It was Patrick Kivlehan’s Wally Pipp moment.
The Rutgers football player wanted to join the baseball team after exhausting his helmet-and-pads eligibility. Baseball coaches told him that there might be a shot — a small shot — to use his speed as a pinch runner.
“Then the guy who started third base the last three years tore his ACL in January,” Rutgers baseball coach Joe Litterio said.
So Kivlehan, like Lou Gehrig vice-gripping the position vacated by Pipp, made the most of a base untended.
In one season, Kivlehan became the Big East’s player of the year despite last swinging a bat as a high school senior.