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Chub Feeney
Charles Stoneham "Chub" Feeney (August 31, 1921 – January 10, 1994) was an Irish-American front office executive in Major League Baseball. Feeney was vice president of the New York/San Francisco Giants, president of the National League (NL), and president of the San Diego Padres during a 40-plus year career in professional baseball. He narrowly missed being elected Commissioner of Baseball in 1969.
Feeney was a respected figure among writers and fellow executives. After Feeney was elected president of the National League in 1970, Red Smith described him as "a class guy, a gentleman, a delightful companion."
Feeney was born in Orange, New Jersey to Thaddeus Feeney and Mary Alice (Stoneham) Feeney. Mary Alice was the daughter of Charles Stoneham, principal owner of the New York Giants from 1919 until his death in 1936, and the sister of Horace Stoneham, who owned the Giants from 1936 through 1976 and transferred the team to San Francisco in 1958.
Charles Stoneham felt that every boy should want to be a baseball star, but his grandson was not athletically gifted. Feeney was a batboy for the Jersey City Giants, a farm team of the New York Giants, but that was the limit of his athletic career on the diamond.
Instead, Feeney attended Dartmouth College, where became assistant manager of the school's baseball team as a sophomore, eventually working his way up to manager. The team was coached by Jeff Tesreau, a former Giants player himself, who instilled values of working toward establishing a solid basis for consistent victory as a program. After graduation from Dartmouth in 1943, Feeney served in the United States Navy until the end of World War II, about two and a half years. Upon separation from the Navy, he joined the New York Giants front office at the age of 24 as vice president in 1946 while he attended Fordham Law School. He passed the New York Bar exam in 1949 and by 1950, Feeney was in effect the general manager of the Giants.
On July 16, 1948, Stoneham and Feeney made a dramatic change. They replaced manager Mel Ott, a popular, Hall of Fame hitter and lifelong Giant, with the controversial and abrasive Leo Durocher, who had been managing their bitter crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Asked by Stoneham to evaluate his new team, Durocher reportedly replied: "Back up the truck", meaning wholesale changes were needed.
In 1951, the Giants battled back from a 13+1⁄2 game deficit on August 11, winning 37 of their last 44 games to force a best-of-three pennant playoff with Brooklyn. After splitting the first two games, the Giants overcame one last hurdle — a 4–1, ninth-inning Brooklyn lead in Game 3 — to beat the Dodgers on Bobby Thomson's three-run home run, baseball's version of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World." The Giants had won their first National League pennant since 1937, but they dropped the 1951 World Series in six games to the New York Yankees.
Brooklyn dominated the NL for the next two seasons, but, in 1954, Durocher's Giants — led by the league's two leading hitters, batting champion Willie Mays and runner-up Don Mueller — won the pennant by five games. They drew the Cleveland Indians, who had set an American League record by winning 111 games, as their opponents in the 1954 World Series. But the Giants won in four straight games, highlighted by Mays' game-saving catch of Vic Wertz' long drive in Game 1, the clutch hitting of obscure outfielder and pinch hitter Dusty Rhodes, and effective pitching from four different starters.
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Chub Feeney
Charles Stoneham "Chub" Feeney (August 31, 1921 – January 10, 1994) was an Irish-American front office executive in Major League Baseball. Feeney was vice president of the New York/San Francisco Giants, president of the National League (NL), and president of the San Diego Padres during a 40-plus year career in professional baseball. He narrowly missed being elected Commissioner of Baseball in 1969.
Feeney was a respected figure among writers and fellow executives. After Feeney was elected president of the National League in 1970, Red Smith described him as "a class guy, a gentleman, a delightful companion."
Feeney was born in Orange, New Jersey to Thaddeus Feeney and Mary Alice (Stoneham) Feeney. Mary Alice was the daughter of Charles Stoneham, principal owner of the New York Giants from 1919 until his death in 1936, and the sister of Horace Stoneham, who owned the Giants from 1936 through 1976 and transferred the team to San Francisco in 1958.
Charles Stoneham felt that every boy should want to be a baseball star, but his grandson was not athletically gifted. Feeney was a batboy for the Jersey City Giants, a farm team of the New York Giants, but that was the limit of his athletic career on the diamond.
Instead, Feeney attended Dartmouth College, where became assistant manager of the school's baseball team as a sophomore, eventually working his way up to manager. The team was coached by Jeff Tesreau, a former Giants player himself, who instilled values of working toward establishing a solid basis for consistent victory as a program. After graduation from Dartmouth in 1943, Feeney served in the United States Navy until the end of World War II, about two and a half years. Upon separation from the Navy, he joined the New York Giants front office at the age of 24 as vice president in 1946 while he attended Fordham Law School. He passed the New York Bar exam in 1949 and by 1950, Feeney was in effect the general manager of the Giants.
On July 16, 1948, Stoneham and Feeney made a dramatic change. They replaced manager Mel Ott, a popular, Hall of Fame hitter and lifelong Giant, with the controversial and abrasive Leo Durocher, who had been managing their bitter crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Asked by Stoneham to evaluate his new team, Durocher reportedly replied: "Back up the truck", meaning wholesale changes were needed.
In 1951, the Giants battled back from a 13+1⁄2 game deficit on August 11, winning 37 of their last 44 games to force a best-of-three pennant playoff with Brooklyn. After splitting the first two games, the Giants overcame one last hurdle — a 4–1, ninth-inning Brooklyn lead in Game 3 — to beat the Dodgers on Bobby Thomson's three-run home run, baseball's version of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World." The Giants had won their first National League pennant since 1937, but they dropped the 1951 World Series in six games to the New York Yankees.
Brooklyn dominated the NL for the next two seasons, but, in 1954, Durocher's Giants — led by the league's two leading hitters, batting champion Willie Mays and runner-up Don Mueller — won the pennant by five games. They drew the Cleveland Indians, who had set an American League record by winning 111 games, as their opponents in the 1954 World Series. But the Giants won in four straight games, highlighted by Mays' game-saving catch of Vic Wertz' long drive in Game 1, the clutch hitting of obscure outfielder and pinch hitter Dusty Rhodes, and effective pitching from four different starters.
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