Brian Jordan Career Biography and Statistics

Bio:
When sports fans think of athletes who played both pro football and baseball, the names Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders come immediately to mind. Fewer fans recall that Brian Jordan also played in both the NFL and major league baseball.

He was drafted by baseball's St. Louis Cardinals (first round) and the NFL's Atlanta Falcons (20th round) in 1988. While Jordan immediately started as a safety for the Falcons in 1989, it took him until 1992 to refine his skills enough to make the Cardinals' big-league squad. He had given up football the previous year, accumulating five interceptions and four sacks in his brief career.

During his first three seasons in St. Louis, Jordan was a utility outfielder, but his talents coalesced in 1995, when he had 22 home runs, 81 RBIs, 145 hits, 20 doubles and a .296 batting average in only 490 at-bats. He improved the following year, hitting .310 with 104 RBIs and a .349 on base percentage, playing mostly as the right fielder for the Cardinals.

In the 1996 postseason, Jordan hit .333 in the Division Series and had a game-winning home run in Game 4 of the League Championship Series. Jordan suffered through an injury-plagued 1997 during which he failed to hit a single home run. But Jordan rebounded with the best season of his career in 1998 - he scored 100 runs, hit 25 home runs, and batted a career-high .316. Fortuitously, Jordan became a free agent after that season, and garnered a $21.3 million contract from the Atlanta Braves.

In 1999, he made his only All-Star appearance and finished the season with 100 runs scored and 115 RBIs. Jordan carried the Braves on his back in the Division Series against the Houston Astros; he batted .471, had the game-winning double in the twelfth inning of Game 3 and drove in seven of Atlanta's 18 runs during the series. In the League Championship Series, won by the Braves, he hit two home runs. Two years later, after a sub par 2000 season, Jordan led the Braves to their tenth consecutive division title. In the process, he forever entered the nightmares of New York Mets fans with a 9th-inning grand slam off John Franco for a come-from-behind late September win that effectively shuttered the Mets' season. In 2002, the Braves shipped Jordan and pitcher Odalis Perez to the Dodgers for Gary Sheffield.

Injuries gradually eroded his skills, and he ended up playing for the Texas Rangers before returning for a brief swan song with the Braves in 2006. After retirement, he went to work as a broadcaster for the club.