Sports

USC American Style: Tom Selleck played basketball for the Trojans – Trojans Wire

Published

5 months ago

July 6, 2024

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On this Fourth of July weekend, we don’t have Major League Baseball… but we can give you “Mr. Baseball,” Tom Selleck, who attended USC.
Though he starred in a film about a baseball player, and even though his love of the Detroit Tigers is his strongest and closest association with sports in the broader American consciousness, it is a fact that Selleck came to USC in the 1960s on a basketball scholarship.
A man you might have heard of named Dick Vitale spoke to Selleck years ago about his experiences as a basketball player at USC. There is also — believe it or not — a Sports Reference page for Selleck, noting that he played seven games in the 1965-1966 season, the last one for Forrest Twogood, one of USC’s most successful basketball coaches and the successor to program godfather Sam Barry.
Selleck has cut an impressive figure on the television screen for decades. When one realizes that Ronnie Lott — a Pro Football Hall of Famer and a decorated football player for USC — also briefly played basketball for the Trojans in the 1979-1980 season, it is easy to see the comparison between the two. Selleck, at 6-4 and 200 pounds as a USC athlete, was rugged and tough. He could have been a vicious safety, leveling hits on wide receivers and running backs alike. Yet, that path never opened up for him.
Another famous athlete with a connection to Los Angeles who evokes an obvious comparison with Selleck is Kirk Gibson. Like Selleck, Gibson was born in Michigan. They were both rangy, powerful and fast. Gibson had the life Selleck once dreamed of.
The recently deceased Al Kaline — the most beloved Detroit Tiger of all time — was Selleck’s childhood hero. Selleck appeared on The Rich Eisen Show to talk about what Kaline meant to him and his family as a native Michigander:
Kirk Gibson hit what is, quite simply, the most famous home run in the history of the Detroit Tigers.
His three-run bomb off legendary closer Goose Gossage in Game 5 of the 1984 World Series sealed the Tigers’ most recent Major League Baseball championship. Yes, Gibson would hit a more famous home run four years — and four World Series — later against Dennis Eckersley of the Oakland Athletics in Dodger Stadium, but that doesn’t change the reality that his 1984 home run is a mountaintop Tiger moment, the kind of moment Selleck once dreamed about as a kid.
Tom Selleck idolized a baseball player. He could have been a Ronnie Lott-type safety if he pursued football. Yet, the sport he played at USC was basketball.
Life is amazing sometimes.
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