, and nobody objects when special people get special treatment.”

THE GREATEST?

How special is Sanders?

If he continues to play both sports for a few years, he will doubtless be ranked as one of the great athletes of the century, possibly the greatest.

One day last football season, for example, he sprinted in front of the receiver he was covering and intercepted a quick slant pass. In the NFL, that is considered practically impossible.

An obviously exceptional athlete, Sanders combines rare eye-hand coordination with a dancer’s quick feet, a boxer’s fast reactions, a sprinter’s speed, quick intelligence and multiple physical skills.

Jim Thorpe was such an athlete, but after six years in the majors, Thorpe left with a batting average of .252. Jackie Robinson was such an athlete, but as a pro Robinson specialized in baseball. Bo Jackson was such an athlete, but he broke down prematurely.

Babe Ruth was such an athlete--and Ruth might have been the best of all. Defining athletic greatness as the ability to prove it in at least two highly competitive areas, Ruth was No. 1. As a pitcher he was a World Series winner, and as a hitter he revolutionized the game.

As an all-around football player, Sanders, a 185-pound 6-footer, is the best the Falcons have. He has played offense as well as defense in Atlanta, catching passes and intercepting passes; and as a special-team regular, he once scored a touchdown on a 68-yard punt return in the same week that he hit a major league home run.

Is he a better athlete than Jackson?

“Bo is the best I’ve seen,” Raider owner Al Davis said, and there isn’t much doubt that Jackson was more spectacular. Home run hitters and fast running backs are always more celebrated than defensive backs or hitters who hit for average.

But who was the better athlete?

Sanders is glad you asked.

“Jackson was 50 pounds bigger than me. He was a big, strong guy who used his brute strength and speed to overpower people,” Sanders said. “It takes more athletic ability to do the things I do.

“For my size, I’m strong, too, and it’s been said that my speed is legendary. But talking about athletic ability, it takes more to play cornerback in the NFL and to bat leadoff in the National League than to just carry a football around, or power a baseball.”

In the great-athlete derby, Sanders has passed every test but that of time. For one thing, on the gifted Braves, he is still a platoon player who hasn’t been used much against left-handed pitchers.

Can he hit .300 as an everyday player?

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he can if he dedicates himself to baseball,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “He’s an outstanding player, an outstanding outfielder. He runs extremely well, and he’s a fastball hitter in a league that’s made for fastball hitters. But I doubt if anyone can do it playing two sports.”

The fatigue factor is bound to get him in time, Lasorda said.

“You’ve got to be up to play baseball--or football--well,” he said. “And a two-sport player has to be up every day of the year. I don’t think any body--that’s body--can handle that. There are times when the body has to rest and rejuvenate itself.”

Why does Sanders want to try?

“If you can do it, you do it,” he said.

THE CRISIS

Most people in Atlanta seem to understand that Sanders’ psyche and personality are driving him to try two sports, but there is one prominent exception--his football coach.

Glanville says he suffered last year with Sanders’ helicopter commutes from the diamond to the football field, and he says he wants him full time now, or not at all, until the baseball season is over.

Glanville’s protest seems irrational, though, to those who analyze the kind of defense the Falcons have, and Sanders’ role in it.

“The Falcons come after you all the time,” said former Ram coach John Robinson. “They’re always blitzing.

“That means that Sanders and McKyer play the most vital positions in their system. They’re on an island, covering the other team’s best receivers man to man on almost every play.”

Their work is so specialized that neither Sanders nor McKyer has to practice much with Atlanta’s other defensive players--provided they stay in peak physical condition. All they have to do on game day is hang around with Jerry Rice.

If Glanville relents, Sanders could still play most of the Falcons’ 16 games this year, dividing his weekdays again between baseball and football. The Braves have told him he can. They insist on keeping him for only two Sundays this fall--one in the playoffs, one during the World Series--but they’re so far in front of the Cincinnati Reds now that, they say, the Falcons can have him the rest of the time.

“I’d love that,” Sanders said, though a month ago he said: “We’re in a pennant race, and there’s no reason to leave right now. That’s just not fair.”

According to the official Falcon line, the hang-up is financial. The club will pay Sanders $1.75 million this year, in bonus and salary, if he quits the Braves now--but only $1.25 million if he comes in for part of the season.

Although Sanders wants $2 million, his agent, Eugene Parker, has indicated that he would take less, but not $500,000 less. “On a (16-game basis), they’re docking him $500,000 for missing two games,” Parker said. “We agree that he should be docked a game check (about $106,000) for every game he misses--but no more.”

Parker and Sanders side with Falcon critics who say the problem isn’t really financial, it’s Glanville.

“They’re doing indirectly what they can’t get done directly,” Parker said, meaning that the Falcons have cut their offer $500,000 because they know Sanders won’t accept it.

That enables Glanville to continue his practice-or-don’t-play policy until the second half of the Falcon season, when Sanders will arrive, presumably, for the last eight games.

But it doesn’t help Glanville’s team win the first eight.

For the little engine who knows he can, it’s a frustrating crisis.

Times editorial assistant Lauri Ferguson contributed to this story.