Colorado's Deion Sanders praises Shohei Ohtani’s record-breaking '50-50' season

BOULDER — Deion Sanders has taken notice of the biggest story in sports, Shohei Ohtani.

The Los Angeles Dodgers superstar, who will visit Coors Field this weekend with at least 53 home runs and 55 stolen bases, recently became the first player in Major League Baseball history to record a 50-50 season.

“It don’t make sense,” said the Colorado coach, who had a nine-year MLB career while he was also one of the top defensive players in the NFL during the 1990s.

As Coach Prime and his Buffaloes prepare for a road game at Central Florida, he reminisced on his own playing career as a transcendent athlete when asked about his thoughts on Ohtani.

“Ohtani, he’s incredible, man,” Sanders said. “You could compare him to the (Michael) Jordans and the Tom Bradys of the world. That’s who he is. He’s doing things that we haven’t fathomed.”

It got Sanders thinking about the players he played against that both had 40-40 seasons in Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco, each of whom achieved that feat once in their careers.

“(Bonds) definitely should’ve been close at some point,” Sanders said. “I never checked his stolen bases because his home runs, he just went crazy with the home runs after a while.”

While Sanders was quick to put Ohtani in the greatest of all-time conversation, he was quick to point out that, in his eyes, Bonds is the “G.O.A.T" after being reminded of his record-breaking 73 home run season in 2001.

“The dude was un-darn-believable,” Sanders said. “If you threw that ball anywhere in his zone, it was a souvenir. That’s how good he was. I love you, Barry!”

Sanders and reporters in the room went back-and-forth near the end of his weekly press conference when the discussion turned to Bonds’ exclusion from the Hall of Fame. Sanders said Bonds deserves a plaque in Cooperstown.

“You don’t gotta tell me,” Coach Prime, who once stole 38 bases in a season, said with a laugh. “I was there. I was in the dugout.”

But even for Sanders’ love of Bonds and appreciation for Ohtani, neither of them are his favorite player of all-time. That honors belongs to a teammate from his rookie season with the Yankees: Rickey Henderson.

“I love me some Rickey Henderson. I wanted to be Rickey Henderson. That was my man,” Sanders said. “Getting an opportunity to play with him, I was like a kid in the candy shop. I didn’t know nothing about baseball whatsoever and I’m sitting on the bench with Rickey Henderson, getting stolen-base tips. That’s when baseball was truly baseball and I loved every minute of it.”