Erik Brady: To Maureen Hurley, Danny O’Connell was ‘Dad.’ In new book, he’s a baseball card come to life

“I laughed when I read that,” she says. “I told my siblings, ‘Maybe I was destined to be in Buffalo one way or another.’ “

The New Jersey-born Maureen is eldest of the four children of Daniel Francis O’Connell, an infielder who played in the major leagues in the 1950s and early ’60s. He died of a heart attack, at age 40, in 1969, when she was just 13. Now he’s the central figure of a wonderful new book called “The Uncommon Life of Danny O’Connell: A Tale of Baseball Cards, ‘Average’ Players, and the True Value of America’s Game.”

Maureen and her husband, John Hurley, president emeritus of Canisius University, will be watching Game 4 of the World Series tonight at their home in the Elmwood Village. They met at Notre Dame Law School, where he was impressed to learn that her father had once played for the Milwaukee Braves, John’s favorite team in its Atlanta iteration.

“That’s one of the things that bonded us early on,” Maureen says. “He couldn’t believe he’d met a woman who loved baseball. And then I told him, ‘Yeah, it’s in my blood.’ “

Baseball biographies are usually reserved for the Hank Aarons and Willie Mayses of the world. O’Connell played on four teams in his 10 big-league seasons, including Aaron’s Braves (in Milwaukee) and Mays’ Giants (in New York and San Francisco).

Journeymen do not normally have books written about them, but Steve Wiegand, author of this book, had a masterstroke of an idea: He has told the story of baseball (and of baseball cards) in mid-century America through the story of a mostly forgotten ballplayer. It is a song of praise for the unsung.

“We think it is a pretty remarkable narrative,” Maureen says. “Of course, he was our father. We’re curious as to how other readers will see it.”

Tom Verducci is one such reader. He’s a reporter on Fox Sports’ World Series telecasts, and his blurb for the book says reading it is like “unwrapping a wax-pack of baseball cards,” only in this case “the bonus is better than a pink plank of gum.”

Wiegand opened a lot of those wax packs as a boy. And he says it seemed as if every pack had a Danny O’Connell card in it. Wiegand wasn’t happy about that, even though O’Connell was then playing for the Giants, his favorite team. He longed instead for one of the Willies: Mays or McCovey.

A lifetime later, Wiegand thought of O’Connell when he proposed a book about a player from baseball’s golden age who had been a “common card.” (That’s collector lingo for the cards of lesser-known players.) Wiegand had a private investigator find O’Connell’s four grown children, including Maureen in Buffalo. Then he sent them letters to tell them about what he wanted to do. He figured if he had sent emails they would have thought he was some sort of scam artist trying to sell them something.

Maureen says the family was skeptical at first but was soon impressed by the depth of Wiegand’s research. Later he spent a week at the library of the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, then visited Maureen and John for two days in Buffalo. Maureen is a through line of the book, quoted 18 times.

Here I should mention that I’ve been a friend of John’s since we worked together on the college newspaper at Canisius. I met Maureen for the first time on a visit to John at Notre Dame in their law school days.

And I happened to be at the Hall of Fame’s library in the 1990s on assignment for USA Today. I asked, just for fun, to see the O’Connell file – and there was a photo of Danny holding Maureen as a newborn. A librarian made me a copy for a small price, and when I presented it to Maureen, she said she had never seen the photo before.

It’s framed in her home office. “Now,” she says, “I see it every day.”

Vera, Maureen’s mother, died in 2018, a few years before Wiegand began the book that would take him two years to research and write. What might she have thought of it?

“She would have been mortified by the discussion of the family finances,” Maureen says. “There were struggles, but as kids we never knew that; we felt like we never wanted for anything. But I think she would have liked how Steve pulled it all together and showed what a scrapper and fighter my father was.”

The book tells a great deal about their father’s career that Maureen and her siblings never knew. “When Dad passed away,” she says, “we were still pretty young.”

Maureen and John worked for law firms in Chicago after graduation from law school. After a few years, they moved to John’s hometown, Buffalo.

“I remember my mother said, ‘Why is it every kid in New Jersey can’t wait to get out, and every kid in Buffalo can’t wait to get back?’ ” Maureen says, laughing.

Wiegand enjoyed his trip to see Maureen more than he had his first trip to Buffalo, 60 years ago, when he was 13. His stepfather owned a small piece of the San Diego Chargers, and Wiegand was at War Memorial Stadium when the Bills beat the Chargers, 20-7, in 1964’s AFL championship game. That one was famous for Mike Stratton’s “Hit Heard Round the World,” a phrase that calls to mind Bobby Thomson’s 1951 pennant-winning “Hit Heard Round the World” for baseball’s New York Giants.

War Memorial was the home of the Bisons when Maureen arrived at Rich Products in March 1984. Three months later, an old-timers game (billed as “Buffalo’s Grand Old Game”) came to the Rockpile. I had a front-row seat with John, Maureen and Vera. The lineups were dotted with a dozen Hall of Famers, including Buffalo’s own Warren Spahn.

Bobby Thomson himself was leaning on his bat outside the cage during batting practice when Vera spotted him. She called out, and he jogged over to see her. They talked warmly for several minutes. The book tells how Danny and Vera had been good friends (and golfing buddies) with Thomson and his wife, Winkie.

“That was such a thrill for her to see these guys, and for them to remember her,” Maureen says of her mother reminiscing with several of the old-timers at a hotel reception. “Cool for me, too. I mean, Bob Rich and some others knew that my father had played, but I think they were surprised at the way so many of them remembered my mom.”

Next year, it will be 75 years since O’Connell broke into the big leagues with the Pirates. The family is planning to go to a game in Pittsburgh to celebrate his career. They know so much about it now.

“The book is such a gift to us,” Maureen says. “I think we knew, even before it was written — maybe it was just my mother saying it — that Dad was well liked by his teammates and the press. We always had that impression.”

Wiegand’s research confirmed it.

“He was kind of a joker by nature,” Maureen says. “He loved to make people laugh. He would always sing at our family gatherings and parties. And of course we were always mortified: ‘Oh, God, Dad’s singing again.’ “

The book begins with O’Connell scoring the first run for the Giants in their first game in San Francisco, in 1958. He also made the last out at Washington’s Griffith Stadium, in 1961, when he played for the Senators.

His big-league career ended in Washington after the next season. He had an offer to play in Japan, but Vera would have none of that. Later he made his pitch to manage the Bisons, but ended up instead as player-manager for the York (Pa.) White Roses of the Class AA Eastern League. That’s the league the Bisons were in when Maureen arrived in Buffalo 40 years ago.

That old-timers game came along three months later. More than 26,000 fans came out to the Rockpile to see Bob Feller pitch and Brooks Robinson hit and Mays make one of his famous basket catches. This was a four-city tour: New Orleans, Buffalo, Indianapolis and Denver.

It so happens that I attended the first one to write a story for USA Today that ran just before the second one, in Buffalo. I had sought out Spahn in the clubhouse in New Orleans. I still remember what he told me about old-timers games:

“They’re baseball cards come to life.”

So is this book.