Catch-21

As the conversation winds down Deion Sanders tries to wind himself up, like a watch. "Prime Time keeps ticking!" he says, searching his Louis Vuitton valise like a Let's Make a Deal contestant. "That's a good title for your article." He produces a cellular phone the size of a makeup compact. "That needs to be the title of your article," he continues, gamely dialing a number. "Prime Time Keeps Ticking."

Trouble is, Prime Time isn't ticking smoothly these days. He didn't play baseball for six weeks after severely spraining his left ankle while sliding into third base on May 31. Adding insult to injury, the Cincinnati Reds—sorely in need of pitchers—abruptly traded him last Friday to the San Francisco Giants.

On this midsummer evening, weeks before the trade, Prime Time isn't even walking, much less ticking. Sanders's injured ankle is immobilized in ice. His heavy eyelids droop, as does his hair, which he wears like a foolscap without the bells. On the whole, Prime Time barely looks alive. It is only briefly, and with a weary sense of duty, that he acts out his cell-phoning, self-promoting image. It is only then that Sanders appears, in the words of friend and Dallas Cowboy receiver Michael Irvin, "cooler than a cat on a marble table."

More often—as Sanders's diamond Rolex sweeps on silently—the only ticking comes from his biological clock. He looks old. "I'm not young," he sighs while slumping his 27-year-old body beside a locker at the Astrodome in Houston, where his Reds are playing the Astros. "I feel old all the time. Playing two sports doubles your age." He yawns gapingly. "Doubles it."

By this math Sanders is 54 years old, which explains all his talk of retiring—from one sport, anyway. "That time is definitely coming," he warns apocalyptically. "And it will be football that goes first. Football will definitely go before baseball."

But time passes—it's all that passes on the best cornerback in football—and scant weeks after that conversation, Sanders tells his teammates that he may indeed soon retire. From baseball. Or so reports Red infielder Lenny Harris. Sanders publicly hinted as much after the trade. "All I'll say is that I told the guys the other day that I had a few things on my mind, and they involved possibly not playing one sport," said Sanders. "I'm not going to say which one."

Sanders is under contract to play baseball through this season. He is a free agent in football and has the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Denver Broncos and the Miami Dolphins waiting impatiently for him to decide which team will have his services come October. Sanders was recently photographed in each of those teams' uniforms for the box art of a forthcoming video game. So not even Sega knows with whom he will sign.

Prime Time won't tip his hand ("Football's the last thing I think about in baseball season," he says), except to proclaim that the team must be a serious Super Bowl contender. Only that's not how he puts it. What he says is, "You don't go from a Yugo [the Atlanta Falcons] to a Benz [the 49ers] back to a Yugo." Sanders's agent is seeking $3 million for a 10-game contract.

The Niners are encouraged that Sanders is playing baseball in San Francisco, and according to a Giant executive, gave him a ringing endorsement when the Giants called Friday morning looking for references. "I think chances are better than 50 percent that we'll sign him," says 49er president Carmen Policy. Bronco coach Mike Shanahan, who had lunch with Sanders in June, seems to concur: "I got the impression that if he could have financial security and play on good teams, both in one town, that would appeal to him."

Sanders had hoped to finish this season trying to help the Reds win a World Series title. Instead, he now gets to share the spotlight and earrings with Barry Bonds.