Keith O’Brien has a thing for tragic midwestern figures, which makes perfect sense as the author originally hails from Ohio.
O’Brien’s book Charlie Hustle, which I’ve reviewed for this website, will go down as the premier biography of baseball’s all-time hit leader, a vivid explanation of Pete Rose’s career and his character, his perpetual gambling scandals and the aftermath.
O’Brien is up to his old tricks with Heartland, a vivid recreation of Terre Haute’s most memorable era, the four years that Larry Bird controlled and patrolled Indiana State’s campus, putting the Sycamores on the map and becoming largely responsible for both the growth of college basketball and March Madness as we know it.
While Bird is undoubtedly the star of Heartland, O’Brien reminds us that countless others were in play: coaches, teammates, opponents, media members, administration and otherwise. He writes about how it all went down and how close it all came to not happening at all. Bird’s time at Indiana State is a tenuous tale that ultimately led to one of basketball’s greatest individual rivalries, while simultaneously saving a league. At the center of it all was a private, uber-talented young man the likes we’d never seen before and may never see again.
Heartland is chock full of fisticuffs, family tragedies, farming accidents, suicides, premature drafting and one of the least likely rises to professional superstardom: an awkward, soft-spoken, trash-talking and yes, White Midwesterner who performed magic with a roundball. And it happened during a simpler time when sports, while popular, aren’t the draw they are today, although Bird taking Indiana State to the NCAA Championship game can be seen as a monumental step in that direction. Or so you would think.
“It would be wrong to believe that Larry Bird and his Indiana State teammates played in an innocent time. The professionalization of college sports had begun years before Bird and his teammates ever showed up on campus. By the early 1970s, college coaches had turned recruiting into a pseudo-science. College boosters were bending the rules to land the best players. Network executives were leveraging America’s growing interest in sports to give viewers more college basketball, in better time slots.” In other words, the more that things change, the more they stay the same.
Like Rose, Bird’s obsession with his craft came from a love for his sport, spawning both their legend and their legacies. Despite Bird’s individual greatness, others involved are not forgotten.
You’ll read about Dave Bliss, who first spotted Larry Bird.
“Bird was slotted at forward for the Spring Valley Blackhawks, yet he played like a guard. He could bring the ball up the floor better than just about anyone, anticipate plays before they happened, see the floor in three dimensions, as if from above.” Bliss, who worked for Bobby Knight at Indiana, encouraged Knight to sign any of his top eight scouted players “as long as Bird is one.”
You’ll read how Denny Crum wanted Bird to come to Louisville and challenged him to a game of H-O-R-S-E, as he was known to do with his heavily sought after recruits. No spoilers as to who won.
You’ll read about Bird’s time in Bloomington which, as we know, ended with him leaving. But O’Brien tells us why.
You’ll read of Bill Hodges who, “like Larry Bird was drifting to the edges of the basketball map.” Hodges, who would ultimately coach the Sycamores to the title game in 1979, “spent a summer selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners door to door.”
You’ll read how these two came together at Indiana State University and the rest, as O’Brien writes, is history.
As Bird began to do his thing at Indiana State, “the school was selling tickets to basketball games at an unprecedented rate.” Despite all that, the “painfully quiet” Bird “wasn’t excited about getting attention.” His issues with intrusive media are well-documented. Once Sports Illustrated did its feature on Bird, those “were the last anonymous days Larry Bird would ever know. The cover minted Bird a star. It put Terre Haute on the map.”
With that popularity came Bird’s many battles with reporters wanting to delve too far. “As reporters showed up with increasing regularity to write stories about Larry Bird, Bird had made an upsetting discovery: He couldn’t control his own narrative.” As reporters wanted to know more about his personal life, “the questions drove him crazy.”
You’ll read about Larry Keith, an SI reporter who spilled “some of Bird’s long-held French Lick secrets. He had mentioned Bird’s marriage and his divorce. He had quoted Bird’s mother at length. They were worried that Bird wouldn’t like it – and they were right.”
You’ll read about networks changing programming and an expanding NCAA. Sound familiar?
And, of course, you’ll read about Magic Johnson. “He was, in short, the opposite of Larry Bird in almost every single way. Magic was coveted and comfortable, personable and prepared, a fully formed star at 17 and an open book. He had no secrets, nothing to hide.”
“Some reporters,” O’Brien goes on, “wrote more words about Bird’s dealing with the media than they did the Sycamores’ miraculous season itself. They wanted Bird to be like Magic.”
O’Brien will reintroduce you to Bob King, Red Auerbach, Billy Packer and Al McGuire. You’ll read about Bird’s teammates, many of them forgotten in his wake. And you’ll be transported back to a big time in a small town where one private young man who just wanted to play basketball changed, if not saved and shaped, the game forever.
“He’d make history that almost no one else could match by fundamentally altering almost everything he touched: Indiana State, Terra Haute, the NCAA tournament, and the NBA. But his greatest achievement might be the thing that’s been documented the least. Bird spawned an afterlife for Indiana State’s one shining moment. He made 1979 last forever, and he changed the people who were part of that moment.”
Heartland is a fun ride, a throwback to a time when college hoops took over the nation and when one young man, simultaneously grand and timid, made March officially mad.
