MLB: Best MLBers to play in NFL during Super Bowl era
On Feb. 7, the National Football League will stage its big event in Tampa and much has already been made of the MLB ties in this year’s matchup between the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Buccaneers are led by six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, who was a good enough player at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif., the Montreal Expos made him their 18th-round pick in the 1995 MLB June Amateur Draft. Brady, however, opted to accept a football scholarship at the University of Michigan.
So we’ll never really know if he could have made the majors as a catcher since he found at least a small amount of success in his other sporting endeavor.
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But his counterpart, Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs, also has deep ties to MLB.
Mahomes, a standout pitcher at Whitehouse (Texas) High School, was considered a top prospect, but not one expected to sign after he had already committed to play football at Texas Tech University. That didn’t stop the Detroit Tigers from taking a 37th-round flyer on Mahomes, an MLB legacy.
His father is Pat Mahomes, who pitched for six different MLB clubs over an 11-year career from 1992-97 and 1999-2003. He was a sixth-round pick of the Minnesota Twins from Lindale (Texas) High School in 1988 and made his debut for the Twins on April 12, 1992. He would later play for the Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Mahomes spent 22 seasons in professional baseball in all, pitching for both Grand Prairie and Sioux Falls in the independent American Association in 2009. He spent part of the 1997 season and all of 1998 playing for the Yokohama Bay Stars in the Japan Central League as well.
That many connections got us to thinking about which NFL players from the Super Bowl era (which began with the 1966 NFL and American Football League seasons) had the best careers in MLB.
There are fewer than 70 players who played in both leagues, according to Baseball Almanac, and only nine of those come from the Super Bowl era.
The crossover player most recently active was former New York Yankees infielder Drew Henson, who played in MLB in 2002-03 and quarterback with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys in 2004 and the Detroit Lions in 2008. Henson was taken by the Yankees in the third round in 1998 out of high school and played in the minors concurrent with playing football at the University of Michigan.
Henson was traded twice before he made his major league debut — to the Cincinnati Reds in 2000 as part of a trade that brought Denny Neagle to the Bronx and then back to the Yankees in 2001 in exchange for Wily Mo Pena.
Two of the nine played their brief MLB careers before the Super Bowl era, but then extended their pro football careers into that time. The Tigers signed catcher Tom Yewcic of Michigan State University in 1954 and he made his one and only appearance in the majors on June 27, 1957, popping out to shortstop in the seventh inning of a 7-2 loss to the Washington Senators.
Yewcic later played quarterback (some) and punted (mostly) for the Boston Patriots of the AFL from 1961-66.
The other early crossover was Tom Brown, who played for the Green Bay Packers in the first two Super Bowls as a starting safety in an NFL career that lasted from 1964-69.
He had been signed out of the University of Maryland in 1963 and played 61 games that season for the Senators at first base and all three outfield positions, batting .147 with a .433 OPS in 128 plate appearances. He homered once and drove in four runs.
Other crossovers include
- D.J. Dozier (Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions running back, 1987-91; New York Mets outfielder, 1992)
- Matt Kinzer (Detroit Lions punter, 1987; St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers pitcher, 1989-90)
- Chad Hutchinson (St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, 2001; Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears quarterback, 2002-04)
That brings us to the three players from the Super Bowl era of the NFL that had the biggest impact in MLB.
MLB/NFL crossover: Deion Sanders
Deion Sanders was known as “Prime Time” during a 14-year NFL career that included two Super Bowl rings, six All-Pro selections and a Defensive Player of the Year award despite playing in only 14 games for the San Francisco 49ers in 1994.
Sanders retired after playing the 2000 season with the Washington Redskins, but returned to play two more years in 2004-05 with the Baltimore Ravens. He also spent five years with the Atlanta Falcons (1989-93) and five years with the Dallas Cowboys (1995-99).
He wasn’t nearly as sought after as a baseball prospect out of Florida State University. He was the fifth overall pick by the Falcons in the 1989 NFL Draft after going in the 30th round to the New York Yankees in the 1988 MLB June Amateir Draft.
But Deion made his major-league debut less than a year later and struggled with the Yankees, who released him before the end of the 1990 season. Sanders signed with the Atlanta Braves, where he played in the 1992 postseason — most famously suiting up for both the Falcons and Braves the same day, Oct. 11, 1992.
