Gene Conley put in double time in big-league baseball and basketball
CROWE'S NEST
A three-time National League all-star as a pitcher in the 1950s and '60s, he moonlighted as a reserve center and forward for the Boston Celtics.
Nobody ever double-dipped quite like Gene Conley.
A three-time National League all-star as a pitcher, the 6-foot-8 right-hander moonlighted as a reserve center and forward for the Boston Celtics.
The only athlete to win championship rings in two major U.S. professional sports, Conley was part of a World Series-winning team with Hank Aaron and the Milwaukee Braves and won three NBA titles with the Bill Russell-era Celtics.
He struck out Ted Williams in the 1959 All-Star game at the Coliseum, played against Jackie Robinson . . . and guarded Wilt Chamberlain.
His teammates included Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews and Carl Yastrzemski, but also Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn and K.C. Jones.
Nobody played two major professional sports longer.
"When I look back, I don't know how I did it, I really don't," Conley says from his home in Clermont, Fla., 15 miles west of Orlando. "I think I was having so much fun that it kept me going. I can't remember a teammate I didn't enjoy."
Conley, who turns 78 in November, once played 12 pro seasons over six years -- six in baseball, six in basketball -- without taking a break in between.
In April 1961, only two weeks after helping the Celtics polish off the St. Louis Hawks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, he pitched into the ninth inning and drove in a run for the Boston Red Sox in a 6-1 victory over the Washington Senators -- with Russell and Jones looking on at Fenway Park.
"I was surprised more guys didn't do it," Conley says of his duality, noting that in his best year as a two-sport professional athlete in the late 1950s and early '60s he made only about $50,000. "In those days, ballplayers had to look for off-season jobs. We didn't get paid big money, and we were raising families. . . .
"Other guys didn't know how I could do it because they thought it was too much of a strain, but I didn't look at it as a strain. I looked at it as work, a paycheck every two weeks. You got 12 checks in the summer and 12 in the winter."
While his baseball employers urged him to give up basketball -- early on, the Braves paid him as much as $5,000 to not play basketball and the Philadelphia Phillies later offered him $20,000 to take the winter off -- Conley says the Celtics and later the New York Knicks didn't care how he spent his summers.
