Fate played a bit of a role in how "The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell" became a book to be reviewed here.
I was at a wedding this summer when it came up in conversation that an acquaintance of mine, Maureen Hurley, had a father who spent more than a decade playing major league baseball. Not only was that a surprise, but the news that a book had been written about his baseball life in 2024 also came up. How did I not hear about this before?
It was a bit odd to hear about Hurley's family baseball connection. She had worked for many years for Rich Products, which is the owner of the Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball team. (Full disclosure: I work for the Bisons now at some home games.) But her tie to the majors isn't well known in Buffalo.
I quickly ordered the book the next day, and buzzed through it relatively quickly. I'm happy to report that O'Connell's baseball life is an interesting one and worth a read.
The premise of the book is a little odd. Author Steve Wiegand was a baseball card collector as a child many years ago, and wanted to pay tribute to someone from that era who wasn't a star. Out of several hundred players portrayed in a given year on cardboard, most of them generally are forgotten rather quickly. In terms of the worth of a particular card, such players are lumped together under the title of "commons" for the same price per card - as if anyone who was/is good enough to play in the majors can be considered "common" in terms of athletic ability. You have to be mighty good to play one game at that level. (The baseball card business receives a slightly superficial review along the way here.)
O'Connell played in 1,143 games in the majors, which is impressive by almost any standard. The problem was that often he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Danny never played in an All-Star Game, and never reached the World Series - two of the best outlets for notoriety.
He became a pro baseball player with the Dodgers early in 1946 after high school. Not only did he have to compete with people his own age, but he quickly noticed how many young men were flooding back to the United States after World War II - all looking to get back on the baseball path to success. Still, Danny worked his way up the ladder and reached Brooklyn in 1949, even if he wasn't deemed ready to play in a big-league game that autumn. But soon O'Connell was dealt to Pittsburgh, the Colorado Rockies of that era. While the Pirates weren't contenders, the change of venue gave him a big opportunity - and he capitalized on it.
O'Connell played enough with the Pirates in 1950 to be a third-place finisher in voting for the Rookie of the Year. Then it was off to the armed forces for a couple of years before returning to Pittsburgh in 1953, where he more or less picked up where he led off. O'Connell was useful, but not a star. Still, a guy like that could be handy, and the Milwaukee Braves gave up six (!) players to acquire him in the offseason.
The Braves were making progress, but O'Connell often took one step forward and two steps back there. Part of the problem was that his best position was third base, and he wasn't going to beat Eddie Mathews out of that job. Danny headed to second base with mixed results over the course of the next three-plus seasons. Meanwhile, the Braves had developed into a very good team, and they could afford to try to win immediately. Milwaukee traded for future Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst to become the regular second baseman, and O'Connell was off to New York to play for the Giants.
At least Danny was near his boyhood home for a few months ... before the team moved all the way to San Francisco in 1958. Opportunities for O'Connell were few and far between there, as his playing time slowly disappeared over the course of two years. He spent 1960 in the minors, and in most years he probably would have been done with big league ball at that point. But expansion came to the sport in 1961, and Washington and Los Angeles were looking for warm bodies in their inaugural seasons. O'Connell scratched out two more seasons in the big leagues before retiring. He eventually went into private business, and died in an auto accident in 1969.
What's immediately striking is that a player such as O'Connell leaves footprints behind, which is one of the fun parts about baseball. The most shocking fact in the book is that when the Pirates were shopping O'Connell to the Braves, they almost received a prospect named Henry Aaron straight up for Danny. Supposedly, the cash-poor Pittsburgh team wanted some money to go with Aaron, and the Braves drew the line there. There's no attribution listed for that story, but it certainly would qualify as a great "what if?" in baseball history. O'Connell also scored the first run in the history of the San Francisco Giants, and his infield partner in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1948 was Rocky Bridges - who was the Buffalo Bisons' manager in 1988.
What Wiegand doesn't come out and say explicitly is that O'Connell could have been the poster boy for the type of undervalued player that was described in the book and movie, "Moneyball." Danny was a decent hitter but drew plenty of walks and even reached base via a hit by pitch quite a bit. He seemed to be a solid enough fielder, particularly at third base when he was allowed to play there.
However, it probably was unreasonable to expect the baseball experts of the 1950s to be able to recognize the "invisible" skills of someone like. One of this book's charms is how often a player's intangibles were used at the time in evaluating players, such as making heads-up plays and having a good attitude. O'Connell clearly would have done better today than in the 1950s.
Wiegand also tells the story of O'Connell's personal life, and supplies plenty of details and context. Baseball players made a decent living in the 1950s, but it wasn't an easy life. Their families either had to move to a new town when a trade came up, or they set up a base camp in one place and saw Daddy in person infrequently in the summer. The author has some fun with the changes in the game along the way, which is nice.
There are plenty of books out there about baseball in the 1950s, but many of them are about the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers. "The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell" puts some perspective on how the other half lived in those days.
Four stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com.
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