Donald Eugene Conley (November 10, 1930 – July 4, 2017) was an American professional baseball and basketball player. He pitched for four teams in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1952 to 1963. Conley also played as a forward in the 1952–53 season and from 1958 to 1964 for two teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is the second person, after Otto Graham, to win championships in two of the four major American sports: one with the Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series and three with the Boston Celtics from 1959 to 1961.
Early life
Conley was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. While still young, his family moved to Richland, Washington. He attended Richland High School, where he played multiple sports. He reached the all-state team in baseball and basketball and was the state champion in the high jump.
Conley attended Washington State University, where (as he told The Boston Globe in 2004) students "kidnapped" him during a recruiting visit in an effort to convince him to matriculate. In 1950 he played on the Cougar team that reached the College World Series. In basketball, Conley was twice selected honorable mention to the All-America team, leading the team in scoring with 20 points per game. But the offers were getting bigger, and in August 1950 he signed a professional contract with the Boston Braves for a $3,000 bonus. After a month, Conley had a record of five wins and only one loss and was praised by observers in the league, saying that he had the best fastball since former pitcher Van Lingle Mungo played in the league in 1933. On June 10, he threw a one-hitter against Schenectady Blue Jays, giving up the lone hit in the seventh inning. Holmes was promoted to manager of the Braves on June 25, and was replaced by future Baseball Hall of Famer Travis Jackson.
By August 1, Conley had a record of 16 wins with only three losses, leading the league. He was unanimously selected to the Eastern League All-Star team on August 29. He received the Eastern League MVP award that season after he became the first player in Hartford history to win twenty games in a single season.
In the beginning of the 1952 season, Conley, along with fellow rookies George Crowe and Eddie Mathews, was invited to spring training with a chance of making the roster. Around that time, the United States Army was drafting for the Korean War. Many major and minor league players were selected to fight in the war, depleting team rosters. Conley was deferred because of his height (6'8'), which was above the Army maximum height for a soldier.
Major league career
Conley's debut with the Boston Braves was April 17, 1952, versus the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Braves' third game of the regular season. Conley started and faced a lineup that included four future members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider. In four innings, Conley gave up four runs on 11 hits and two walks, taking the loss as the Dodgers prevailed 8–2. Conley lost his next three starts through early May, ending the season with an 0–4 record and a 7.82 ERA.
Conley returned to the majors in 1954 with the Milwaukee Braves, going 14–9 in 28 games with a 2.82 ERA, making the National League All-Star team and finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting
The following season in 1955, Conley was named to the All-Star game again, completing the season with an 11–7 record with a 4.16 ERA. Conley pitched for the Braves through 1959, compiling a record of 42–43 including an 0–6 record in his final season in Milwaukee.
In the spring of 1959 with the Celtics in a playoff push, Conley delayed reporting to spring training with the Milwaukee Braves, prompting the team to trade Conley on March 31 to the Phillies.
In 11 seasons pitching for the Braves, Phillies and Red Sox, Conley posted a 91–96 record with 888 strikeouts and a 3.82 ERA in 1588.2 innings.
Conley was an above average hitter for a pitcher, posting a .192 batting average (105-for-548) with 33 runs, 19 doubles, 5 home runs and 45 RBI in 276 games. Defensively, he was below average, recording a .944 fielding percentage, which was 14 points lower than the league average at his position.
On April 26, 1952, the Boston Celtics selected Conley with the 90th pick of the NBA draft. Playing 39 games as a rookie in the 1952–53 NBA season, Conley averaged about 12 minutes a game for a Celtics team that went 45–26 in the regular season under Red Auerbach. Conley did not play in the Celtics' two playoff series that season, with the team losing 3–1 in the Eastern Division finals to the New York Knicks.
After a five-year hiatus to focus on baseball with the Milwaukee Braves, Conley returned to the Celtics for the 1958–59 season, again seeing limited usage at about 13 minutes a game for a team that swept the Minneapolis Lakers 4–0 in the NBA finals. Conley averaged 4.2 points and 5.4 rebounds during the regular season and 4.9 points and 6.8 boards in the playoffs. Conley would have his best year as a Celtic the following season, averaging nearly 19 minutes a game during the regular season to score 6.7 points while hauling in 8.3 rebounds on average over 71 games in the regular season. The Celtics repeated as NBA champions with a 4–3 finals win over the St. Louis Hawks, with Conley roughly duplicating his regular-season averages during the playoffs.
