With the MLB season in full swing and the Boston Red Sox playing in their Opening Day against the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday, it brings me back to a story that has always fascinated me. The time Larry Bird played in a college baseball game for Indiana State University in 1979.
This game saw Bird not only put up a great performance but also almost end his career in the same day. Why did he play in a baseball game then? Because the baseball coach challenged him and Larry didn’t back down.
The Challenge
Why did the
ISU baseball coach at the time, Bob Warn, even offer Bird to play baseball in the first place? Well according to the Indy Star, Warn saw the 6’9” Bird icing his body in the training room every night and called him out, saying “You’re a real wuss…Every night, I see you. You’re just here in the training room icing.”
Bird snarled at the remark but Warn wasn’t finished giving the basketball star a piece of his mind. Warn proceeded to call out Bird’s manhood, saying that only “real men” play with balls the size of a baseball and anybody could play basketball. He then asked Larry, “You just have to have a large basketball or you can’t do it?”
Hearing the challenge was all Bird needed to hear, replying with a simple answer of, “I could do that…I could play baseball.”
It was official, the man that just led the Indiana State University Men’s Basketball team to a 33-1 season and a loss in the NCAA Finals to rival Magic Johnson, was going to suite up for a doubleheader against Northern Kentucky on April 28, 1979 to play baseball.
The Game
Bird did start the first game of the double header, a decision that made the sellout crowd of about 3,000 people at the time boo. Warn said it was because Larry “didn’t want to hurt the game, the team, the program —just because he and I were having a small (friendly) bet.” ISU’s Sports Information Director Tom James at the time said having Bird out there was basically a publicity stunt anyway so and Warn was just trying to “boost attendance.”
When they did see the first glimpse of Bird, they saw him trade in his No.33 ISU basketball jersey for a No.24 ISU baseball jersey and put into the game at first base. When he was at the plate, Warn described his swing as, “swinging a slow pitch softball bat…it was awful.” Bird would strike out in his first plate appearance due to his erratic swing but his next at bat saw him rope a single up the middle and drive in two runs to give ISU a 3-1 lead.
In the field however was a different story. At first base he was able to make nine putouts which is great but Bird almost ended his career at the same position. During a pop-up between first base and home plate, Larry Bird collided with the ISU catcher and went down hard. He would eventually get up, making the catch of course, but for a short moment there was a chance Bird ended his basketball career due to a baseball game.
Warn quickly took Bird out of the game after that collision and that was the end of Larry Bird’s college baseball career. Bird talked about getting the wind knocked out of him saying, “All the time I’d been playing basketball, I’ve never been knocked out, one baseball game and I get it. I was really hurt.”
He went on to talk about his performance saying, “So, end of career — one for two, .500 average, two RBI. I figured I couldn’t do much better than that.”
Aftermath
If you aren’t factoring in the amount of at-bats a player had, Larry Bird’s .500 batting average is still a franchise record for Indiana State University baseball. Two months after this game, Bird would sign his NBA contract with the Boston Celtics and you could say the rest is history from there.
Larry Bird even making the decision to play in a baseball after being challenged to is just one great example that shows how much of an ultimate competitor he really was. Never backing down from a challenge is what made him a three time NBA Champion, NBA Hall of Famer, and one of the greatest Boston Celtics to ever live.
