GENE CONLEY
Gene Conley was the first great two-sport professional athlete of modern times.
Today’s sports heroes are measured by their achievements and accomplishments — as diverse and compelling as they may be — in their chosen field, event or discipline almost exclusively confined to one pursuit, and one only.
And this makes sense given that the era of specialization is not exactly bright, shiny and new.
For quite a while now kids have been taught to focus on one sport in order to enhance their advancement potential, a philosophy that was anathema back in the day.
When I was a boy, the barometer of athletic greatness was all-around ability and talent. The very best athletes played all sports with unmistakable natural grace in the playground or on organized teams.
The three-sport (and in isolated cases four-sport) captain, all-star or even letterwinner was a divine being, a quasi-deity breathing rarified air. The goal back then was to be that good, and to be considered among those select few, you had to do it all and do it very well.
Historically, the consensus #1 choice as the best multi-sport athlete of all time was American icon and sports legend Jim Thorpe.
In 1912 Thorpe won Olympic gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon displaying remarkable versatility. He won eight of the 15 individual events amassing a point total which stood for more than two decades before it was surpassed. He played professional football for 13 seasons; Major League baseball for seven; and professional basketball for two, lest we forget that he also excelled in ballroom dancing, capturing the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.
Very heady stuff.
Others who fell in behind Thorpe, era notwithstanding, typically include in no particular order: Jim Brown, Deion Sanders, Bo Jackson, Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Hayes, Jackie Robinson, Dave DeBusschere, John Elway, Charlie Ward, Dave Winfield, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Bob Gibson, Tony Gwynn, Kenny Lofton, Tom Glavine, Todd Helton, Tony Gonzalez, Allen Iverson, Julius Peppers, Walter Ray Williams, Donovan McNabb, Danny Ainge, Keith Erickson, Joe Mauer, Scott Burrell, Jeff Samardzija, Randy Moss, Russell Wilson, Carl Crawford, Kirk Gibson, Willie Gault, Dick Groat, Brian Jordan, Chuck Connors, Jimmy Graham, Matt Barnes and Antonio Gates.
Besides Zaharias on the women’s side — Lottie Dod, Clara Hughes, Ellyse Perry and Beth Heiden among scores of others deserve mention and the highest commendation.
(It should be further noted that in every pocket of America and corner of the world countless stellar all-around athletes, male and female exist cloaked in anonymity and thus represent those of whom we’ve never heard).
And then there was Gene Conley.
Donald Eugene Conley born in Muskogee, Oklahoma and “one of the nicest guys you could ever meet,” according to former Red Sox teammate and pitcher Don Schwall was the only professional athlete to play for Major League Baseball and NBA championship teams and the only athlete to play for three professional teams in the same city: the National League’s Boston Braves, the Red Sox and the Celtics.
Conley pitched for the 1957 World Series champion Milwaukee Braves and sported NBA championship rings celebrating his contributions as a member of the 1959, ’60 and ’61 Celtics.
His demeanor and sense of humor were such that he got along beautifully with the irascible Red Auerbach who according to Conley, once chided him: “‘Well, Gene, the playoffs are over, the season’s over, now you can go down and try to get out of shape so you can pitch.’
He thought baseball was a sissy game, I think,” Conley observed.
Meanwhile the 6-foot-8, 225-pound righthander was a powerful and imposing presence who moved seamlessly between both worlds beginning in 1952 when he broke in with the Boston Braves and played the 1952–1953 season with the Celtics.
He pitched for 11 seasons (1952–1963) with four major league clubs, taking time off from the hardwood to focus solely on baseball until 1958 when he returned to the NBA. He and Otto Graham are the only two athletes in history to win championships in two of the four major American sports.
(Graham won the 1946 NBL and AAFC titles plus three more AAFC and three NFL crowns. Wow!!)
The fact that Gene Conley was an accomplished enough all-around athlete — competing at the highest levels — to strike out Mickey Mantle and post-up Wilt Chamberlain in the same year no less, speaks volumes about his other-worldly talent and would excusably allow a mere mortal to hang them up on the spot, thoroughly satisfied.
Not Conley.
He loved to compete and he loved to win but at the same time was an extraordinarily humble and simple man who led a life rich in love and character. And of course lofty achievement.
