There have been many athletes who play multiple sports, but playing two high-level sports in the span of a few hours is more rare. The latest interesting example of that comes from John Rhys Plumlee of the UCF Knights. Plumlee is both the starting right fielder for the Knights’ baseball team and the starting quarterback for their football team, and he filled both of those roles Saturday.
In baseball, Plumlee had a solid game for UCF Friday against the visiting Memphis Tigers, going 2-for-3 with a single and a triple (and also adding a hit-by-pitch). He was pulled in the seventh inning for a pinch-hitter, and then rushed over to the Knights’ football stadium for their spring game. There, he came in for the offense partway through after a quick change into his football gear, and completed 10 of 17 passes (58 percent) for 236 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
John Rhys Plumlee’s day today was INSANE.
He played in UCF’s 5pm home baseball game vs Memphis. Goes 2-3 with a triple and 2 RBIs. UCF wins 12-3.
He then leaves the game in 7th inning, sprints out of the stadium & is escorted in golf cart to the football stadium to play in the… pic.twitter.com/jWcuRNijj5
— Adam Breneman (@AdamBreneman81) April 15, 2023
Here’s Plumlee’s own tweet on that from Saturday:
So about last night…#G10rytoGod pic.twitter.com/dIa2QeVnQV
— John Rhys Plumlee (@JohnRhysPlumlee) April 15, 2023
Plumlee (seen at top during last December’s Military Bowl) had some good quotes on that afterwards to Matt Murschel of The Orlando Sentinel:
“I like to be pretty present where my feet are and that’s something that I’ve always tried to do,” Plumlee said. “But when they started playing loud music [at FBC Mortgage Stadium] and everybody started getting pumped up and I’m in centerfield and I started looking back and they’re about to start getting kicked off over there.”
…“I knew we had a pretty good handle on the game, so I asked coach [Greg] Lovelady, ‘What do you think after I bat that I head over since it seemed like the game was pretty in hand?’ He said that’s a pretty good idea and so ultimately, I got a hit which was cool,” Plumlee recalled.
…“Seven minutes [to get dressed]. That’s got to be a world record,” Plumlee joked after the game.
…“One of the coolest days of my life and I’m probably going to die with it being one of the coolest days of my life,” he said. “This is a movie for me and a dream for me. Second-grade John Rhys cheered about this day for a long time and I’m blessed to be able to live it out.”
There have been some cases of playing high-level football and baseball in a short span before, including Deion Sanders playing in a NFL game in between MLB postseason games as chronicled in Deion’s Double Play (but he wound up not getting into the baseball game). Bo Jackson’s another player who found success in both the NFL and MLB, and there are quite a few people who have overlapped baseball and football in the college ranks, including Russell Wilson and Steve Gleason. Baseball America even puts out a regular list of the top 20 baseball players in college football, with Plumlee coming in at No. 5 last fall.
So the two-sport crossover isn’t unprecedented, and it isn’t unprecedented for Plumlee. He played both baseball and football at Ole Miss from 2019-2021 before transferring to UCF. But it’s still cool to see how Plumlee was able to play in an actual college baseball game and then a spring football game in quick succession Saturday.
[The Orlando Sentinel; photo from Tommy Gilligan/USA Today Sports]