He was with the Falcons for a 21-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins in South Florida that afternoon and made it for Game 5 of the the Braves’ NLCS against the Pittsburgh Pirates, though he did not play in Atlanta’s 7-1 loss.
Sanders played parts of nine seasons in the majors, also spending time with the Cincinnati Reds and San Francisco Giants from 1989-95, 1997 and 2001.
He led the majors with 14 triples in just 97 games in 1992 and stole a career-high 38 bases in the strike-shortened 1994 season with the Braves and Reds.
For his career, Sanders hit .263 with a .711 OPS in 641 games and 2,325 plate appearances. He had 72 doubles, 43 triples, 39 homers and 168 RBI while stealing 186 bases.
MLB/NFL crossovers: Bo Jackson
Bo Jackson has the distinction of being one of only two Heisman Trophy winners to play in MLB. Jackson was awarded the Heisman in 1985 after a standout career at Auburn University.
He was both the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft in 1986 by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and a fourth-round pick by the Kansas City Royals in the MLB June Amateur Draft a couple of months later.
Jackson signed with the Royals while sitting out the 1986 NFL season — he did not want to go to the woeful-at-the-time Bucs — and he was a September callup by Kansas City that year, hitting two home runs and stealing three bases while showing an impressive array of raw tools.
He re-entered the NFL Draft in 1987 and went in the seventh round to the Los Angeles Raiders. He played four seasons with the Raiders, though baseball was his primary career, and was a Pro Bowler in 1990.
With the Royals, Jackson was an All-Star in 1989, winning the MVP honors for the game in part because of a monstrous home run off San Francisco’s Rick Reuschel to lead off the game for the American League.
But Jackson sustained a devastating hip injury in his final NFL game, a playoff win over the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Divisional Playoffs, an injury that also shut down his baseball career. The Royals released Jackson in March 1991, citing the injury, but he was signed by the Chicago White Sox.
He appeared in 23 games with the Sox, hitting .225 with a .742 OPS as a DH, with three homers and 14 RBI. But the pain from his necrotic hip was too much and he had the joint replaced in April 1992.
He re-signed with the White Sox and came back to play 85 games in 1993 — including 47 in the outfield — while hitting .232 with a .722 OPS and 16 homers. He played the 1994 season with the California Angels, batting .279 with an .851 OPS in 75 games with 13 home runs.
In parts of five seasons with Kansas City before the injury, he was a star on the rise, hitting .250 with a .787 OPS and 109 home runs in 511 games. But he hit .263 with an .832 OPS and 60 homers in his final two seasons with the Royals, although he did lead the majors with 172 strikeouts in 1989.
His four-year NFL career yielded 2,782 yards and a 5.4 yards per carry average to go with 16 touchdowns on the ground and another two as a receiver.
MLB/NFL crossovers: Brian Jordan
No player who logged time in both the NFL and MLB had a more successful baseball career than Brian Jordan, a first-round pick from the University of Richmond by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1988 who hit 184 career home runs over the course of a 15-year big-league career.
A seventh-round draft pick by the Buffalo Bills in 1989, Jordan was cut and signed by the Atlanta Falcons in December 1989. He appeared in four games, handling the return duties in the season finale.
By the following season he was the starting strong safety in the same secondary as Deion Sanders. He had three interceptions in 1990 and two more in 1991, when he also tied an NFL record by registering two safeties in a single season.
Jordan signed with the Cardinals in 1988 and worked his way through the farm system until he made the opening day roster in 1992. In June of that year, he signed a new contract that included a $1.7 million signing bonus … with the caveat he would give up the NFL.
He became a full-time starter in right field in 1995, drove in 104 runs in 1996 and hit 25 homers in 1998 before becoming a free agent and signing with the Atlanta Braves.
In Jordan’s first season with the Braves, he was an All-Star, hitting .283 with an .811 OPS with 23 homers and 115 RBI as Atlanta reached the World Series.
In January 2002, he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers as part of the package that sent Gary Sheffield to the Braves. He signed with the Texas Rangers in 2004 and returned to the Braves in 2005, where he played his final two seasons.
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For his career, he hit .282 with a .788 OPS in 1,456 games, driving in 821 runs and stealing 119 bases. Jordan also led the National League in Defensive WAR in 1996 and led the NL in Total Zone Runs and Range Factor per nine innings three different seasons each, but he never won a Gold Glove.