An apple doesn’t usually fall far from the tree, so perhaps either of the Sanders brothers could have followed the same path as their father, the two-way phenom who thrived in both the NFL and MLB. And Coach Prime did try to instill that love of baseball in his sons, too. But in Shedeur’s case, the apple took a very different path, and ironically, Deion may have unknowingly played a part in pushing him away from the game.

Recently, Shedeur sat down with Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby for a rapid-fire round of “Deflected.” And when he was asked for his craziest story involving his father, Shedeur unexpectedly went back to his baseball days, revealing the exact moment he felt his love of the sport disappear. 

“Shilo was pitching. I’m talking about they smacking this ball. Mind you, I got to play in the outfield right now. I start leaning on the gate. He start yelling at me,” Shederr Sanders mentioned. ‘My dad, he was like, ‘Hey, don’t you ever disrespect this game, the game of baseball. Do you not know what this has done?’ I’m like, ‘Do you not see how they hitting this ball, bro?’ Like, I know you feel some type of way. This Shilo, this my brother, this your son. They sitting here abusing this ball. And then, like, from then on, I think that was my last year. The love of the game just left for me.”

However, even today he thinks about baseball. In fact, in a 2025 episode of 2Legendary with Shedeur Sanders, he was actually reminiscing about just how much the game meant to him and how deeply his father tried to immerse him in the sport.

“Dad definitely instilled baseball in us when we were younger,” Shedeur said. “I went to the Little League World Series. I did all that stuff, so I lived in full, you know, youth. So I was excited about it.”

Now, his entire focus is on football, but it’s not like he hasn’t turned to baseball at all. During his preparation for the 2025 NFL Draft, he visited a batting cage after a football workout, curious to see how much of his old swing was still there. 

“I just feel like going to a batting cage and practicing my skills, seeing what I still have,” Shedeur said. “And I don’t know. It’s like when you get to that 60 and up range, then it gets really, really, really fast.”

However, it would be wrong to pin Shedeur’s decision entirely on his father. Baseball itself played a part. While Shedeur wasn’t afraid of the work he had to put in, he simply wasn’t sure if he had one thing every great hitter needs: a good eye. 

“I don’t know if I could have went pro in baseball because it’s like, you can put in the work, but your eye,” Shedeur said after that batting practice. “You gotta have a good eye for those fast, fast pitches.”

He said he would rather get “hit on a football field than get hit with a baseball”! For context, the average fastball velocity in MLB today is around 94 mph. And while Shedeur can joke about it now, his father’s relationship with baseball was anything but casual.

Deion Sanders spent nine seasons in Major League Baseball. He played with the Yankees, Braves, Reds, and Giants, batting .263 with 39 home runs and 186 stolen bases while juggling two professional sports at the same time. His biggest baseball moment came in Atlanta’s 1992 World Series run.

Sanders went 8-for-15, hit .533, and stole five bases in four games. His athletic ability stood out to the players around him in Atlanta, even during a career split between two completely different sports. Former Braves pitcher Marvin Freeman was one of those teammates who got to see it firsthand.

“He was the fastest guy I ever seen,” Freeman says. “He looked like the Road Runner, his legs would turn into wheels. His feet didn’t touch the ground.”

And while Shedeur didn’t follow his father into baseball, he has carved out a path of his own on the football field. He enters the 2026 season as the Browns’ primary backup behind Deshaun Watson after an offseason and preseason competition for the starting job. Now, it remains to be seen how his season will pan out.