New York Baseball

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Katy Feeney, Baseball Executive Who Oversaw Scheduling, Dies at 68
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSAPRIL 3, 2017

Katy Feeney, a longtime senior executive for Major League Baseball, died on Saturday in Maine while visiting relatives. She was 68.

Major League Baseball announced her death but did not specify a cause or where she died in Maine. Baseball officials said she died in her sleep and had not shown any sign of illness. She lived in New York.

Ms. Feeney, a daughter of a former National League president, retired in December, ending a nearly 40-year career with Major League Baseball after working her final postseason.

She was hired by the National League in 1977 and rose to Major League Baseball’s senior vice president for club relations and scheduling. She was an expert on the complicated rules governing the schedule.

“Overseeing the schedule, Katy long held one of the most challenging positions in the sport,” the commissioner’s office said in a statement. It added, “She was one of the leading pioneers to the female executives of our game.”

Ms. Feeney was born into one of baseball’s most prominent families. Her father, Charles S. Feeney, who was known as Chub, was a grandson of Charles Stoneham, the New York Giants’ controlling owner from 1919 to 1936, and a nephew of Horace Stoneham, who owned the team from 1936 to 1976 and moved it to San Francisco after the 1957 season.

Chub Feeney became a Giants vice president, and by 1950 he was essentially the club’s general manager. He served as National League president from late 1969 until 1986, and was the San Diego Padres’ president for a little over a year, in 1987 and 1988.

Born in 1949, Katy Feeney, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, had worked in a variety of jobs — as a waitress, a teacher’s aide, a gas station attendant and a probation officer — when she joined the National League.

“I went in to help out temporarily for a couple of weeks, to fill in for a P.R. secretary who was leaving,” she once told Major League Baseball for a career profile. “When the offices moved to New York City, I was asked if I would go to help out for a year.”

She added, “It’s been a long year.”

She was promoted to assistant director of public relations in 1979 and became director of media and public affairs in December 1986.

As part of that role, she introduced National League players on the podium during the postseason and All-Star Games. After the merger of the National League and the American League with the commissioner’s office in 2000, she became the point person on scheduling, particularly when weather caused havoc.

Ms. Feeney is survived by her brothers, John, Stoney and Will; a sister, Mary; and eight nieces and nephews, the Giants organization said.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/sports/baseball/katy-feeney-dead-major-league-baseball-executive.html?