Minor League Baseball

Louisville Bats to Honor Local Legend with Bobblehead Giveaway in 2025

Louisville basketball coach Denny Crum won two NCAA titles with the Cardinals and is a local legend. Crum is being honored by the Louisville Bats Triple-A team this summer with a bobblehead giveaway.

Jami Leabow

Former Louisville basketball coach Denny Crum looks on during the Louisville Live Hoops event at Churchill Downs in September 2021.
Former Louisville basketball coach Denny Crum looks on during the Louisville Live Hoops event at Churchill Downs in September 2021. / Alton Strupp/Courier Journal via Imagn Content Services, LLC
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The Louisville Bats will immortalize city legend Denny Crum in bobblehead form this season.

The team announced a Crum bobblehead will be given away in 2025 but didn't release the date. Whenever it comes, the game is sure to attract a legion of Crum fans hoping to score a souvenir.

The photo of the bobblehead released by the Bats shows Crum wearing a cardinal red blazer, which he was known to don while roaming the baseline at the University of Louisville, where he coached the men's basketball team for 30 seasons (1971-2001).

Crum died in 2023 at age 86.

A Los Angeles-area native, Crum played at UCLA under another icon of the sport, John Wooden, and later joined his coaching staff. In each of those seasons, the Bruins won the NCAA Tournament.

And Crum took that championship pedigree east to Louisville as he led the Cardinals to their first two NCAA Tournament championships. In 1980, his team finished 33-3 and beat the Larry Brown-coached UCLA Bruins 59-54 for the title. Six years later, the Cardinals repeated as champs, topping No. 1 seed Duke 72-69.

Crum had an overall record of 675-295, and his teams appeared in two national championship games, six Final Fours and 23 NCAA Tournaments.

After his retirement, Crum was succeeded by Rick Pitino, who led the Cardinals to their third national championship in 2013. Still, Crum never strayed far from Louisville,

Crum was inducted into Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994. The Hall, in Springfield, Mass., later made Crum one of six coaches to have a commemorative bench outside the building in honor of his exemplary traits.

The Bats are the Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds.

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Jami Leabow
JAMI LEABOW

Jami Leabow is the managing editor of Minor League Baseball on SI. Her love for the game began when her parents bought season tickets to the then-California Angels.

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