John Elway won two Super Bowls, was Super Bowl XXXIII MVP, 1987 NFL MVP, inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2004, and is currently the Executive Vice President/General Manager of the AFC Champion Denver Broncos. With all of the success in the NFL that Elway has had, people forget that he was also a pretty good baseball player.
Elway's brief, but successful minor league baseball career has led the New York Penn League to vote Elway into it's hall of fame along with former Major League pitcher Randy Johnson and minor league statistician Charlie Wride.
A year before Elway became the first pick of the 1983 NFL draft by the Baltimore Colts , then refusing to play for the Colts and demanding a trade that eventually landed him in Denver, he was a promising Yankees prospect playing right field for the Class A Oneonta Yankees of the New York Penn League.
Gary Hughes of the New York Yankees scouted Elway at Stanford University, stating that "the sky was the limit" as far as his future was concerned in Major League Baseball. This high opinion of the Cardinals outfielder and pitcher led the Yankees to make Elway their first pick of the 1981 amateur draft.
Following the selection of Elway, the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner hosted his new prospect along with his parents at Yankees Stadium. It was there that Steinbrenner persuaded the college football star to pursue a professional baseball career. Elway signed a $140,000 contract and was assigned to the short season team in Oneonta where he would play the 1982 season.
Elway started the season slow as he became mired in a 1-for-22 slump. Doubts began to seep into the minds of some about the two sport "Golden Boy" from California. Elway eventually broke out of the slump to post a .318 batting average, hitting four homers and driving in 25 runs while also stealing 13 bases.
Elway played in 45 games that summer before returning to Stanford for his senior year. Steinbrenner was so impressed by Elway that he had him penciled in to the Major League club's starting lineup for the 1985 season along with another Yankee prospect, first baseman Don Mattingly. Steinbrenner was often quoted in articles describing Elway as "an all-American kid with a big smile, like a modern-day Frank Merriwell or Jack Armstrong." In an 1982 article by Rich Cimini, current NFL writer for ESPN, Steinbrenner said, "He will be a great outfielder for me, one in the great Yankee tradition of Mantle, Maris, DiMaggio and all the others . . . including Reggie (Jackson)."
It was due to his performance at Oneonta and the admiration of Steinbrenner that Elway was able to hang a baseball career with the Yankees over the Colts and force owner Robert Irsay to make the famous trade with the Broncos, forever changing the future of both franchises.
Elway has always said that football was the right choice for him and the results of that choice can't be debated. Still, it will always be interesting to wonder what could have been had the Colts not traded Elway to the Broncos and he ended up as the starting right fielder for the Yankees.