Blue Jays player profile: Shortstop Danny Ainge
Though best known for his career in basketball, most notably with the Boston Celtics both as a player and executive, Danny Ainge was a remarkable athlete, excelling in high school in not just hoops, but football and even baseball with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Ainge's pro baseball journey began when the expansion Blue Jays took him with the 389th pick in the 15th round of the 1977 MLB amateur draft out of North Eugene High School in Eugene, Ore.
This was a risky proposition by club president Peter Bervasi and general manager Pat Gillick as they drafted Ainge right before he began what would be a prolific college career at Brigham Young University.
However seeing as Toronto was devoid of top-tier talent as one of the newest organizations in the league at the time, the Blue Jays had no choice but to roll the dice.
Gillick believed taking a flyer on an athlete of Ainge's caliber would ultimately be worth it for the Blue Jays.
And as Ainge began his pro baseball career, the diamond in the rough that Gillick and his scouting department saw before drafting him started to become more apparent.
Ainge was such a talent he immediately began his pro career at triple-A in 1978 and got called up to the Show the year after where he made his major-league debut with a strong performance, going 3-for-4 with three runs scored and an RBI.
Ainge was the John R. Wooden Award winner, given to the top player in college basketball, and just months prior he had led BYU to a 51-50 win over Notre Dame in the Sweet Sixteen with his iconic coast-to-coast layup at the buzzer.
He split time between the diamond in the summer and BYU in the offseason, earning a big league paycheck as a college kid, and appeared in 211 games for Toronto from '79-81.
On June 9, 1981, while on the road with the Jays, Ainge slipped into the lobby of a Chicago hotel and found a spot to hide out in one of its ballrooms where he could listen to the NBA Draft.
That day,Ainge was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the second round. That night, he started at shortstop for the Toronto Blue Jays.
After seeing the kind of collegiate season he had and the national headlines he drew with the late-game heroics, Ainge could no longer be ignored by the NBA and was taken with the 31st-overall pick in the second round of the 1981 NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics.
A move that Boston, technically, wasn't allowed to make.
In a recent interview with Keegan Matheson of MLB.com, Ainge explained what it was like being in a court battle between two teams from two different sports.
As dramatic as a federal trial sounds, things between the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Celtics appeared to reach an amicable end with both teams coming to terms on an agreement with each other with details of this agreement being sealed.
In late November 1981,Ainge signed with the Boston Celtics.
Still,Ainge is one of the most unique players to wear a Toronto Blue Jays uniform. One of the biggest names, too, even if he made his name somewhere else.
SOURCE: MLB.com Sportsnet
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| POLL | ||
JANVIER 14 | 118 ANSWERS Blue Jays player profile: Shortstop Danny Ainge Did Danny Ainge make the right choice by choosing pro basketball with the Boston Celtics over Pro baseball with the Toronto Blue Jays? | ||
| Yes | 104 | 88.1 % |
| No | 14 | 11.9 % |
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