French Lick Origins: The Impossible Larry Bird Story | Keith O’Brien | Engel Angle

My fantasy is not to win a lottery, although that is up there. No. My real dream is to sleep five consecutive hours without getting up to have to use the bathroom. Now there's a steal by Bird. I'm gonna reach the Mac Engel, Fort Worth star telegram, angle angle podcast here on the Sunset Lounge, Stolen Water Media. Not sure I need to give a shout out to anybody else on the list of credits. Guest for this episode is a best selling author who has written a kick ass book about one of the great mythical legends in sports. I'm not talking about myself, although I do think that is worth a book, at least three pages. I'm talking about the one and the only, the great Larry Bird. Mr. Keith O'Brien, bestselling author of a book, the last book written about Mr. Pete Rose before Pete died, has tackled the very difficult subject of one of the great basketball players and athletes in the last fifty years, and that is Larry Bird, who came from my home state of Indiana. And when I was growing up in Indiana, Larry Bird was in the middle of his career with the Boston Celtics and revolutionizing not just the NBA, but professional sports. Now what Keith has decided to do is not write a book about Larry's life that jumps into the familiar areas of the Boston Celtics or the Dream Team or his time coaching the Indiana Pacers or his time as the general manager of the Pacers or anything like that because we have heard and seen those stories forever. Larry Bird's life started with circumstances that would say this guy's going nowhere. He grew up in a little town in Western Indiana, famously called French Lick. And he was so poor. His mom and dad struggled. His dad really struggled to make ends meet. He had probably gone through some trauma when he served in the Korean conflict. They didn't want to call it the Korean War. And Larry's life with his family was a blue collar, hard scratch life, but he could really play basketball. He was an exceptional basketball player. And if it wasn't for the people around him who recognized his ability, who saw what he could do on a basketball court, and pushed him to get out of French Lick Indiana, there's a very good chance the world never knows of Larry Bird after he graduates from high school. Because at the time, when he was a high school basketball player, he was one of the better players, but not the best player in Indiana, which is absurd to think about. Because at the time, the school that he went to was good. It wasn't great. Larry Bird didn't win a state championship. Larry Bird wasn't mister basketball and all that other stuff. And he was a damn good player, but there were other good players too. And there's a lot of details to Larry's life that are just absolutely fascinating. And we don't know him because Larry famously is so private. I mean, so private. And he doesn't wanna talk about himself. He really doesn't do it. He did it when he was with the Celtics and was in the NBA, but he didn't love it. And if it was up to him, he'd live where he lives now, which is splits time between Florida and an estate that he's built for himself that is extremely private in Southern Indiana. And if you're going to get there, you've got to be invited. And you've got to know Larry to be invited. And that all started in French Lake, Indiana, where Keith O'Brien went back and interviewed anybody who was alive to talk to them about what they remember about the man who had become the hick from French Lick. So let's talk. Here's Keith O'Brien. Keith, you decided for your next book after the Pete Rose book, which was so good to pick maybe the single most difficult subject to agree with you to do anything about him. And that is Mr. Larry Bird. What made you decide to tackle the impossible subject And by impossible, not because there isn't material readily available about him, but because his cooperation is notoriously minimal. How did you pick Larry Bird? Right. I mean, I don't know. I probably need to go into some therapy or something. And go out of P. Rose into Larry Bird. I I think I I I need to I need I have lots of people have questions. Let's be honest. As you said, you know, I wrote that book on P. Rose. I'm from the Midwest originally. I obviously was back in the Midwest a great deal during the reporting of that book. As I came out of it, was thinking about what are some other Midwestern stories that we've maybe overlooked? And I started to think about Larry Bird. And, you know, I wasn't interested in the soup to nuts Larry Bird biography. You know, I feel like a lot of this material, the the bird magic, know, Lakers, Celtics story has been told many times. But I really did begin to think about this origin story, a story of Larry's rise in rural Indiana in the nineteen seventies, and the story of that Indiana state team. And, you know, the more I thought about that, the more I I became interested. Every time we've come to this story over the past fifty years, we always do the bird magic thing, where we tell the story of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson together. And I get it. I understand why we do that, of course. You know, Bird and Magic play against each other in March 1979 in that epic NCAA championship game. And then they will go on to save the NBA, redefine it, spark a generational rivalry. So I get it. But the reality is in the seventies, these guys don't know each other. They've met one time. In that one time, they barely spoke. So they're not friends. They're not rivals. They're