Deion Sanders might be known today more as the head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes and as the former head coach of the Jackson State Tigers, but there was a time when he was the talk of the sports world because of his dual-sport abilities. As one of the rare people who have ever played both in Major League Baseball and in the National Football League, Sanders is also one of the few types who can credibly give a first-hand account of which sport is harder to excel at.
Well, Sanders just gave his answer to that during a recent appearance on the Club Shay Shay podcast with Shannon Sharpe (h/t Daniel Chavkin of Sports Illustrated).
It turns out, Sanders’s difficulty playing the sports matched the numbers. On the Club Shay Shay podcast with Shannon Sharpe, Sanders said that football was the “easiest” sport he played, which included basketball and track and field, while he found baseball to be the hardest.
“That ball does some things to you,” he said about the sport. “Any sport where you can fail 7 out of 10 times and become great, and make $2-300 million, that’s a hard sport.”
Hitting a baseball is indeed hard. The sport is less about athleticism and sheer strength or speed. It’s a sport where even the most chiseled of human beings can struggle mightily but someone with a physique of a local drunk could dominate.
Across 2,123 career at-bats in the big leagues, Deion Sanders hit .263 with 39 home runs, 168 RBI, and 186 stolen bases. He had greater success in the NFL, where he also played a dual role as a defensive back-slash-wide receiver before later getting inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
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