O’Shea Helped Create a Baseball Champion
Harold O’Shea, father of Chief Executive Officer Bud O’Shea, loved baseball. He played baseball with his four sons and took them to major league games. It was only natural that his company would sponsor a youth baseball team.
In the middle 1940s, Harold O’Shea Builders sponsored a team in Springfield’s so-called “Midget” league. Nobody knew it then, but the team would produce a star – Dick (“Ducky”) Schofield, who turned pro. “I played shortstop and Dick Schofield played second base,” says Pat O’Shea, one of Bud’s brothers. “The team was made up mostly of 11- and 12-year-old friends of mine.”
Jim O’Shea, another of Bud’s brothers, says their father, Harold, “attended every one of those games, even though they were played during the daytime.”
The O’Shea team took top honors. “We won all the league games, beat every team, and then we won the playoff games,” says Pat. The August 22, 1945 Illinois State Journal reported: “O’Shea Builders added the Midget league playoffs to their regularly scheduled pennant yesterday, defeating Stinnetts 9 – 1 in the second game of their final series.” The team gave up only two hits for “a decisive victory.”
On December 30 of that year, the Journal mentioned O’Shea’s stellar team again: “In mentioning future sports possibilities, we’d be sadly remiss if we failed to mention the Midget baseball champions of 1945. Tab these kids for some big time baseball in the next few seasons.”
“Dick Schofield and I played on the team that dad sponsored, and on the Eddie Quinlan team in the Old Timers league. Dick’s dad coached that team,” Pat says. His youngest brother, Paul, recalls: “But when Dick’s father coached the team, Dick would play shortstop and Pat would play second base, because they were both shortstops and both very good. I would go to all of those games. Dick went on to get signed by the Cardinals.”
Dick played for seven major league baseball teams. He debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1953 at the age of 18, “as one of baseball’s youngest players,” shortly after graduating from Springfield High School, according to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). The front page of Springfield’s June 4, 1953 Illinois State Journal featured a photo of Dick signing his Cardinals contract with then Cardinals President August A. Busch, Jr. and reported that he received a signing bonus between $37,500 to $70,000. It says 12 of the 16 major league teams bid on him.
The utility player and infielder played nineteen seasons in the majors, during which he helped the Pittsburgh Pirates win the 1960 World Championship. Dick retired at the age of 37 as one of its “oldest players,” according to the SABR. His son and grandson played for the major leagues, too.