not anything when they play against each other in March 1979. And so what I really wanted to do is tilt the camera and, you know, just change the perspective just a little and zoom in on that origin story. And when you do that, you get almost a completely different story and you get a totally new cast of characters, people who were around Bird in those years. And, you know, that's the story that I wanted to tell. So, Larry Bird, from the Midwest, you know when a guy becomes famous, nationally famous, you kind of attach yourself to that person's fame subconsciously. Right? So in Indianapolis, that was people like Jane Pawley who went on the NBC Today show for a long time and certainly David Letterman. Right? So even if you had no formal time with these people, you knew people who did, or more importantly, you knew people who pretended that they did. So you would hear all these sort of Paul Bunyan stories about these characters, and then they would just be kind of come become fact. And one of them that I had heard, and I I'm fascinated to know if you ever heard this one, was Larry Bird famously shot a Converse commercial with Magic Johnson at his home in French Lake, Indiana. Right? And the story goes, Magic comes down and that's where they become pretty good friends. That's the, that's really the point of origin of their friendship. At the time they were very popular players to the Celtics and Lakers, Keith. And the story goes, Larry wants to take magic out to a local bar. French Lick is as rural of a place as Indiana could possibly create, and it is awash in rural communities. So Larry's gonna take magic into a bar, and Larry walks in, and an older gentleman walks in. He says, we don't allow blanks in here, the n word and Larry says he's okay, he's with me and magic comes in and he's the only black guy in the place and they sit down and perceive to have a couple drinks and hang out. That's a story that I had heard for years and years about Larry's relationship with magic and going to bat for him in a place that a lot of black people in that in that part of Indiana or that specific maybe area, wrong side of the track so to speak, would not have been welcome even though this was long after integration and all that stuff. This would have in the seventies. Keith, did you ever come across either that specific story or other anecdotes like that? Well, so, I know the story you're talking about and I know the exact I know the exact time when it happened. So, they filmed that Converse commercial in September 1985. It's the peak of, each of their fames. Bird and Magic collectively are going to win the next four NBA titles, right there in the in the mid nineteen eighties. And they do record that commercial over course of a couple days on Larry Bird's property, not in French Lick, but in West Baden, Indiana. West Baden is just just a little north of French Lick. They're right next to each other. They're essentially the same town. I don't know. I can't confirm the story about the majority of and somebody saying something negative about Magic Johnson. I do know exactly where they went. They went to a place called the Jubilee Bar on State Road 56 in West Baden, Indiana. They hung out there all night and held court essentially at a table between the door and the pool table. And it was Bird, it was Magic, it was Magic's handler or security guard. And it was a lot of, Larry Bird's high school friends and teammates hanging out drinking beers, in rural Indiana in the 1985. Can you imagine Keith, can you even conceive something like that happening today? No. I mean, no, I can't. All of these guys were fortunate to have lived and to have played and to have achieved their fame and iconic status in a time before, you know, everybody had a camera phone in their pocket. They could they could move through the world, you know, not inconspicuously, but without photos and, things being posted immediately online. You know, they did have that sort of freedom. And so, no, I I don't think that would happen today. You wouldn't you wouldn't have two of the biggest stars sports stars of the nineteen eighties drinking beers in a little bar on State Road 56 in West Baden, Indiana late into the night. That wouldn't happen today. Keith, can you explain to people this process of you pick the subject. He's a public figure. Certainly you're more than welcome to write about him, but specifically reaching out to him because you had read, you had written in your, in the prologue that Larry didn't do an interview for you for this book, whereas Pete Rose did cooperate, which is something I still am astonished that you were able to do that with him. So in terms of you reaching out to him, what was that process like? Was it it cordial and professional or was it nothing? So, I didn't reach out to Bird right away. I began to do my reporting and began to talk to many others, including the folks who were around Bird in those days. And once I got to a place where I felt confident that regardless of Larry's participation, was going to be able to tell this story, That's when I reached out to him and his people. And I made multiple attempts to get to Larry through the proper channels, you know, through his agents, you know, going in through the front door. And it was cordial. It was professional, but it was also firm. The answer was firmly stated to me time and again that Larry was not going to participate. And so once I knew that the front door was essentially closed, I tried to get to Larry through the back door, you know, through back channels, through