Did You Know This NFL Hall of Fame QB Played Baseball in Upstate NY?

John Elway is one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.

The first overall pick in the 1983 Draft, Elway played all 16 of his NFL seasons with the Denver Broncos. He threw for 51,475 passing yards, and exactly 300 touchdowns, during his career, and won two Super Bowls before retiring after the 1998 season.

Everyone who hears the name John Elway immediately thinks of football, but that's not the only sport in which Elway excelled.

Elway was also an incredible baseball player, so much so, in fact, that he was drafted by the New York Yankees in the second round of the 1982 MLB Draft. Elway played one season of professional baseball, and did so in Upstate New York.

Elway played 42 games in 1982 with the Oneonta Yankees.

At 22 years of age, Elway, who was an outfielder, hit an eye-popping .318 with a .432 on-base percentage. He hit four home runs, drove in 25 runs and stole 13 bases. At the time, it looked like he was shaping up to be a very good prospect for New York.

The Yankees believed this to be true, as well, and did everything they could to turn that dream into reality. Reports claim that Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner—who had already paid Elway $150,000 to play in Oneonta—reportedly planned to make him the Yankees' starting right fielder by 1985.

That said, while scouts saw Elway as a very good baseball player, they also believed that he had a better chance to become a star if he focused on football.

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Elway made headlines soon after, when he publicly stated that he would join the Yankees full-time if he was not traded from the NFL's Baltimore Colts, the team that drafted him first overall. The Colts acquiesced to his demands, and Elway was moved to the Denver Broncos.

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Elway became a Hall of Fame quarterback, and the entire baseball world was left to wonder "what could've been" if Elway continued his career on the diamond.