LOUISVILLE — It's a little more than an hour before game time, and Louisville RiverBats left fielder Deion Sanders is getting ready.

        For the man known as Prime Time, this is divine time. Sanders sits alone in front of his locker room stall, with a Bible the size of the yellow pages spread open in his lap. He reads a few passages from the Book of Psalms, pauses and reflects.

        “I read (the Bible) every day, man,” Sanders says. “Not just before games, all the time. Whatever passages the Lord inspires me to read.”

        This is a different Sanders than the one last seen on a major-league baseball diamond, in 1997 with the Cincinnati Reds. That was before he found religion. At times that year, he said, he felt suicidal.

        But now the eight-time NFL Pro Bowl cornerback draws strength from his spirituality, and nothing like a detour through the minor leagues on rehabilitation assignment is going to get him down.

        “I'm at peace with life. I have no quarrels,” says Sanders, who plays with a large gold cross dangling from a chain around his neck. “This is a game, this isn't life.”

        Sanders is on the Reds' disabled list while he recovers from offseason knee and ankle surgery. He does not count against the RiverBats' 24-man roster.

        Though he receives about 20 minutes of treatment after batting practice each day, Sanders says he feels fine and is about 90 percent healthy. He shows few ill affects on the basepaths; Thursday night he stole second base and jogged to third when the catcher's throw landed in shallow center field.

        “He can cause a lot of havoc when he gets on base,” says Louisville manager Dave Miley. “He has free range to run.”

        Sanders was hitting just .167 entering Tuesday's games (4-for-24) but has hit two homers, scored five runs, knocked in five hits and stolen two bases in three attempts. He spent most of spring training shuffling back and forth between the Reds' Double-A and Triple-A games, leading off every inning to get at-bats, but went nearly two weeks without any live action after camp ended.

        “I'm trying to get my timing back now, and it's going to take a couple of days,” said Sanders, a career .266 hitter in 609 major-league games. “I'm trying to get my work done here. I'm not just trying to get three of four hits every day. That would be fine, but I need to work on all parts of my game.”

        Sanders and his wife, Pilar, are staying in Louisville along with his German Shepherd “for protection,” he said. He said he neither knows nor worries about how long it will take Cincinnati to call him up.

        “I'm on the Lord's timetable,” Sanders said. “When He feels like it's time to move up and move on, that will be His decision.”

        If the Reds have a plan for Sanders, they're not saying. General Manager Jim Bowden will have to work him into a stacked outfield that includes Ken Griffey, Jr., Dmitri Young, Michael Tucker and Alex Ochoa.

        “Deion needs to get reacquainted with baseball and go through real, live situations,” said Bill Doran, the Reds' player development director. “We'll get him plenty of at-bats until Jim decides what to do.”

        In the meantime, the RiverBats are happy to have him.

        “He's a hard-nosed player,” Miley said. “He showed that between the football lines, and he shows it between the baseball lines too. He's a great guy to have around.”

        “At first, I was a little overwhelmed, because I had watched him on TV these years,” Louisville outfielder Brady Clark said. “But he's a super nice guy, just like everybody else on the team.”

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