his friends. You know, and I did interview at great length of some of Larry Bird's best friends right now. I'm not talking about Kevin McHale or Danny Ainge or even Magic Johnson. I'm talking about the people he's texting right now, you know, this week. And, you know, I went to them, you know, and to see if they could maybe help get Larry to speak with me and and and that didn't work either. And, you know, obviously, you know, as a journalist, as a historian, I wanna speak to everybody. I certainly wanna speak to the characters at the middle of my narrative. But I've also learned over the years, you know, through my reporting, my journalism, through my book on Pete Rose, through this book here that, you know, you can often get a more accurate portrait of a person by talking to fifteen, twenty, 45 people around that person than you can by talking to the person him or herself. And I and I do believe that's what I've done here. And and to be clear, and as you know, so it's because because you've read the book, this story in Heartland is bigger than Larry Bird. It is the story of a team, of a time, of a place, of a town, of a moment. And this moment is so big in 1979 that it not only changes, you know, college basketball, changes the NBA, changes Magic Johnson to Larry Bird. It it changes everybody who's around Larry and and really lifts them all up like a furious tide and propels them forward to places they never would have gone otherwise. And so the story is, you know, just far bigger than just Larry. When you go through that process with a subject who says, no, thank you. The concern I've talked to other people, the one that I can think of is bestselling author Mark Kregel, did a terrific book on Mike Tyson. And he had known Mike for years and had written some really hard things about Mike because, you know Mike put himself in that position and the concern was just don't shut me down like don't don't reach out to these guys and tell them not to talk to me. Did you find yourself in that position at all, Keith, where anybody said, I ain't talking to you. Larry told me I couldn't talk to you. Did you find yourself in that spot? It doesn't look like it, did you? The only person who told me directly that, he wasn't gonna speak to me because Larry wasn't speaking to me was Magic Johnson, and Magic Johnson's people. I I don't believe that it was because Larry reached out to Magic Johnson's people to tell him not to participate. I think, you know, Magic's people were just not comfortable in participating if Larry wasn't participating. I'm not aware of any other situation or any situation in which, Larry or interfered in that way. As I said, I I did interview everybody, you know, who was around him in the nineteen seventies, including every member of his miracle 1979 Indiana state team, all of his living coaches, his the the the men who coached him who are still alive, some of his best friends right now, you know, so I did still have that access. Well, think you're a 100% right and I think it's a detail that not enough people appreciate is when you write these kinds of biographies, sometimes you don't need them. Sometimes in fact the better ones are when you don't talk to them, because they can color it through their own version of events, whereas the 10 people who were around that person at the time can give you a fuller, more accurate portrayal of that particular moment or person in that, in that time in their life. And I certainly think you did that here with Larry. Now one of the more famous anecdotes of his young career that you go into that is part of college basketball lore was that, Indiana University was actually Larry's first place to attend college. And I came across an interview and I'm sure you saw it, that Larry did with Reggie Miller and Isaiah Thomas before the All Star game in Indianapolis a couple of years ago. Was a really fun thing for, for native Hoosiers and basketball fans to watch those three talk. And when Reggie Miller brought it up, Larry said, I left Indiana because I was broke. When I read your book and your your account of that that whole thing, it sounded to me, Keith, like more Larry left Indiana not because he was broke, but because he didn't like it there and he was fiercely homesick. Which one do you do you think Larry when Larry recounts that? He doesn't want to admit that part about him because there's a flaw in there or do you really think maybe no. He was just, mean, obviously you wrote it. You only had $75 in his pocket when we went to Bloomington as a freshman. Where do you think it is? Where do you think that sort of truth resides in that particular decision? Great question. And the the honest answer is I don't really know. You know, one thing that you see famous people do over the years or anybody who gets interviewed hundreds or thousands of times is that stories do evolve and they change a little bit or the edges get rounded off. I think, honestly, it's just human nature. You know? I think all of our stories probably change a little bit over time. All of us are probably not reliable narrators of our own lives. What I believe happened in August and September 1974, the twenty one days that Larry Bird is on campus in Bloomington, is a bit of a cumulative effect. I do believe he felt poor in Bloomington. I know that based on Larry's own recollections later, and on interviews I conducted with people who were around him during that three weeks. So he did feel poor in Bloomington, or to use Larry's term, your your term a moment ago, he did feel broke. I also believe