Ten Baseball Players Who Made It Big Elsewhere

They started as common players in the majors, hoping to stick around for more than a year or two. When that didn’t work out, they tried something else…and achieved more fame and honor, whether it was in another sport, on the stage, or in political office. 

The following 10 people are largely well known to most folks, but not because of baseball. In anticipation of the whataboutism that’s sure to be brought up as you read through this list, we omitted those who were just as successful at baseball as they were elsewhere—people like Bo Jackson or Jim Bunning, the Hall-of-Fame pitcher who enjoyed a longstanding 25-year tenure in Congress—as well as those who leveraged their fame elsewhere for a shot, however serious, at baseball, such as basketball legend Michael Jordan and country star Garth Brooks. Finally, we only selected those with big-league experience, though we acknowledge minor leaguers-turned-notables such as actor Kurt Russell, singer Charley Pride, pro wrestler Randy Savage, novelist Zane Grey and politician Mario Cuomo.

Deion Sanders

The man who self-anointed himself “Prime Time” gets an asterisk of sorts for inclusion on this list—like Bo Jackson above, he was good at baseball, playing nine years and stealing 187 career bases and leading the NL in 1992 with 14 triples—but he was definitely superior at football. Sanders made it to football’s Hall of Fame for his tenacious pass defense skills at the corner, with 53 career interceptions—nine of them returned for touchdowns—and scored another nine TDs as a punt/kick returner. Sanders split his time between baseball and football through his first seven years out of Florida State University—sharing the same Atlanta Falcons defensive backfield as fellow two-sport star (and St. Louis Cardinals outfielder) Brian Jordan, but by the late 1990s began concentrating exclusively on football, returning to baseball here and there with the Cincinnati Reds in 1997 and 2001.

Ace Parker

The Virginia-born athlete of five sports loved both baseball and football—but at a top level, he was poor at the former (batting .179 in two bench-ridden seasons with the Philadelphia A’s) and terrific at the latter, eventually securing a spot in both the college and pro football Hall of Fames. But even after establishing himself as a star quarterback and punter circa 1940, Parker continued to play baseball at the minor league level, playing today’s equivalent of Class-AA in both the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers organizations until almost the age of 40. He continued coaching both baseball and football at his alma mater of Duke through the mid-1960s.

Fred H. Brown

After barely skimming the surface of major league life with 20 at-bats for the Boston Beaneaters (Braves) from 1901-02, and struggling just to make it in the minors, Brown made his greater claim to fame in politics—leveraging his career in law to a role as governor and later U.S. Senator for New Hampshire, an impressive feat for a Democrat in a then-predominantly Republican state. He was later brought into the FDR administration, serving as comptroller general under President Roosevelt. Just past the age of 60, Brown suffered a crippling stroke that forced him out of public service and, essentially, into his home to be looked after for the remaining 15 years of his life.

Ernie Nevers

At the height of his athletic greatness, Nevers probably should have changed his name to Always, because he was always good at any sport he played. That included baseball, basketball, track and field, and the one sport he particularly excelled at, football. Pitching in the majors proved his biggest challenge, especially in a time when hitters ruled the day; in three years with the St. Louis Browns, Nevers posted a 6-12 record and 4.64 ERA, which looks rough but actually wasn’t far above the league average. The Browns later sold him to the Pacific Coast League and the Mission Reds in San Francisco, where he performed two more seasons with fair results. During this time, Nevers also played in the fledgling NFL where, as he did in college for Stanford, he became a one-man wrecking crew as quarterback, rusher and kicker for the Duluth Eskimos and Chicago Cardinals; in a 1929 game for the latter team, Nevers scored all 40 points (six touchdowns and four extra points) to set a league record which, nearly a century later, still hasn’t been equaled or surpassed. Nevers quit all sports at 29 to concentrate on coaching football, and would later be inducted into the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.

Billy Sunday

Before becoming one of America’s most famous preachers and a key mover in the growing prohibition movement that led to the outlawing of alcohol in the 1920s, Sunday applied his magnetic personality to the baseball field, where he proved to be a popular figure over an eight-year career playing for the Chicago White Stockings (Cubs), Pittsburgh Alleghenys (Pirates) and Philadelphia Phillies. He wasn’t a great hitter, but he could sure run; in his last season, split between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in 1890, he swiped 84 bases. Sunday won over both his manager, 19th-Century legend and first 3,000-hit man Cap Anson, and equally heralded Chicago owner Albert Goodwill Spalding for his dedication and—most importantly—his abstinence from drinking. During his tenure in Chicago, Sunday turned to Christianity and applied his personal charm and passion toward life as a minister. Even though he ended his playing career at age 28, Sunday stayed close to baseball, organizing and umpiring games involving minor leaguers, charities and celebrities.

