Since I’m only a casual basketball fan, I didn’t know a whole lot about Larry Bird. Sure, I was aware that he was a multi-time All-Star and NBA Hall of Famer, but the only “insight” I had about him was from the HBO miniseries “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” in which he came across as kind of a jerk. HEARTLAND goes a long way in explaining why that might have been.

Keith O’Brien has gone down this midwestern path before with his New York Times bestseller, CHARLIE HUSTLE: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, which was a finalist for Spitball magazine’s coveted CASEY Award for best baseball book of 2024. But unlike the garrulous Rose, Bird did not enjoy talking to the media. Plus, he faced the disadvantage of having the always smiling, always chatty Magic Johnson as a college contemporary.

"The most compelling part of HEARTLAND comes in the last third of the book as O’Brien recounts Indiana State’s run at glory. Not every win was a runaway, and he does a marvelous job of sharing the nail-biting tension the hoopsters faced."

The cover of HEARTLAND depicts Bird launching a shot in front of a background of wide-open spaces. This would seem to represent the relative emptiness that defined his upbringing in a stressful family life underscored by an alcoholic and presumably depressed father who ended up dying by suicide.

When I was a kid, the sports biographies I read were full of star athletes overcoming adversity without actually going into detail. I never would have known about the personal hardships these young men and women faced. If a bio of Bird had been written in those times, I doubt we would have known about Bird’s father taking his own life. It was something he never wanted to talk about. The book’s major drawback is that O’Brien falls a bit short in discussing the long-range impact that might have had on Bird.

Unlike Rose --- who was a fan favorite because of his hardworking efforts despite a comparative lack of talent --- Bird was an athletic prodigy, running rings around his contemporaries in Indiana and earning the interest of scouts from colleges across the country. He wound up at Indiana State, where he led the Sycamores to a thrilling season in 1979, winning 33 games before losing to a pre-Lakers Magic Johnson and the Michigan State Spartans in the NCAA finals for their only defeat of the year. The Sycamores’ astounding run helped make college basketball a big business, especially when it came to broadcasting games on network TV.

But not everything was beer and skittles. Bird’s fame led to a famous cover shoot for Sports Illustrated, which he considered a burden. Google “Sports Illustrated curse,” and see how that ultimately came to affect him. Despite an inquisitive sports media who were just doing their job in trying to find out more about the young man, Bird was more than reluctant to discuss his personal life. His ongoing feud with members of the press --- they labeled him a “hayseed” and “the hick from French Lick” and made fun of what they considered his questionable intelligence, lack of eloquence, and homespun, often vulgar, language --- seems to stem from what he perceived as their mistreatment because of his aversion to let them in (whereas he, like many celebrities, accused them of misquoting and misrepresenting him).

The most compelling part of HEARTLAND comes in the last third of the book as O’Brien recounts Indiana State’s run at glory. Not every win was a runaway, and he does a marvelous job of sharing the nail-biting tension the hoopsters faced. He also gives major attention to the string of teammates, coaches, athletic directors and other background figures who contributed to the cause.

In the end, though, Larry Bird comes across as a team player. He always gave credit to his fellow Sycamores and downplayed his own prowess, even long after his time as an athlete, coach and executive was over.