William Alfred Shea (June 21, 1907 – October 2, 1991) was an American lawyer and a name partner of the prominent law firm of Shea & Gould. He is better known as the founder of the Continental League, which was instrumental in bringing National League baseball back to New York City with the New York Mets, and for being the namesake of the stadium where that team played for 45 years, and paving the way for all of the MLB expansion teams that have followed.
Early life and career
Born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, Shea attended George Washington High School. He began undergraduate work at New York University where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, and later graduated from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1930 and the Georgetown Law School, receiving his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1931. He was a member of the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team for three years and played one year for the Georgetown Hoyas football team.
Shea worked for two state insurance bureaucracies before entering private practice in 1940. He accumulated political contacts through volunteer work on influential boards such as the Brooklyn Democratic Club and the Brooklyn Public Library. As one account put it: "Shea was neither a litigator nor a legal scholar. Rather, he was the sort of lawyer whom powerful men trusted with their secrets and whom they could rely upon as a go-between. ... [H]e earned a reputation as a man who could get things done."
Major League Baseball
In 1958, one year after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left for Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively (which left the city with one major league baseball team, the American League Yankees), Mayor Robert Wagner of the City of New York asked Shea to chair a committee to return the National League to New York. He first tried to bring an existing franchise to New York, but the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Pittsburgh Pirates all refused his overtures. When requests for expansion were declined, Shea proposed a new league, the Continental League, and travelled to a farm outside Philadelphia to talk Branch Rickey out of retirement to help him. The formation of the Continental League was announced by Rickey in 1959. The Continental League would have been a third major league and would have begun play in 1961.
The threat of a third major league forced Major League Baseball to discuss expansion. Two teams would be added to the American League in 1961: the second incarnation of the Washington Senators – now the Texas Rangers - and the Los Angeles Angels (now in Anaheim), and two more to the National League in 1962 (the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s (now the Houston Astros). With New York virtually assured of one of the new teams, Shea abandoned the idea of the Continental League. The New York Mets played their first game on April 11, 1962.
In 1964, the City of New York named the new stadium in which the Mets were to play in Shea's honor — Shea Stadium. In 2008, the New York Mets retired the name "Shea" on the outfield wall of Shea Stadium alongside the other elite players and managers whom the Mets have deemed worthy of such an honor over the years (Tom Seaver, Mike Piazza, Gil Hodges, Casey Stengel, and Jackie Robinson, retired by all teams at the request of Major League Baseball). The honor was carried over to Citi Field, the new home of the Mets, with the other players' and managers' numbers.
As of 2017, there are approximately 39 individuals who have been admitted to the Executives & Pioneers Division of the Hall of Fame. Of the 15 honored individuals admitted to the Executives & Pioneers Division of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame post-World War II, Shea served as a friend, an advisor, a peer, and as counsel to no less than two-thirds thereof (Happy Chandler; Ford Frick; Warren Giles; Clark Griffith; William Harridge; Bowie Kuhn; Leland MacPhail Sr.; Leland MacPhail Jr.; Walter O'Malley; Alejandro Pompez; Branch Rickey; Bill Veeck; George Weiss; J. Leslie "J.L." Wilkinson; Tom Yawkey).
National Football League
Shea was a one time owner of the Boston Yanks, the Long Island Indians, and a partial owner, with lifelong friend Jack Kent Cooke, of the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL). He further persuaded Harry Wismer to sell the New York Titans (now the Jets), and Sonny Werblin to buy them, and was integral to the creation and administration of the initial annual championship games between the AFL and the NFL, now known as the Super Bowl (thanks to Lamar Hunt). He, and his law firm, Shea & Gould, also represented the Jets, Giants, Redskins, and the NFL.