that he was a bit lost. You know, Bloomington, the campus, at IU is about 15 times the size of French Lick. Dormitory where Larry lived had roughly the same amount of people as as the entire population of French Slick. So it's enormous. So I think he feels a bit lost. But I think the last thing that is relevant is this. I I I think based on my reporting, Larry feels a bit unwanted in in Bloomington. That's a really good Hoosiers basketball team that's there, that that late that summer. Over the next two years without Larry, that that team's gonna go sixty three and one. They're gonna lose one game even after Larry packs up and goes home. They've got lottery draft picks in that locker room already. Number one draft picks in that locker room. So they're they're really good. And, you know, again, based on my reporting, at least some players on that team let Byrd know it, you know, that they're really good. And, you know, again, we we think of Larry Bird as coming to us fully formed. He doesn't. You know, he's not considered to be a top 15 player in the state of Indiana as a high school senior. Know, Bobby Knight signs him, but he really sort of has to be convinced to do so. He's not falling over himself to to sign Larry Bird. He he comes to the party late and signs him late. And and so, you know, Knight doesn't know what he has in Larry. Larry does feel poor. He does feel lost. He does feel a bit unwanted in that locker room. And I think the thing that's important to know about Larry is he never dreamed of being there. You know, he grows up poor in French Lick. His only dream was to play on the varsity team at Springs Valley High School. He hadn't dreamed of playing for Bobby Knight. He hadn't dreamed of going to the NBA. These dreams belong to other people, you know, to townsfolk, his mother, his his coaches, his high school coaches. They didn't belong to Larry. And, you know, as he says later, he felt unhappy. And if he was unhappy, why is he sticking around? Why is he staying there? And, you know, Larry Bird's stubborn then, he's stubborn now. That's one thing that remains consistent. And so, you know, he stubbornly packs up and he goes home. So one of the great what ifs about that time is what if Larry Bird had played for Bobby Knight, as opposed to ultimately at Indiana State where the coach anchors everything around him justifiably to great success. Bobby Knight did not play in that kind of, did not coach that kind of system. Now he would have great players that, that, that he would feature Isaiah Thomas, Steve Alford, Calvert Cheney, but at that point in his career, later on, Knight did an interview with Bob Costas and said, was too young in my career to coach him the way I needed to do it. He said, if I was, I didn't handle it the way I should have, which basically tells me he didn't recognize how good Larry Bird was. Keith, do you think Larry Bird would have become the player that he did at the same trajectory had he played at Indiana University? I know a lot of people like to speculate that if Larry had stayed that, you know, this stubborn, headstrong player would have butted heads with the a stubborn headstrong coach, and that it would have ended badly. I I I know I know that theory's out there. I I subscribed to a different theory. You know, Larry loved to win. He loved to win. And, you know, if if he had stayed, in Bloomington, he absolutely would have been a starter by the end of that freshman year, because his talent was apparent. I, you know, I mentioned a moment ago that they go sixty three and one over the next two seasons without him. If Larry stays, they very likely go 64 and o. They went back to back. And then, you know, is it is there a a an alternative universe out there where they win the next two years too? You know, they win four in a row and then spill right in to the to the Isaiah Thomas years? You know, I think that's very possible. And so, you know, would have Larry scored 30 points a game, averaged 30 points a game at Indiana as he does at Indiana State? No. I don't think he would have done that. Would he be would have he have been, a first team all American by his junior year as he is at Indiana State? Yeah. I think he would have been, because, again, Larry wants to win. And you know who else wanted to win? It's Bobby Knight. And, I I I do think if Larry stays, it's a success, and it it changes Bobby Knight's entire career. You know, he becomes almost like the second coming of John Wooden, you know, winning back to back to back to back. I think that's very possible. Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you. Are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Well, join the Sunset Lounge DFW and Your Dark Companion on patreon.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more. He goes back to French Lick where he gets a blue collar job. And in your core in the course of your reporting, Larry Bird tells interested recruiters, college recruiters, I'm very happy in this job, picking up trash, working for the city, you know, hanging out with my buddies afterwards. It's amazing to think he was doing that. This wonder talent is sitting there in a blue collar job, you know, passing up all these opportunities and going to what essentially amounts to as a glorified, you know, teacher's college, right? Just it's it's just baffling to me. Do you think at that point in the interviews that you did, he really meant it that he would have been perfectly happy just playing pickup ball the rest of his life and having a blue collar job with the city with some benefits