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University of Massachusets Athletics
Larkin To Join UMass Hall of Fame
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July 21, 2003
Ned Larkin created plenty of dazzling displays during his athletic career at the University of Massachusetts. He starred on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond after arriving on campus in 1955 and, for the next four years, put up incredible numbers - Hall of Fame numbers, in fact.
But recalling the memories of his UMass days, Larkin, 65, remembers a different spectacular display with the biggest smile. No, not a drive to the basket. Nor an amazing throw from deep in the hole at short.
The display that really makes him chuckle occurred on one of his baseball team's annual southern trips in 1959, his senior year. Heading for Camp LeJeune, N.C., to play against a team of marines, the team stopped for lunch. Since fireworks were legal there, the players loaded up on just about everything they could find with a fuse. As their bus pulled into the marine base later that night, the boys from UMass lit their loot, tossed it out the window and illuminated the night, much to the chagrin of their head coaches (and the marines even more so). The pyrotechnics created a scene that Larkin could recall vividly some 44 years later.
"We arrived with a bang and the marines weren't too happy about it," he said. Now, Larkin is again arriving with a bang - this time in the UMass Athletics Hall of Fame. This bang, though, is strictly due to his numbers.
In his senior season, he batted over .300 on the baseball field and led his team in scoring on the basketball court at 13 points per game. These achievements garnered him the E. Joseph Thomson Award as the most valuable baseball player and the Samuel S. Crossman Award for being the University's top two-sport athlete (the only other player in the UMass Hall of Fame to be awarded both these awards is Joe DiSarcina).
"Those were important at the time," Larkin said. "But (being inducted into the Hall) is certainly the biggest (achievement). I mean you think about being the best baseball player on the team, that's one out of a roster of maybe 20, and for basketball it was less than that. But now you're talking about a university of thousands of athletes that have gone through here over the years.
"It's just indescribable. The day I got the call I was just elated."
Larkin was originally nominated for the Hall of Fame by his two brothers, Peter and Paul, in 2000, but it took three years for him to be selected. How could someone who excelled at not one, but two sports fail to be voted in initially?
Larkin dealt with several disadvantages that were unique to his era and deflated his statistics compared to today's players.
He played before aluminum bats - in fact, he never even held one. But he believes if he had used one, it would have made a substantial difference.
"I see (college) games today and I see balls just snap off those aluminum bats," he said. "A lot of players hit those groundballs that make it through because they go out much faster. I think (aluminum bats) would probably add 25 or 30 points to your batting average."
The paucity of games - his team played about half as many as today's - could also have been a disadvantage. And not only did Larkin's baseball team play fewer games than today's, but the statistics from the southern trips (including the firework adventure) were not kept. This gave more statistical weight to each individual game, so bad days at the plate had a magnified effect on batting averages.
Taking southern trips in the late 1950s, several years before the civil rights movement, created a culture shock for the UMass ballplayers. Larkin played about 10 years after Jackie Robinson broke the Major League color barrier in 1947. UMass did not have any African-American players at that time and played against few in the North. The team certainly didn't face any in the South.
"The shock was the black restrooms and white restrooms and the signs up in restaurants that said, 'No blacks allowed'," Larkin said. "We hadn't been exposed to that in New England."
In addition to the challenges, Larkin confronted playing baseball in his era, he also faced disadvantages on the basketball court. Freshmen were not allowed by the NCAA to play varsity basketball. As captain of the freshmen team, though, Larkin led the team in scoring at 16 points per game.
There was no three-point line back then. As a guard (he reached six feet in height stretching every inch of his body, he said), Larkin believed the three-pointer could have helped him score more. Many players from his era launched one- or two-handed set shots from well beyond today's college three-point line.
But Larkin preferred to use his quick first step to drive to the basket. Then, he would either pull up for a 15-foot jump shot - a shot not nearly as common then as it is today - or continue into the paint and look to dish the ball off or score. UMass' fast-break style suited him well and he loved it.
"He was a very well-rounded player in the sense that not only was he a good scorer, but he always would pass off to people who were open," said Paul Kollios, who was captain of the basketball team in Larkin's junior year and was a fellow Theta Chi fraternity brother.
Said Larkin, "I got just as much of a kick out of making a good pass as I did scoring myself."
In one of the most memorable games of his career, though, Larkin's offense took center stage. Feb. 20, 1958, playing against heavily favored Holy Cross on its home court in Worcester, Larkin put UMass ahead for good by converting a reverse layup with 30 seconds to play. UMass won the game 64-60, beating Holy Cross for the first time in six straight years of trying.
The victory was especially sweet for Larkin because he had been recruited by Holy Cross before he accepted a basketball scholarship at UMass.
"Candidly, I thought I had always wanted to go to Holy Cross, because they were really the No. 1 team in New England at the time," he said. "But I didn't really feel comfortable up there. They were kind of half interested in me."
Larkin's Hall of Fame nomination letter underlined the rarity of a player excelling at two sports. He admitted, though, that playing two sports might have been one feat that his era actually helped him achieve. The smaller schedule made each season less strenuous and left more time for another sport. Moreover, the head coaches required less of a year-round commitment.
Larkin played both his sports well and played them with passion. His only problem was deciding which one he liked better.
"It was basketball when I played basketball and baseball when I played baseball," he said.
The common denominator in the two sports for Larkin was the way he played: hard.
"One of the things that helped me in both sports was I always had a good feel for the game and knew where to be in situations and had good reactions," he said.
On the basketball court, this instinct manifested itself in gathering loose balls and rebounds. As a sophomore and senior, Larkin averaged over six rebounds per game - a high tally for a guard.
"He had that little knack of getting inside players and I think Coach Bob Curran used to call that the 'rebounding instinct'," Kollios recalled. "He did that on the outside, too, going for loose balls and just getting a little step ahead of most people."
Larkin developed his game sense in his hometown of Belmont, Mass. There, even though he predated Little League, he found plenty of athletic opportunities. With his father and two brothers also active in sports, he could always find someone to play with. He first dreamed of playing professional sports when he was seven years old and saw the Red Sox play the Tigers at Fenway Park for his first Major League baseball game. When he was 14, these dreams grew bigger as he got a vending job at Fenway.
"It was a lot of fun, and I saw a lot of baseball, and I learned a lot of baseball," he said of the experience.
Larkin did eventually play professional baseball when the Cleveland Indians drafted him a few days after he graduated from UMass. He played one year in the now-defunct Nebraska State League before being released and serving a six-month military obligation.
The next year, he had an opportunity to attend spring training with the San Francisco Giants, but his father told him not to kid himself.
"At that point I knew I wasn't going to be a major league shortstop," Larkin said. He tasted professional basketball three years later playing for a team from Hazelton, Pa., in the Eastern Basketball League, which later became the American Basketball Association. That didn't last long either because the league was very violent and fights erupted frequently.
"I already had a wife and daughter and I didn't want to come home with a broken nose," he said.
After dabbling in professional sports, Larkin worked for the Gillette Co., Dow Chemical and the Floor Graphics Advertising Co., the company which he retired from recently. He has one daughter, four stepdaughters and seven grandsons. Living with his wife, Anne, in La Verne, Calif., he has remained in good shape by running every day.
"He's always been very competitive," said Jack Naughton, a friend from his Theta Chi days. "And he just wants to stay in shape so he can do the things that he enjoys doing - golfing and running. So, one feeds on the other."
At a recent alumni game, Larkin showed he could still make some fireworks on the basketball court.
Said Kollios, who also played in the game: "He's still pretty good."