To wit: He was a three-time NBA champion as Bill Russell’s highly regarded back-up, an enforcer who could play as well; he won a World Series with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957; he was a three-time MLB All-Star who was the winning pitcher in the 1955 Midsummer Classic, striking out three — the side — in a scoreless 12th. inning; and he finished ahead of legitimate career HR King Hank Aaron in NL Rookie-of-the-Year voting when they were kids with the Milwaukee Braves.
(It’s true. Look it up. In 1954, Conley’s “official” rookie season, he went 14–9 and finished third behind Wally Moon with 17.0 Vote Pts. and Ernie Banks with 4.0. Conley had 2.0 and Hammerin’ Hank had 1.0).
With all of this to define him, Conley also found time to pick ’em up and put ’em down. Maybe it was a release or perhaps it was a matter of an affinity for debauchery but the big fella liked to imbibe.
And he was a character.
Serving as fodder for many interesting tales, perhaps the most prominent and storied involved his pal, the Red Sox’ first black player, Elijah “Pumpsie” Green.
It was a hot July day in 1962 when Conley, pitching for the Red Sox, was getting lit up by the defending WS champion Yankees at the Stadium. After he was lifted in the fourth inning of what became a 13–3 rout and none too happy about it, he hit the showers and then the beer cooler in the clubhouse — or was it the other way around? — and spent the rest of the afternoon ‘hydrating.’
The team boarded the bus following the debacle and invariably became stuck in the sweltering heat and stifling tumult of New York City traffic en route to the airport.
Conley explained, “It was so hot. I pulled Pumpsie aside and said ‘Pumpsie, let’s get off this bus. Let’s go inside and have a cold one.’ We told [manager] Mike Higgins [another sot if there ever was one] we were going to the bathroom so we got off and went to this bar and when we came back out, Pumpsie said, ‘Hey, that bus is gone,’ and I said, ‘We are too!’
And we were off. And we were gone for three days.”
Green actually returned to the Sox the next day but Conley went AWOL for 68 hours living the high life. He stayed at the Waldorf, dined and drank at Toots Shor’s and finally cabbed to Idlewild Airport where he bought a plane ticket to Jerusalem. “I figured I’d go to the Holy Land and solve everything,” Conley quipped.
With no passport in hand he was unable to board the flight and upon his return to the club he was summoned to the office of team owner Tom Yawkey.
Conley remembered it this way: “Mr. Yawkey had a little refrigerator on the side of his office and said, ‘How would you like a beer?’ I said, ‘No way Mr. Yawkey. I don’t touch that stuff.’”
The Red Sox fined him $1,500 but Yawkey returned the dough when Conley bounced back with a 15-win season for the moribund (eighth-place) Sox.
Conley was strong, physical and tough too. During a game in Cincinnati with Conley on the mound, tempers were short and a brouhaha ensued.
When the smoke cleared, Conley had decked the ‘never-saw-a-fight-I-didn’t-like’ Billy Martin and broken his jaw. “Boy, I let him have it…He did a full gainer,” Conley recalled. “He [Martin] turned around and said, ‘Conley, I’m going to get a stepladder and get you next time.’”
He enjoyed the banter, the ribbing, the back-and-forth and it wasn’t confined to the diamond, the clubhouse or to baseball.
Wrapping up his NBA career with the hated Knicks in 1964, Conley stuck it to the Celtics on a couple of occasions.
“Red endorsed a line of athletic shoes in those days and he asked me to wear them. One game I was really hot and scored about 20 points and we beat the Celtics in New York,” Conley fondly remembered. “I saw Red and said, ‘I like the shoes,’ and he said, ‘Kiss my ass.’”
Jocularity was a defining piece of Conley’s persona.
Gene Conley was as well-rounded as they came. He retired from professional sports at 33 and gave up drinking at 36. He was married to the same woman, Katie, for 66 years with whom he started the Foxboro Paper Company which they operated for 34 years. They raised three children together, two nurses and a doctor.
He still communicates with some of his former teammates including the Celtics’ Frank Ramsey, Satch Sanders and Tommy Heinsohn. His eldest daughter admiringly notes that [her] “dad was simple, humble and loved his family…He knew that he wasn’t the single name that jumped out when talking about one sport or another, but he was a superstar as a human being, a father, and a mentor to those within hearing distance.”
‘Nuff said?
Gene Conley died at 86 on July 4th. of congestive heart failure in his Foxborough home.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in July 2017.]