and hanging out with his buddies on the weekend and drinking beer? Well, if I've learned one thing over the course of writing this book and researching this book is Larry Bird only says things that he means. He doesn't say things for dramatic effect. He doesn't say things to, to stir the pot. You know, he only says things that he means. And in the 7475, Larry's not only saying that he likes that job working for the city, you know, where among his other duties, he is collecting the trash. He's telling everybody, including most importantly, his mother, that he's not going back to college, that he's done. And, you know, you can't underestimate just how hard that winter was for Larry. You know, his father had long struggled with alcoholism, had long struggled personally, struggled to hold down a job. It is that winter, the 7475 that he's left Indiana and sort of disappeared. That is his father Joy Bird takes his own life. These days, you know, we have a a a term we would use for that with a family, with a kid. Larry's only 18, just turned 18 that winter. This is a trauma. It's a trauma for a family. It's a trauma for a kid. But nobody spoke like that in Rural Indiana in 7475. Larry doesn't have, you know, a a support system around him to help him in this moment. And he really has by April 1975, all but disappeared. He's playing in what's known as the, industrial league. It's essentially glorified pickup men's basketball, in Rural Indiana. You know, he's playing on a a team of guys who are in their twenties and thirties. Some of these guys, you know, were once good, like eight years earlier, but now they have day jobs and mortgages and kids and wives. And and and, you know, Larry really has truly disappeared. I I called the newspapers, you know, went through every newspaper in Indiana in that winter and spring. No one is writing stories about Larry Bird. No one Yeah. He's gone. And and you're right. This would never happen today. None of this would ever happen today. You know, you know, a kid like Larry in high school, even in a poor rural community by the age of 16, 17 would have a corporate team around him, you know, with, with lawyers and agents and, you know, you know, marketing executives. You know, you wouldn't go looking for Larry Bird in 2026. His people would be setting meetings up for you. And so it's it's just a an entirely different world. And I do believe that were it not for, you know, a man we we may speak speak about here. A man named Bill Hodges, a down on his luck assistant coach at Indiana State who goes down to Tara down to French Lick looking for Larry Bird. Literally driving the streets looking for Larry Bird. That we may have not ever heard Larry's name. Maybe he doesn't go back to college just like he was telling people he wasn't gonna do. Do you think Larry Bird and you know, you're, you've lived long enough now, you can kind of draw your own behavioral conclusions about yourself or other people, but when you're reporting and learning about Larry at that time in his life, when I was reading this, I read about a kid who was scared, really scared, who, who loved basketball, knew he was really good at basketball, but was ultimately scared to go outside literally of his bubble to try to see if he could do it. That's what I, That's what I interpreted. Is that what, was that really what it was? You know, it's a great way of putting it and I do believe, you know, while Larry would probably never admit to that, even if I got access to him, I I do believe that that's what was happening there. And, you know, Bill Hodges, I think knows that too. You know, you know, when Bill, you know, gets an audience with Larry, you know, Larry tells him the same thing he's told everybody else. I'm not going back to school. You're wasting your time here, you know. But Bill Hodges is from rural Indiana. He grows up poor just like Larry. He's from this little town, Indiana, Union Township. You know, Bill Hodges grows up in a house with no indoor plumbing, no running water. You know, he knows what it's like to, you know, bail hay, be poor, feel slighted, feel overlooked. Bill Hodges does. Bill and Larry connect and he convinces Larry to at least come make a visit to Indiana State. And when Larry does agree to come, to to Indiana State in August 1975, one year after he's left, Bloomington and and abandoned Bobby Knight, Bill Hodges then does that thing you just mentioned. He builds a safe place for Larry. Bill Hodges recruits to come with Larry, one of his high school teammates, a man named Danny King, a point guard. All all all Danny King has done is played two years of basically community college, junior college basketball. But he he recruits Danny to come with Bird. Then, you know, Bill Hodges rooms Bird and Danny together. First they live in Hodges's basement on Ohio Street in Terre Haute where, the the these two young athletes pay a a a small fee and rent so they can cover their bases with the NCAA. Bill Hodges then helps Larry Bird get a job. Helps him get a job with one of the richest men in town. And that man, a man named Max Gibson, will become like a father figure to Larry, you know, a mentor to him. And and then lastly, you know, remember in the nineteen seventies or up until just a few years ago, if you left a school and transferred to another school, you were a transfer player, you had to pay a price for that. You would just sit out an entire year. Well, that's gonna be really hard for Larry Bird. Right? I mean, he wants to play. That's the only place where he feels totally safe all the