Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, Sanders was a four-sport (baseball, basketball, football and track) star at Grand Island High School before he was signed to his first professional contract as an outfielder by Athletics scout Whitey Herzog.[1] Sanders threw and batted right-handed, stood 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and weighed 200 pounds (91 kg).
In his rookie season (1964) in the Appalachian League, Sanders batted only 30 times, but collected 13 hits for a .433 batting average. He was then kept on Kansas City's Major League roster at the outset of the 1965 season under the terms of the bonus rules then in force. During that time, he appeared in his only Major League game, on April 13, 1965, as a pinch runner in an 11–4 loss to the Detroit Tigers.[2] On May 4, 1965, the A's lost Sanders on waivers to the Boston Red Sox when they attempted to send him to the minor leagues for more seasoning. He played in the Red Sox, New York Mets and Kansas City Royalsfarm systems through 1968 before quitting the pro game. Overall, he batted .269 with ten home runs in 205 minor league games.[3]
In 1999, Sanders returned to professional baseball and the Red Sox organization, spending nine seasons with Boston as manager of their Rookie-level Gulf Coast Red Sox affiliate (1999–2002) and a scout based in Woodstock, Georgia (2003–2007). He then became a professional scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he played an instrumental role in the August 25, 2012, trade that brought Josh Beckett, Adrián González and Carl Crawford from Boston to the Dodgers.[4]
Sanders was named to the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. He died from cancer on February 3, 2022, at the age of 76.[5][6]
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