Deion Sanders is a great footballer, a mean baseball slugger, a reformed womaniser, a born-again Christian (surprise) and a top shoe salesman. Hes nursing a bad divorce |and a worse injury. George Kimball reports on a hectic start to the NFL season
On a recent Sunday morning the parishioners of an Atlanta church were the recipients of a testimony, or lay sermon, from a prominent visitor who was passing through town on business. The message was essentially the same one the visitor had presented to the congregation of the Church of God in Christ in Cincinnati a week earlier, with one major difference. This time a CNN camera crew was in attendance to record the proceedings.
After taking the spellbound churchgoers through a brief tour of his improbably diverse career, Deion Luwynn Sanders explained that he had finally found peace through Jesus.
I never drank or smoked or swore, said Neon Deion, but I did have two drugs I allowed to rule my life: women and money. Although he proclaimed Im through with fornicating, the extent to which Sanders has foresworn the other vice remains in the eye of the beholder. The most visible evidence of his new-found conversion comes in the fact that he has traded in the diamond-encrusted, solid-gold 21 his uniform number in two sports pendant around his neck for a diamond-encrusted, solid-gold cross.
Two weeks ago he was in Atlanta with his baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds, who were playing the Braves. Last Sunday afternoon he was in Pittsburghs Three Rivers Stadium, in the uniform of the Dallas Cowboys.
Given the militaristic discipline that is the hallmark of the National Football League (NFL), this would be unthinkable with any other player on any other team, but Sanders is undeniably a special athlete. And the Cowboys, having struggled to a 22 mark two wins, two losses through the exhibition season, need him that much.
Last year Sanders, who had made the conversion to wide receiver, participated in 50% of the Cowboys offensive plays, in addition to holding down his regular position as the leagues best one-on-one cornerback, thus becoming the NFLs first full-time two-way player in 30 years.
In January, capping what was by any measure a trying season for Americas Team, he carried the ball one last time on a reverse in the fourth quarter of the teams play- off game against the Carolina Panthers. He gained 16 yards on the play, but suffered a fracture to the orbit bone surrounding his right eye and was carried from the field on a stretcher. The Cowboys lost, 2617.
It would have been a serious injury under any circumstances, but it was doubly devastating to Sanders, who had already resolved to return to baseball this year after missing last season. With the All- Star receiver Michael Irvin facing a suspension last year, Sanders had skipped the 1996 baseball season to immerse himself in a crash course in learning the Dallas offensive scheme.
He had barely arrived at the Reds Plant City (Florida) spring training site to prepare for the baseball season when the barrage of unwelcome news began. In the space of just a few days his stepfather died and his wife Carolyn sued him for divorce, demanding custody of the couples two small children.
Sanders began the season with a bang, and just before the midsummer All-Star break he was still hitting over .300, but the pressures eventually took their toll. He has endured two prolonged slumps since, and his batting average has dipped to .277. A nagging back injury presumably an old football injury turned out to be a bulging disc. He rejected surgery but has already been treated with two epidural steroid injections and probably faces a third.
Worse, the divorce battles have not only lingered but seem to have escalated at every turn. Each time the attorneys appeared to have worked out an accommodation, the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs Sanders has upped the ante.
Ive never seen anyone hit harder by the break-up of a relationship, says Jeff Horrigan, a media acquaintance who counts himself a friend of Sanders. And the worst part of it has been that hes gone through it all alone. You see him in a football locker room, hes the most visible guy around, but in a baseball clubhouse you hardly know hes there. Earlier in the year Sanders took to reading a Bible in his hotel room on road trips. As the weeks passed by he could be found reading the Bible in his clubhouse cubicle.
It wasnt like he had an overnight conversion, said Horrigan, but back in July there was clearly a breakthrough. On a Reds off-day recently Sanders flew into Dallas to be examined by the Cowboys team doctors. Team-mates greeted him warmly, but were plainly sceptical about the diamond- and-gold crucifix and all it represents. Since the visit Sanders has been described, though not to his face, by other Cowboys as the Reverend Deion and the team chaplain. In a brief press conference during his whirlwind visit, the Dallas media proved even more sceptical.
I couldnt believe they were doubting everything, said Sanders, wounded by the reception. They were even doubting Jesus. On his return to Cincinnati he lamented: I thought theyd be willing to accept this. Especially considering everything else thats gone on down there.
The Cowboys have endured their usual quota of off-field embarrassments of late. In the two months since the team began its pre- season workouts, their guard Nate Newton has been charged with sexual assault, their head coach Barry Switzer was arrested for attempting to board an airplane with a loaded .38 revolver, and the team had to pay thousands of dollars in damages to St Edwards University in Austin after Cowboy players celebrated the end of training camp by trashing the college dormitory where they had been billeted.
After dismantling the closed-circuit TV surveillance system installed by the owner Jerry Jones in their boys-will-be-boys rampage, the players reportedly broke lamps and television sets and left the dormitory carpet reeking of urine.
Deion couldnt have stopped Barry from taking his gun on the plane even if hed been there, noted one observer, but hes enough of a leader that he might have kept them from pissing on the rug.
The off-season acquisition of Anthony Miller and the full-time availability of Irvin mean that Sanders probably wont be required to play offence this season. And though NFL defences are normally complex, the Dallas team is expected to let Sanders do what he does best cover the opposing teams top receiver one-on-one and let the rest of the team play a 10-man scheme.
Although he is the best cover corner in the league, and very possibly the game has ever known, Sanderss statistics are not those of your usual superstar. He doesnt even like to tackle, and his interception totals usually lag behind those of the NFL leaders simply because opponents will rarely dare throw the ball to his side of the field.
Sanderss decision to play both offence and defence, as well as his decision to play both baseball and football, were undoubtedly encouraged by Nike, the footwear sponsor whose deal pays him as handsomely as his contracts in either sport. While his puzzled team-mates continue to ponder the ramifications of his religious conversion, sport-watchers wonder about the deeper question: how does the shoe company propose to capitalise on this? All of which reflects a certain scepticism those closest to him find unwarranted.
Hes very sincere about this, says one friend who thinks the limits of Sanderss versatility could be expanded yet again. I have no way of knowing this, but it wouldnt surprise me to see him leave both sports to become a full-time evangelist.