time, is on the floor. And now he can't do that either. And so, you know, Bill Hodges helps get Larry Bird a key to the boys club in Terre Haute where he can come and go as he pleases, you know, shooting anytime, day or night on the basketball court there at the boys club. And one of the, you know, most powerful scenes I think in in my book is Bill Hodges is the lead recruiter for Indiana State in those days. He's an assistant and he would often be out at rural gyms in Illinois or Indiana recruiting high school kids that first year that Larry's there. And he drives back into Terre Haute late at night. And Bill would have to drive right downtown to get to his house. And the boys club was right there. And it was like a warehouse kind of building with those triangle windows up in the top of of the apex of the roof. And it'd be like midnight, one in the morning, lights are on. Bill Hodges go in and there's Larry Bird, all alone shooting and shooting. And he was there, you know, because, you know, Bill Hodges had helped make it possible. So of the two central figures in Larry Bird's life when he was a late teenager, to convince him, to push him, to get out of French Lick? Because I think like a lot of those communities, that's, that's the term, get out of here, get out of here. There's no future here. Who was the bigger driving force to make it possible? Bill Hodges or Larry's mom, Georgia? Great question. You know, his mother is is obviously one of the most important figures in his life, you know, full stop. She was a hard worker. You know, taught Larry, I think just by watching her, you know, the value of hard work. You know, she wants Larry to go to college. She is thrilled when Bill Hodges shows up in town. You know, a man who can finally connect with her wayward son. You know, I I don't know about you, but I'm I'm a parent, you know, and I got I got two teenage boys right now. And sometimes, you know, parents, you know, we can tell our kids, you know, one thing again and again and again, and they don't listen to us. Sometimes they need to hear that same thing from somebody else. And Georgia was one of the most disappointed people when Larry drops out of Bloomington. She drops out of IU, leaves Bobby Knight. You know, she thought that her son had blown it, you know, squandered his one chance in life. And she and Larry knows she's gonna be upset to the point that he doesn't even tell her that he has come home. He he doesn't want her to know. He knows she's gonna be livid. And so, you know, I think Georgia Bird is incredibly important to Larry. You know, certainly more important as a foundational character and mentor to Larry than Bill Hodges. While of course it is Bill Hodges who does convince him to come back to school and opens the door to everything else. And, you know, I think just as important as these other characters was his high school coach, a man named Jim Jones, a man I interviewed, who's in his in his mid eighties today. You know, Jim Jones, you know, sees something in Larry Bird before Larry can even see it in himself. You know, when Larry's a sophomore, a freshman, a junior in high school. You know, it's it's Jim Jones at times who's going into Larry's house to wake him up and to make sure he got to school. And I think, again, I think there are a lot of powerful elements to this narrative. But one powerful element for me is, you know, just as Pete Rose didn't do it alone, doesn't get there alone. You know, it isn't just about hustle. You know, Larry doesn't do it alone either. I think we all in life, you know, need those people who lift us up and push us forward or see something in ourselves when we don't see it, you know, on our own. And and all of those folks, you know, you know, help help help Larry in that way. Keith, I got two questions for you and I'll let you go. Of all your you've covered a subject now that from about 1980 on is readily available with YouTube highlight videos, whether they're game highlights or interview clips or his interaction with his famous interaction with Isaiah Thomas, when Isaiah Thomas, you know, called him out and used a racial element to to and and all these things are just available about Larry Bird, the the dream team stuff and the bad back and the this and the that. But you swim in an area that is so great because it's the origin of it. It's it's the beginning of it. And of all those details that you came across of all the anecdotes, what was the one you're like, I said, that's awesome. Oh my gosh there's so many it's hard to pin down but when you asked me the question my knee jerk reaction was to go to back to his childhood in West Baden and French Lick. You know, West Baden and French Lick, again, folks can look at it on a map. These are two little towns that are, you know, contiguous to each other, adjacent to each other on State Road 56 in Orange County, Indiana. Larry and the Byrd family, they'll live in both of those towns back and forth over the course of the of Larry's life. Sometimes they're in West Baden, sometimes they're in French Lichen. You know, when they were living in West Baden, they were up on this little hill, this tiny little house. It's gone now. It's torn down. And down the hill from that house was a water plant. A water plant right there on the edge of the Lost River and a little Lick Creek. And at the water plant lived a family, the Emmons family. And I interviewed Butch Emmons, still alive today. Butch is about the age of Larry's older brothers, Mike and Mark Bird, who were just a little bit older than Larry. And the Emmons