Keith O'Brien returned to the program to discuss Larry Bird, a
basketball player from Indiana who leaped from obscurity to fame. You
might recall the last time O'Brien was on the show it was to talk about
his book "Charlie Hustle," a biography of Pete Rose, the legendary
Cincinnati Reds player who would surely be in the Baseball Hall of Fame
except he had a gambling problem and he kept denying it. Perhaps now
that Rose has relocated to that heavenly ballpark he'll eventually be
considered for a posthumous HOF honor.
Larry Bird had secrets of his own but they were not scandalous, they
were deeply personal. Bird's shyness and reluctance to be interviewed
made him something of an enigma. He let his skills on the basketball
court speak for him instead. When he played in the NCAA championship
game in 1979 he was dealing with a broken finger. That game was watched
by over 50 million people as Bird's Indiana State team played Michigan
State, Magic Johnson's team. Bird and Johnson could not have been more
different. While Magic was charismatic and effusive Bird could be silent
and withdrawn. They both went on to extraordinary success in the pro
game.
In this book O'Brien shows us how Bird might have vanished and never
become famous. Two determined men sought him out and brought him back
into the collegiate ranks. Bird had gone back home to French Lick,
Indiana where he had been perfectly content working on a municipal
garbage truck after a brief period at Indiana University when Coach
Bobby Knight was unable to retain the services a country boy who was
uneasy on that big campus.
