Chub Feeney | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Feeney, circa 1963 | |
| Born | Charles Stoneham Feeney (1921-08-31)August 31, 1921 Orange, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | January 10, 1994(1994-01-10) (aged 72) San Francisco,California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Baseball executive |
Charles Stoneham "Chub" Feeney (August 31, 1921 – January 10, 1994) was an American front office executive inMajor League Baseball. Feeney was vice president of theNew York/San Francisco Giants, president of theNational League (NL), and president of theSan Diego Padres during a 40-plus year career inprofessional baseball. He narrowly missed being electedCommissioner 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."[1]
Feeney was born inOrange, New Jersey to Thaddeus Feeney and Mary Alice (Stoneham) Feeney.[2] It was a baseball family; Mary Alice was the daughter ofCharles Stoneham, principal owner of theNew York Giants from1919 until his death in1936, and the sister ofHorace Stoneham, who owned the Giants from 1936 through1976 and transferred the team toSan Francisco in 1958.
Charles Stoneham felt that every boy should want to be a baseball star,[3] but his grandson was not athletically gifted. Feeney was abatboy for theJersey City Giants, a farm team of the New York Giants, but that was the limit of his athletic career on the diamond.[1]
Instead, Feeney attendedDartmouth College, where he tried out to be an assistant manager of the school's baseball team as a sophomore and worked his way up to manager. The team was coached byJeff Tesreau, a former Giants player himself, who instilled values of working toward establishing a solid basis for consistent victory as a program.[3] After graduation from Dartmouth in 1943, Feeney served in theUnited States Navy until the end ofWorld 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 in1946 while he attendedFordham Law School. He passed the New York Bar exam in 1949[2] and by 1950, Feeney was in effect thegeneral manager of the Giants.[4]
The postwar Giants were a second-division team of slow-footed sluggers with poor fielding and mediocre pitching. On July 16, 1948, Stoneham and Feeney made a dramatic change. They replacedmanagerMel Ott, a popular,Hall of Fame hitter and lifelong Giant, with the controversial and abrasiveLeo Durocher, who had been managing their bitter crosstown rivals, theBrooklyn Dodgers. Asked by Stoneham to evaluate his new team, Durocher, no sentimentalist, reportedly replied: "Back up the truck", meaning wholesale changes were needed.[5] Within1+1⁄2 years — and with the decision to follow Brooklyn in breaking thecolor line — Durocher, Stoneham and Feeney's front office had built the Giants into a hard-playing, balanced team of pitching, hitting, speed and defense.
In1951, the Giants battled back from a13+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 onBobby Thomson's three-runhome run, baseball's version of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World." The Giants had won their first National League pennant since1937, but they dropped the1951 World Series in six games to theNew York Yankees.
Brooklyn dominated the NL for the next two seasons, but, in1954, Durocher's Giants — led by the league's two leading hitters,batting championWillie Mays and runner-upDon Mueller — won the pennant by five games. They drew theCleveland Indians, who had set anAmerican League record by winning 111 games, as their opponents in the1954 World Series. But the Giants won in four straight games, highlighted by Mays'game-saving catch ofVic Wertz' long drive in Game 1, the clutch hitting of obscureoutfielder andpinch hitterDusty Rhodes, and effective pitching from four different starters.
Unfortunately, the 1954 Fall Classic was the last highlight of the Giants' 70-plus year history in New York City. Attendance plunged in the years that immediately followed, and after Durocher's resignation in1955 to become a "Game of the Week" baseball broadcaster, the team played poorly. By1957, owner Stoneham had decided to leave for greener pastures, ultimately choosingSan Francisco as the team's destination to preserve itshistoric rivalry with the Dodgers, who simultaneously moved toLos Angeles.
The Giants returned to thefirst division upon moving to theWest Coast, led by players produced by the club'sminor league system. Feeney and minor league directorCarl Hubbell, the Hall of Famepitcher, had stocked the team with outstanding young talent — especiallyAfrican-American andLatin-American players, exploiting lingering prejudice by most other Major League clubs. The Giants were the first team to sign players from theDominican Republic, bringing to San Francisco stars such asJuan Marichal,Felipe Alou andMatty Alou. The Giants also were the first MLB team to sign a player from Japan,Masanori Murakami, a left-handedpitcher who debuted in1964.
In1962, the Giants and Dodgers engaged in a West Coast version of the 1951 pennant chase. The Dodgers built an early lead in the National League race, but began to fall to earth when ace left-handerSandy Koufax was sidelined by a finger ailment. By season's end, the teams were deadlocked, at 101 wins and 61 defeats. Again, a best-of-three playoff would determine the champion, and — again — the Giants would rally in the ninth inning of Game 3 (this time from a 4–2 deficit) to beat the Dodgers. But the deciding game was played in Los Angeles, thus the winning run — forced in by a bases-loadedwalk — was not a "walk-off" situation and lacked the drama of Thomson's home run. The Giants, as in '51, faced the Yankees in the1962 World Series and lost, this time in seven games.
Although San Francisco remained a first-division team, and frequent contender, during the rest of the 1960s, it did not win another pennant in the decade; in fact, the team won one division championship from 1969 through 1986 (1971), and did not appear in the World Series again until1989. The Giants finished in second place for four successive seasons (1965–68). By1969, the team was showing signs of age and decline. Concurrently, Feeney was being considered for prominent positions within Major League Baseball's hierarchy. After his candidacy forCommissioner of Baseball fell short, Feeney succeededWarren Giles as National League president on December 5, 1969.
During his 17-year (1970–86) presidency, the National League continued its dominance of theAll-Star Game, losing only in1971,1983 and1986 and winning 14 times, although the American League prevailed in the World Series, 9–8, during this period. The NL also dominated the Junior Circuit in home attendance, outdrawing its rival league in each of Feeney's 17 years as chief executive, including the period of 1977–86, when the AL had two more member teams.[6][7] Feeney rallied NL owners to resist adoption of thedesignated hitter and presided over a period of stability, as the league neither expanded nor moved a franchise during his term. (Ironically, the NL team that came closest to moving was Stoneham's Giants, which were nearly sold to aToronto consortium in 1976. The owner who saved the Giants for San Francisco in 1976,Bob Lurie, nearly moved the team toSt. Petersburg, Florida in1992.)
Just before his tenure as NL president ended, he made an appearance onJeopardy! in the revived show's second season in 1986.
As he passed his 65th birthday, Feeney was succeeded as NL president byA. Bartlett Giamatti. His baseball career concluded with a 15-month tour as president of theSan Diego Padres (1987–88), which ended with his resignation the day after he gavethe finger to fans carrying a "SCRUB CHUB" sign on Fan Appreciation Night in San Diego on September 24, 1988.[8]
Feeney died on January 10, 1994, of aheart attack in San Francisco at the age of 72. He is interred atSkylawn Memorial Park inSan Mateo, California. Survivors included his daughterKaty (1949–2017), who was a longtime senior executive for both the National League and Major League Baseball.[9]