family put in at the water plant this little ramshackle basketball hoop. And growing up in those days, the Bird boys would tumble down that hill and go to the hoop there at the Emmons house and play ball there, you know, on the grass, on the gravel, you know, shoveling the snow away at times to to play basketball. And that water plant is still there today. It's not an operation, but it's still there. And I just I just loved that. From the moment I heard that story, I wanted to do a ton of reporting around it because the idea that one of our greatest players and and most unlikely players of the last fifty years, would be growing up in his earliest days playing basketball in this little ramshackle hoop at the little yellow brick water plant there in West Baden Springs, Indiana, was just incredibly evocative to me. So I'm sure you probably saw the HBO, short lived series Showtime based on the bestselling book written by Jeff Pearlman about the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers with Pat Riley and Magic Johnson and included Larry Bird, as a character. The book was great. The TV series was fun, but as I watched it, one of the hardest things to get right from a Hollywood standpoint when they try to do sports is to get the athlete. It's just, it's hard to find an actor who's six'nine, who can convince you to do it. The guy who played Larry Bird, he looked a lot like Larry Bird. And as I watched it and as I read this book, I thought, damn it, this is a really good movie. But the challenge for me is how can you find anybody, anybody to convince you that that's Larry Bird you're watching on screen. The, as great as this story is, and as good as this, all this different stuff that you have found in this book is fantastic, and it is a movie, do you think they could do it justice? Do you think Hollywood could do Larry Bird's life justice, as a, as a major motion picture? Well, I mean, obviously I'm biased. Certainly I think so. Calling up will sell the screen rights. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, the actor who played Bird in Winning Time was just incredible. I believe then he went on, I think, to play Bird in some kind of play or Broadway role on stage, I believe. I didn't know that. Certainly there has been an actor who's played Larry Bird on stage. I know that as well. I think it's an incredibly cinematic story. I think some of the most cinematic moments don't even happen on the basketball court. They don't happen in the game. They happen off the court in rural Indiana in the 1970s. And I spent a ton of time back in Indiana researching this book. Weeks in Terre Haute, Weeks in French Lick, little towns all across the state. You know, you know, across the farmland, you know, from interview to interview. And, you know, I I think, I'm right to say, I think you and I are roughly the same age. You know, we grew up on Hoosiers. We grew up on the Norman Dale, you know, Jimmy Chitwood Hoosiers story. And maybe it's because we grew up on that, but there is something, just powerful about basketball in Indiana. It is it is a sport that transcends the game there. Even now today, even in an age of name, image and likeness, even now in an age where high school stars have attorneys and accountants and agents and marketing executives, it still resonates. And without spoiling things for folks, I think this story would have been written as I wrote it long ago if Bird and Indiana state manages to beat Magic and Michigan State in the end. You know, this would have been considered one of the great underdog stories of all time. We would have put it up there with Miracle on Ice and every other great, underdog story. Because of the outcome of that game in March 1979, reporters all these years, writers have been doing the bird magic thing because they couldn't figure out how to land the plane, how to tell the story, you know, without magic. But again, without spoiling things for folks, you know, I learned things early on in my reporting about what happens after that bird magic game. That just blew me away. And I couldn't believe it honestly. And I do believe even the ending, you know, of this narrative in Heartland is incredibly cinematic. Keith, you did a phenomenal job with Pete Rose's book. And I think I told you this, our friend Hal McCoy is a long, long, long time sports writer, still lives in Ohio, has covered the Cincinnati Reds forever. He said that's the best one that he's ever read on Pete Rose. I don't know if I shared that with you or not, or if you may have heard it. And certainly you did a subject here. You did it justice. It's terrific. And, I'm really excited about reading your next book, whatever it is. And I'm gonna put you on the spot. What is your next book? Well, I'm not ready to announce anything But just I think I might take a break from a difficult Midwest who struggle to talk to writers. I think I might take a break from that for a moment. Well, congratulations on the book. Thank you very much for your time. My best to you and your family, and certainly your navigation of parenting two teenage sons. That might be a better book, although they'll probably be as just as cooperative as Larry Bird was for this. Yeah, no, they wouldn't want that. I'm going sit that one out too. Keith, thanks a lot for your time. That's all I need. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I appreciate it. See you, Keith. Take care. Goes to Bird. Bird up fakes. Bird takes the shot. It's gone. It's gone. Oh my goodness. I can't believe it. This is a Stolen Water Media production.