PAT FLAHERTY -Baseball/Football Athlete Turned Actor/Producer

[rhettyeakley]

One of the most rewarding aspects of this hobby (for me) is finding information about some of the more obscure players depicted on the cards we collect. Some players are so obscure that even today we know only a last name and little more. Then every once in a while you find a card of a player that really piques your interest.

The 1921 Zeenut set is a strange one. There are some cards in that set that are so rare that only a few examples are known, and of all the Zeenut sets it is one of the most likely to produce unknown or uncataloged cards. It includes several players that essentially only their last name is known (with some good guesses as to who the individual really was... Hesse, Jackson, Kersten, Kifer, Mustain, Nickels, O'Malia are all so obscure there is still debate as to who these guys were, some may not actually be players at all!)

Also in the 1921 set was an unassuming card of San Francisco Seals pitcher Edmund J. "Pat" Flaherty. He only played in 5 games for the seals with an 0-1 record, and only pitched in the Minor Leagues from 1921-1923, never making it into Major League game. Pat also played a bit of football and played in 12 games (as punter) for the 1923 Chicago Bears (NFL) & also in a single game for the 1926 Brooklyn Horsemen of the AFL (playing alongside the Four Horsemen from Notre Dame).



While those accomplishments are great, he then turned his sights to Hollywood and became a very prominent actor that appeared in or produced over 200 movies in his career. He was never the leading man but he appeared in pretty much every baseball movie made (The Jackie Robinson Story, The Stratton Story, The Babe Ruth Story, Pride of the Yankees, Death on the Diamond, The Winning Team, etc) and other non-Baseball classics such as The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) etc.

The guy lived a crazy life, although I knew about his acting career, today as I was researching him a little more I was really impressed with the sheer magnitude of his contributions and thought it would be interesting to make a post about him.

Here is a great SABR article that was written about him (apparently his daughter was contacted to help with the article):
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bbc1ed84

His Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Flaherty_(actor)

His IMDB page (w/ movie credits):
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0280900/

Not sure anyone else will be as intrigued by this as I was but it was worth a share.

[pclpads]

I recall him from "Key Largo, with Bogie. Small role as a hood, but he made the most of it.

[VintageJay]

Great post, thanks for sharing!

[tedzan]

Interesting stuff, Rhett. And yes, I found it this story of Pat Flaherty very "intriguing". Thanks for sharing it with us.

Reminds me of my favorite guy who started off playing baseball, basketball, and football (1940-1942). I met Chuck
in the late 1980's and had a great conversation with him. One of my favorite Western movies is "The Big Country".
In which he played a very bad dude. It was fascinating to hear him tell me a lot about the making of this movie.

I really enjoyed his sense of humor. He chuckled as he said.... "he rather had been Gil Hodges than The Rifleman".

Here is Kevin "Chuck" Connors SABR bio....it's very interesting.
http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/a687f416





TED Z
.

[qed2190]

I enjoyed it thanks for the post.

[ATP]

Bumping a really old thread, but thought it might be worth it to share an autograph of him. It's the first of him that I have handled, signed by Wallace Ford below him.