When Abe Saperstein's American Basketball League (1961–62) was born in 1961, Tuck Tape Company owner Paul Cohen purchased a franchise, gave it the Tapers name, and placed it in Washington, D.C.; the team played its games in the Washington Coliseum. Conley signed with the team. While with the Tapers, Conley often accompanied Cohen on sales calls for his company and gained industry experience.
Conley played in the Eastern Professional Basketball League (EPBL) for the Hartford Capitols and New Haven Elms from 1966 to 1969. He was selected to the All-EPBL Second Team in 1968.
Conley is one of 13 athletes to have played in both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. The thirteen are: Danny Ainge, Frank Baumholtz, Hank Biasatti, Conley, Chuck Connors, Dave DeBusschere, Dick Groat, Steve Hamilton, Mark Hendrickson, Cotton Nash, Ron Reed, Dick Ricketts and Howie Schultz.
Retirement
After his retirement from professional sports, Conley started working for a duct tape company in Boston, Massachusetts. After a year working there, the owner of the duct tape company died. Conley later founded his own paper company, Foxboro Paper Company, which he owned for 36 years until he retired from the business.
The Washington Sports Hall of Fame included Conley in its 1979 class of inductees.
Until December 2009, Conley lived in Clermont, Florida, where he played golf and watched the Orlando Magic play in his free time. He moved to his vacation home in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, in 2010.
In the spring of 1951, Conley married Kathryn Dizney whom he met the previous fall. They had three children and seven grandchildren. In 2004, his wife released a biography of Conley called One of a Kind that chronicled his life in both baseball and basketball and related how his family dealt with his being gone for most of the year.
In the days following July 27, 1962, Conley made headlines after exiting a Red Sox team bus that was stuck in New York City traffic with teammate Pumpsie Green to find a restroom, with the bus driver subsequently driving away without the players on board. As Conley recollected the episode in a 2004 interview with the Boston Globe: "So we got off and went in this bar, and when we came back out, Pumpsie said, 'Hey, that bus is gone,' and I said, 'We are, too!'"
Career statistics
NBA
Source
Regular season
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:95%; text-align:right;"
|-
!Year
!Team
!GP
!MPG
!FG%
!FT%
!RPG
!APG
!PPG
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|1952–53
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|39 || 11.8 || .324 || .581 || 4.4 || .5 || 2.3
|-
|style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1958–59†
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|50 || 13.3 || .328 || .578 || 5.5 || .4 || 4.2
|-
|style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1959–60†
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|71 || 18.7 || .373 || .667 || 8.3 || .5 || 6.7
|-
|style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1960–61†
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|75 || 16.6 || .370 || .693 || 7.3 || .5 || 6.3
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|1962–63
|style="text-align:left;"|New York
|70 || 22.1 || .390 || .656 || 6.7 || 1.0 || 9.0
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|1963–64
|style="text-align:left;"|New York
|46 || 12.0 || .392 || .677 || 3.4 || .5 || 4.2
|-class="sortbottom"
|style="text-align:center;" colspan="2" |Career
|351 || 16.5 || .371 || .657 || 6.3 || .6 || 5.9
|}
Playoffs
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:95%; text-align:right;"
|-
!Year
!Team
!GP
!MPG
!FG%
!FT%
!RPG
!APG
!PPG
|-
|style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1959†
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|11 || 14.3 || .364 || .462 || 6.8 || .6 || 4.9
|-
|style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1960†
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|13 || 20.7 || .386 || .727 || 8.9 || .2 || 6.7
|-
|style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1961†
|style="text-align:left;"|Boston
|9 || 6.2 || .364 || .583 || 3.4 || .1 || 3.4
|-class="sortbottom"
|style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
|33 || 14.6 || .374 || .617 || 6.7 || .3 || 5.1
|}
Footnotes
External links
;Baseball:
- Gene Conley at Baseball Almanac
;Basketball:
- , or College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
- Conley had twice as much fun at The Boston Globe