The odds are long against making it as a professional athlete. It’s also similarly rare to be a good enough musician to make a living of it. But to be talented enough at sports and music to have success at a high level with both endeavors? That’s got to be impossible, right?
Videos by American Songwriter
These four men proved otherwise. Each performed at an elite level in their sport over an extended period of time, and then had success as a professional musician after retiring from sports—and in some cases they did it even during their sports careers. All four athlete/musicians featured here have lived the dream (or dreams, plural!), achieving what most of us can barely even imagine doing.
1. Bernie Williams
Williams was a five-time All-Star center fielder who spent his entire 16-year major league career with the New York Yankees, playing a key role in four World Series championships. He was one of baseball’s best and most-recognizable players during the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but he had already embarked on his jazz guitar career while still in pinstripes.
Williams released his debut album, The Journey Within, in 2003, which featured numerous accomplished musicians, including banjoist Béla Fleck, guitarist Tim Pierce, bassist Leland Sklar, keyboardist David Sancious, and drummer Kenny Aronoff. Both The Journey Within and its follow-up, Moving Forward, peaked in the Top 5 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart and reached the Billboard 200. The latter album featured collaborations with Bruce Springsteen and Jon Secada, with the former teaming up with Williams on a live version of “Glory Days.”
2. Jack McDowell
The 1995 Yankees didn’t reach the World Series, but their roster was loaded…with musical talent! For one season, Jack McDowell was Bernie Williams’ teammate, and by the time the Yankees had traded for the pitcher from the White Sox, he had already recorded two albums with his alternative rock band, V.I.E.W. Then McDowell formed a new band, stickfigure, which released four albums, three of which came out after his retirement from baseball in 1999.
While still with the White Sox, McDowell and V.I.E.W. toured with The Smithereens in 1992 in support of their fourth album, Blow Up. While McDowell was a good enough guitarist and singer to be opening up for a popular band, his most lasting impact on the music world may have come away from the stage. Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken tells American Songwriter, “We had a lot of fun when (McDowell’s) band opened for us … but my most memorable hang with Jack was when my wife and I attended an after-party … following an R.E.M. show at Madison Square Garden during the summer of ‘95.”
[RELATED: 7 Musicians You Didn’t Know Were Successful Athletes]
The details of that “hang” are immortalized in the Baseball Project’s song “The Yankee Flipper,” written by former R.E.M. touring member Scott McCaughey, who joined his bandmate Mike Mills, McDowell, and Diken that evening. McCaughey sums up the evening in “The Yankee Flipper” with the line, Jack loved The Replacements, and we drank enough that we became them. McDowell, possibly still not at 100 percent after his big night out, was shelled by the White Sox for nine runs in his next start, and he flipped off the fans at Yankee Stadium upon his exit. While it’s pretty cool that McDowell got to have success as both a ballplayer and a musician, this was one instance when sports and music did not mix.
3. Wayman Tisdale
When do a basketball player and a baseball player get to be on the same team? In the case of Wayman Tisdale and Bernie Williams, it happened by playing on the same song together. Tisdale, a jazz bassist, guested on the title track of Williams’ Moving Forward. He had an illustrious college basketball career at the University of Oklahoma, was a member of the 1984 Gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team, and had a 12-year career in the NBA.
Tisdale’s debut album, aptly named Power Forward, was released in 1995 while he was still playing with the Phoenix Suns, and he would go on to release seven more albums. Seven of his eight studio albums ranked in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, and three of them reached No. 1. His final two albums, Way Up! and Rebound, were crossover hits that cracked the Billboard 200. Tragically, Tisdale died in 2009 at the age of 44, two years after being diagnosed with bone cancer.
4. Mike Reid
What the preceding three athlete-musicians accomplished is stunning, but it’s hard to top Reid’s accomplishments in both arenas. As a defensive tackle for Penn State, Reid won the 1969 Maxwell Award—an honor given to college football’s best overall player—and he went on to be a two-time Pro Bowl selection with the Cincinnati Bengals.
After a five-year NFL career, Reid turned his attention to country music, first gaining attention as a songwriter. He penned “Stranger in My House,” a Top 40 hit for Ronnie Milsap that won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1984, and he also wrote or co-wrote songs for Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Tim McGraw, Wynonna Judd, Marie Osmond, and several other artists. He also released a pair of solo albums, and his 1991 debut, Turning for Home, included the hit “Walk on Faith,” which topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.
Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for NAMM
