Booted: How a Basketball Championship Cost NC State Baseball Pitcher Dan Plesac a Win

Lefty Dan Plesac visited by coach Sam Esposito.

© Tim Peeler, 2025

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Has there ever been a greater betrayal of NC State’s longstanding baseball-basketball partnership than the afternoon of April 13, 1983?

For years, NC State baseball legend Sam Esposito served double-duty as head coach on the diamond and assistant coach for Norm Sloan’s championship basketball program. He once was intentionally ejected exactly one pitch into a baseball game so he could make it to an important basketball game two hours away.

His baseball program, which won ACC titles in 1968 and 1973-75, frequently utilized basketball players like Eddie Biedenbach, Mike Dempsey, Tim Stoddard, Monte Towe and Terry Gannon, just to mention a few.

That particular afternoon, however, his Wolfpack team, with four future major league players on its roster, was playing a doubleheader against UNC Charlotte, attempting to pad its record in an eight-game homestand during the school’s annual spring break.

Future three-time major league All-Star Dan Plesac, one of the most underrated professional athletes in school history, was on the mound, cruising with a 7-2 lead in the seventh inning. The lefthanded Plesac, who was also recruited to NC State to play basketball by assistant Monte Towe to play for Sloan’s program, needed a win because he had struggled in the early season with blister issues, and this one seemed in the bag.

That’s when basketball betrayed Esposito’s Pack.

Most students, who were returning from spring break that Sunday afternoon, were keeping their eyes on the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament in Atlanta, where Jim Valvano’s Wolfpack had advanced to the championship game against Virginia. The senior-heavy team had escaped with a one-point first-round win over Wake Forest, thanks to sophomore forward Lorenzo Charles, and an overtime upset of defending ACC and NCAA champion North Carolina.

Students in the stands were listening to Wally Ausley and Garry Dornburg on the radio and many others who lived in Lee and Sullivan dormitories on the other side of the fence from Doak Field were running in and out of their rooms, watching the ESPN telecast with one eye and the baseball game with the other.

With one out in the top of the seventh, Plesac needed two outs to secure the win. Charlotte added a baserunner, perfectly setting up a game-ending double-play. An easy grounder to freshman shortstop Doug Strange should have secured the win, but just as he was making the throw to first base, Valvano’s team finished off its 81-78 victory over Ralph Sampson and the Cavaliers, causing a great roar from the crowd listening on their transistor radios and on televisions in the residence halls.

And Strange threw the ball off the wall of the old press box down the first-base line.

The 49ers scored five unearned runs to tie the game and send Plesac to the showers, thanks in part to a two-run homer after Strange’s error. In the top of the ninth, Barry Shifflett sealed the 10-7 victory with another two-run homer.

“Strange’s fatal error occurred at exactly the same time Wolfpack basketball team wrapped up the ACC Tournament championship and the roar from the campus seemed to unsettle the freshman shortstop,” reported my friend Bruce Winkworth in Technician, NC State’s student newspaper. “Esposito wasn’t sure if Strange’s error was caused by the sudden noise, but he did say that the basketball tournament was on his players’ minds.

“We’ve played the last two days while the basketball team was playing, and it’s been a distraction,” Esposito said at the end of the weekend. “We’ve been pulling hard for them to win and maybe that was a factor.”

Strange, who played nine years in the majors for six different franchises, took full blame for the loss when I talked to him 25 years later for When March Went Mad. He was even able to laugh about it.

“I heard this big roar and I threw the ball over the second baseman’s head and up against the old pressbox on the first base line,” Strange said back then. “Plesac gave me a couple of dirty looks about that play, but I think once everyone realized the basketball team won, I don’t think they gave a damn that I threw the ball away.

“Looking back on it now, I think it’s funny as hell.”

Plesac found it within his heart to put the error aside almost immediately.

“Hell yes, I forgave him,” Plesac said earlier this week. “Doug always played his heart out. I forgot about it two minutes after it happened.”

Strange, a native of Greenville, South Carolina, made the most of the remainder of his college career. He was taken in the seventh round of major league draft of amateur players by the Detroit Tigers in 1985 and made his big league debut in 1989. He also played for the Chicago Cubs, the Texas Rangers, the Seattle Mariners, the Montreal Expos and Pittsburg Pirates.

In nearly 2,000 at-bats, he belted 31 home runs and drove in 211. He now serves as an assistant general manager for the Pirates.

In the end, Plesac didn’t need the win against the 49ers. Despite a modest 4-2 overall record and a 5.62 earned run average his junior year, he was taken with the 26^th pick of the draft later that year by the Milwaukee Brewers, becoming the initial NC State player to be taken in the first round. After a couple years in the minors as a starter, Plesac became an extraordinary relief pitcher, taking over for Hall of Fame closer Rollie Fingers in 1986 with the Brewers and appearing in three consecutive All-Star Games.

In an 18-year career—the longest by a former Wolfpack player—Plesac pitched in more than 1,000 games, one of fewer than 10 relievers in major league history to hit four-digits with 1,069 innings pitched. Plesac is now a star analyst on the Major League Baseball Network’s MLB Tonight recap show.

Still, it’s hard to forget the college win that got away—thanks to basketball.