Even the most knowledgeable sports fan may have trouble making the connection between soon-to-be National Baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin and Gerry Faust.
If you know a lot about Cincinnati high school football, this should be a breeze.
If not, read on.
Faust is the only head football coach to go from the high school ranks straight to the University of Notre Dame. He became the Fighting Irish's 24th head football coach after leaving Cincinnati's Moeller High on Nov. 24, 1980.
At the time, Larkin was a student at Moeller High, where he excelled in football and baseball. When he graduated two years later, Larkin had to pick one.
The choice may have seemed obvious as the Cincinnati Reds selected Larkin in the second round of the 1982 baseball draft. But Faust's Fighting Irish and Bo Schembechler's University of Michigan Wolverines offered football scholarships to Larkin.
"As a high school senior, I wasn't thinking I was a baseball player," Larkin said during a conference call Tuesday. "I mean, I was a football player. So I wanted to go to Michigan, I wanted to play football, and I wanted to be a Wolverine.
"So I remember getting drafted _ I got drafted in the second round _ and I think the toughest decision for me was turning down the money because we didn't have much money growing up," he continued. "I remember feeling torn simply because I felt like this was an opportunity for me to give my parents money.
"I didn't really want to go (play baseball). I wasn't prepared to go. I knew that I wanted to go to college. (The Reds) were throwing money at me that, you know, we had not seen. And so therefore, I felt like that was really the tough part for me.
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"I remember asking my mom and dad, 'Well, do you guys need this money? Do you want this money? Should I do this and give you this money?' They were like, 'No.' "
Larkin ultimately picked football at Michigan, which actually paved the way for his Hall of Fame baseball career.
"Bo Schembechler recruited me to play football and I really was intent on playing football up there my freshman year," Larkin said, "but he redshirted me."
Larkin then became all baseball all the time.
"It's the first time in my life that I'd just had a chance just to participate in baseball, and I got a lot better," said Larkin, who reached the College World Series with the Wolverines in 1983 and 1984, then played shortstop for the U.S. Olympic team in the 1984 Summer Games.
The Reds came calling again in the 1985 draft, this time making Larkin the fourth pick overall. He advanced quickly, playing Double-A ball for the Eastern League champion Vermont Reds in 1985, becoming the MVP of the American Association in 1986 with the Denver Zephyrs, and making his major league debut against the San Francisco Giants on Aug. 13, 1986 at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium.
And thanks to a couple of football fumbles, the rest is National Baseball Hall of Fame history.
