Indy Star<\/a>, Warn saw the 6\u20199\u201d Bird icing his body in the training room every night and called him out, saying \u201cYou\u2019re a real wuss\u2026Every night, I see you. You\u2019re just here in the training room icing.\u201d<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Bird snarled at the remark but Warn wasn\u2019t finished giving the basketball star a piece of his mind. Warn proceeded to call out Bird\u2019s manhood, saying that only \u201creal men\u201d play with balls the size of a baseball and anybody could play basketball. He then asked Larry, \u201cYou just have to have a large basketball or you can\u2019t do it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hearing the challenge was all Bird needed to hear, replying with a simple answer of, \u201cI could do that\u2026I could play baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was official, the man that just led the Indiana State University Men\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Game<\/p>\n
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 \u201cdidn\u2019t want to hurt the game, the team, the program \u2014just because he and I were having a small (friendly) bet.\u201d ISU\u2019s 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 \u201cboost attendance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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, \u201cswinging a slow pitch softball bat\u2026it was awful.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
Warn quickly took Bird out of the game after that collision and that was the end of Larry Bird\u2019s college baseball career. Bird talked about getting the wind knocked out of him saying, \u201cAll the time I\u2019d been playing basketball, I\u2019ve never been knocked out, one baseball game and I get it. I was really hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He went on to talk about his performance saying, \u201cSo, end of career \u2014 one for two, .500 average, two RBI. I figured I couldn\u2019t do much better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Aftermath<\/p>\n
If you aren\u2019t factoring in the amount of at-bats a player had, Larry Bird\u2019s .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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the MLB season in full swing and the Boston Red Sox playing in their Opening Day against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2289],"tags":[5,13889,806,82637,6137,50,648,60729,82638,55562,1694,2341,4504],"class_list":["post-645375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-college-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-coach","tag-baseball-game","tag-bob-warn","tag-boston-celtics","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-college-baseball","tag-indiana-state-university","tag-isu-basketball","tag-larry-bird","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-baseball","tag-the-boston-red-sox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116297832025922037","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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