Danny Ainge

Best known for a career as the basketball player everyone loved to hate, Ainge was an athlete so unusually gifted that he became the first high schooler to be selected on the prep All-American teams for baseball, basketball and football. Recruited to Brigham Young University, Ainge focused on basketball—where as a senior he won several honors as college hoops’ best player. But simultaneous to all this, he was performing part-time duty as a lanky infielder with the Toronto Blue Jays, playing good defense but struggling to strike fear in opposing pitchers with little power and a career .220 batting average in 211 games. Nevertheless, Ainge’s first of two lifetime homers, hit at age 20, made him the youngest Blue Jay to go deep until Vladimir Guerrero Jr. came along. Though Ainge was angling for a potentially richer future in basketball, he was contractually handcuffed to the Blue Jays—who warned NBA teams not to draft him after he finished his BYU tenure. The Boston Celtics selected him anyway, and the lawyers went into action; the Celtics eventually bought out the remaining year of Ainge’s deal with the Blue Jays, freeing him from legal court to the basketball court

Dave DeBusschere

Like Ainge, the 6’6” DeBusschere dabbled in baseball before making a permanent move to his better sport, basketball—enjoying a 12-year career which included eight All-Star Game appearances and, ultimately, a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame. But while attending college near his birth home at the University of Detroit, one could have flipped a coin as to which sport he would have been better at, as he achieved All-American honors on the court and on the mound as a pitcher leading his team to a trio of NCAA tourneys. DeBusschere initially managed to juggle both sports on a professional level, debuting with the 1962 Chicago White Sox as a reliever and then, later that fall, beginning his pro hoops career with the Detroit Pistons. With the Sox, DeBusschere looked quite the promising prospect; he furnished a 2.00 ERA in 12 appearances in 1962, then as a hybrid starter/reliever a year later posted a 3.09 ERA over 24 appearances (10 starts) with a 3-4 record and one shutout, on August 13 against Cleveland. Despite these good numbers, DeBusschere was demoted at the start of the 1964 season to Triple-A, where he was stuck for the next two seasons—making his decision to concentrate full-time on basketball a much easier one.

Chuck Connors

Many will remember Connors for his starring role on The Rifleman, which had a strong run on ABC from 1958-63, and for ensuing roles as a bad guy (Soylent Green, anyone?) thanks to his 6’5” frame and chiseled, deep-jawed expression. But all of that was parlayed from his earlier life as a talented athlete, earning his way onto a basketball court with the Boston Celtics in the NBA’s inaugural (1946-47) season before turning to baseball, where he featured mostly in the minors for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. He took only one major league at-bat for the Dodgers, understandably failing to break into a legendary, star-studded lineup which included Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges; with the relatively struggling Cubs, he managed to stick around for half of one season (1951), batting .239 with a pair of homers in 201 at-bats. Otherwise, he starred in the minors through 1952, often batting above .300 with decent power. In playing for the Cubs’ Triple-A team at Los Angeles from 1951-52, Connors began probing a possible acting career in Hollywood, one which would yield over 60 movie roles and numerous guest turns in TV shows beyond his Rifleman tenure.

George Halas

The Connie Mack of football, serving as both coach (40 seasons) and owner (63) for the Chicago Bears from their infancy in the early 1920s, excelled just as equally on the ballfield as on the gridiron as a youth, even as he was picking up MVP honors at the 1919 Rose Bowl. The New York Yankees, who had closely scouted Halas at the University of Illinois before he enlisted in the U.S. Military during World War I, invited him to Spring Training—where he impressed enough to make the Opening Day roster. One problem: He badly hurt his hip during camp, and when he recovered enough to take the field in early May 1919, he managed just two singles in 22 at-bats with eight strikeouts. Disappointed but still hopeful he would become a future star, the Yankees sent Halas to the minors; when he learned he would start the 1920 campaign there as well, he balked—choosing instead to take on football full-time. It was a wise move; Halas would go on to a Hall-of-Fame career in the NFL, coaching the Bears to six league titles and 318 overall wins—second only to Don Shula on the all-time list.

Jim Thorpe

As you’ve no doubt read to this point, a lot of the folks on this list were good at multiple sports. Jim Thorpe was good at every sport. You name it, the Oklahoma-born Native American did it—and did it very well. Football, basketball, lacrosse, track and field—even ballroom dancing—Thorpe was omnipresent during the 1910s on the college scene, the pro scene, even the Olympics, where he won two gold medals (decathlon and pentathlon) at the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm. There’s no debate as to why the Associated Press named Thorpe the greatest athlete of the 20th Century’s first 50 years. 

But: Could he hit a change-up? With some minor league experience a few years before, Thorpe leveraged his Olympics fame into a bidding war from major league teams, with the New York Giants ultimately paying him $6,000 in 1913. But Thorpe rarely played for the parent team, spending more time at the minor-league level; his most active of six seasons in the majors came in 1917, and that’s only because the Giants ‘loaned’ him out to the Reds, where he played 77 games and batted .247 with four homers. In what would be his final season at the top level, in 1919, Thorpe came alive with a .327 average in part-time play with the Boston Braves—but found himself back in the minors, hitting .300-plus over each of the next three years in various circuits including the Pacific Coast League. Afterward, Thorpe stepped down from baseball and concentrated on coaching football.