Two-Sport Stars: Ricky Williams

Who is this? Ricky Williams.

What sports did he play? Football and Baseball.

What teams did he play for?

Williams will be remembered for many things: Being one of the most prolific running backs in the history of college football and winning the Heisman Trophy in 1998 at the University of Texas; being selected by the New Orleans with the fifth-overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft after the Saints traded away all of their 1999 picks and their first and third-round picks in the 2000 NFL draft to get him; posing in a Wedding dress alongside Saints head coach Mike Ditka on the cover of ESPN the magazine with the headline "For Better or Worse"; retiring from football in 2004 after testing positive for marijuana, after which he studied Ayurveda, an ancient form of Indian holistic medicine, in California; returning to the Miami Dolphins in 2005 only to be suspended for the entire 2006 season for another violation for the NFL's drug policy, during which time he played in Canada; and returning to the NFL in 2007 and playing until 2011, when, as a member of the Baltimore Ravens, he became only the twenty-sixth player in NFL history to rush for more than 10,000 yards.

What is less remembered about Williams' athletic career is that he also played four seasons of professional baseball in the Philadelphia Phillies organization. Williams was drafted by the Phillies in the eighth-round of the 1995 MLB draft and during his four seasons in the minors played for the Martinsville Phillies, Piedmont Boll Weevils, and Batavia Muckdogs. Despite his intentions to play football, Williams was actually selected in the 1995 Rule 5 draft by the Montral Expos and then traded to the Texas Rangers, who attempted to convince Ricky to pursue a baseball career rather than play in the NFL.