Baby Boomers will remember Chuck Connors as a popular actor on the big and small screens. However, before he turned to the stage and screen, he was a historically significant athlete, having played Major League Baseball and in the National Basketball Association.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Connors was a multisport star at Adelphi Academy, where he played football, basketball, and baseball. After graduating in 1939, Connors attended Seton Hall University, where he played baseball and basketball. He left school after his sophomore year to play professional baseball, and then enlisted in the United States Army, serving for three years during World War II.
Conners as an actor, and with the Celtics & Dodgers (source Odd Sports Stories)
After serving in the Army and returning to the diamond at the minor league level, and then switched back to basketball, joining the Boston Celtics during their inaugural season in 1946. There, Conners only averaged five points a game over 49 games, but he made history by becoming the first NBA player to shatter a glass backboard, doing it (amazingly) not via a slam dunk but by way of a jump shot.
Connors left the Celtics during the 1947-1948 season and shifted back to baseball. He played with the Dodgers’ AAA farm club, the Montreal Royals, for two seasons before being called up to the Majors at the end of the 1949 season. In 1951, Connors joined the Chicago Cubs as a first baseman and, a year later, he played with the Los Angeles Angels, the Cubs’ top farm team at the time.
Chuck Connors is one of only 13 athletes to play in both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball.
He shifted his profession in the early 1950s from athletics to acting, and for the next four decades, he had starring roles in film and on television. He is probably best remembered for playing Lucas McCain, the gun-toting marshal in the long-running TV series, The Rifleman (1958-1963). In a sidenote, two future Hall of Fame baseball players (both Dodgers), Duke Snider and Don Drysdale, appeared in roles during the show’s run.
Connors also starred in other Westerns, including Gunsmoke, Tales of Wells Fargo, Wagon Train, and The Virginian. Connors also portrayed an enslaver in the made-for-TV historical mini-series, Roots (1977), for which he earned an Emmy nomination. In 1984, Connors achieved Hollywood’s most prominent legacy award–a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Chuck Connors died in 1992 at the age of 71, and his gravestone includes logos of the teams on which he played, the Dodgers, Cubs, and Celtics.
