Baseball Chief

"Play Ball!"

When the voice of the umpire is heard in the land and the faithful flock to the ball park to check out the new bonus baby's curve ball, America's annual fever—not to be allayed until the World Series is history—is on.

The doomsayers who would have it that baseball has lost ground to professional football as our national pastime will get a persuasive argument from CHARLES S. FEENEY '43, president of the National League.

"Baseball is still number one," Feeney states unequivocally, citing nationwide polls and 1971 attendance figures to back up his contention. The polls show baseball to be America's favorite two-to-one, he claims, and National League games attracted 17 million spectators last season— an all-time record high. "All but one of our teams drew a million or more fans in 1971, and two drew more than two million. There's no question about it—baseball is still our national sport."

The addition of two new teams to each league in recent years and new ball parks in suburban areas with easy access by superhighway have contributed to rising attendance figures, "but the basic point," Feeney reiterates, "is that baseball is America's favorite sport."

Although his position requires strict neutrality, baseball—and up to three years ago—the Giants have been part of Chuck Feeney's life from way back. His grandfather Charles Stoneham, for whom he was named, was the New York Giants' backer. Not blessed with that singular blend of dexterity and coordination that makes a great ball player, Feeney took the managerial route to his "D" as a Dartmouth student. Jeff Tesreau, former Giants' pitching star, was coaching the Big Green in those days, and his model was "the way we did it with the Giants."

After graduation Feeney spent three years in the Navy, on submarine chasers and destroyers in both Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Mustered out as a lieutenant, he entered Fordham Law School. He earned an LL.B. and was admitted to the New York Bar after three years—some classmates claim—of spending his mornings in class and his afternoons at the Polo Grounds helping his uncle, Horace Stoneham, run the Giants. He put his legal skills to good use in contract negotiations and player trades when he joined the front office as vice president in 1946.

"Good Guy Makes Good" was the headline on a sports column in the San Francisco Chronicle when Feeney was elected league president in 1969. A good press is not always a baseball executive's long suit. Next to the men behind the Plate, they probably absorb more verbal brickbats from the fans and the press corps than any other group in the game.

But the sportswriters pronounced him a "regular guy" soon after he came to San Francisco in 1958 when the ball club moved from New York. An initial western skepticism about Feeney's Ivy League background was quickly dispelled by his genuine warmth.

The "good guy" image is shared with the Giants, an organization whose reputation prompted a veteran righthander to complain when he joined them, "It's no fun pitching for this club; there are too many nice guys running it." The explanation: "I'll feel bad when I lose. In other places, I didn't care."

In addition to tossing bouquets at Feeney for his record as second in command of the Giants—his shrewd judgment, sincere concern for the sport, his skill and tact in personnel matters—they zeroed in on his personal charm and an engaging quality of getting fouled up in little things.

"Feeney loses at dice, telephones wrong numbers, spills ineradicable substances on new neckties, trips on entering rooms, and gets people's names wrong," Ron Fimrite of the Chronicle wrote. "Feeney is one of those souls who passes through life accomplishing Big Things and shouting 'Oops!' all the way."

Another thing which endeared him to San Franciscans, as fiercely partisan a constituency as can be found anywhere, was one of his first decisions as president—to move league headquarters to the Bay Area. An East Coast suburbanite by birth and upbringing, Feeney has capitulated totally to the spell of the West in 14 years. "The only other place I'd like to live is Hanover," he maintains.

The Feeneys have five children, the middle son John a Dartmouth sophomore. The eldest son, a student at the University of the Pacific, worked with the Chicago Cubs last summer, but his father isn't prepared to predict that any of the younger generation will make it four-in-a-row in professional baseball.

Last month Feeney was on the road, joining the various clubs in turn at spring training, that annual signal that winter can't go on forever, even in the North Country. He wasn't sure that he'd be in Cincinnati April 5 for Opening Day, but of one thing he was convinced: it marks the start of another great season of America's national pastime—which is baseball.